The gin joint is Rick’s Café Américain, the most popular spot in town. The woman is Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). The man is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). And the film is Casablanca, one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. On this day in 1942, the film premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York.

Casablanca featured one of cinema’s most memorable great love songs, As Time Goes By (lyrics and music by Herman Hupfeld):

“You must remember this;
A kiss is still a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh —
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.”

Based on the unpublished play Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the film began production without a finished script or a clear ending. Still, its scenes, characters, and lines have become unforgettable with time.

“I stick my neck out for nobody,” said Bogart’s character — the hard-drinking cynic who loved and lost his great love Ilsa in Paris years earlier.

For Ilsa and Rick, in the midst of World War II, defeating the Nazis meant more than their own desires. “Oh, it’s a crazy world. Anything can happen… Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time,” Ilsa pleaded.

It’s impossible to imagine other actors in the roles, though producer Hal B. Wallis nearly cast Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan. The film ultimately won three Oscars: Picture, Director, and Screenplay (Julius & Philip Epstein and Howard Koch).

Reviewer Roger Ebert once wrote, “The more you see it, the more the whole film gains resonance. It never grows over-familiar… the more I know it, the more I like it.”