structural:expansion, linguistic:translation
Enduring popularity

In the decades since its release, the film has grown in reputation. Murray Burnett called it "true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow". By 1955, the film had brought in $6.8 million, making it the third-most-successful of Warners' wartime movies, behind Shine On, Harvest Moon and This Is the Army. On April 21, 1957, the Brattle Theater of Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed the film as part of a season of old movies. It proved so popular that a tradition began in which Casablanca would be screened during the week of final exams at Harvard University. Todd Gitlin, a professor of sociology who had attended one of these screenings, has said that the experience was "the acting out of my own personal rite of passage". The tradition helped the film remain popular while other films that had been famous in the 1940s have faded from popular memory. By 1977, Casablanca had become the most frequently broadcast film on American television.

Ingrid Bergman's portrayal of Ilsa Lund in Casablanca became one of her best-known roles. In later years she said, "I feel about Casablanca that it has a life of its own. There is something mystical about it. It seems to have filled a need, a need that was there before the film, a need that the film filled."

On the film's 50th anniversary, the Los Angeles Times called Casablanca ' s great strength "the purity of its Golden Age Hollywoodness the enduring craftsmanship of its resonantly hokey dialogue". Bob Strauss wrote in the newspaper that the film achieved a "near-perfect entertainment balance" of comedy, romance, and suspense.

Roger Ebert, wrote of Casablanca in 1992, "There are greater movies. More profound movies. Movies of greater artistic vision or artistic originality or political significance.... But one of the movies we treasure the most... This is a movie that has transcended the ordinary categories." In his opinion, the film is popular because "the people in it are all so good" and it is "a wonderful gem". Ebert said that he had never heard of a negative review of the film, even though individual elements can be criticized, citing unrealistic special effects and the stiff character of Laszlo as portrayed by Paul Henreid.

Critic and film historian Leonard Maltin considers Casablanca "the best Hollywood movie of all time".

According to Rudy Behlmer, the character of Rick is "not a hero... not a bad guy" because he does what is necessary to appease the authorities and "sticks his neck out for nobody". Behlmer feels that the other characters are "not cut and dried" and come into their goodness over the course of the film. Renault begins as a collaborator with the Nazis who extorts sexual favors from refugees and has Ugarte killed. Even Ilsa, the least active of the main characters, is "caught in the emotional struggle" over which man she really loves. By the end, however, "everybody is sacrificing". Behlmer also emphasized the variety in the picture. "It's a blend of drama, melodrama, comedy intrigue."

Scott Tobias, writing for The Guardian on the film's 80th anniversary, calls it "the jewel of Hollywood's Golden Age", and the best example of the system of film-making working: due not to a single artistic genius but a combination of talented writing, set design, music, casting, supporting characters, and production.

A few reviewers have expressed reservations. To Pauline Kael, "It's far from a great film, but it has a special appealingly schlocky romanticism..." Umberto Eco wrote that "by any strict critical standards... Casablanca is a very mediocre film". He viewed the changes that the characters manifest as inconsistent rather than complex. "It is a comic strip, a hotchpotch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects." However, he added that because of the presence of multiple archetypes that allow "the power of Narrative in its natural state without Art intervening to discipline it", it is a film reaching "Homeric depths" as a "phenomenon worthy of awe".

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 136 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.5/10. The website's consensus reads, "An undisputed masterpiece and perhaps Hollywood's quintessential statement on love and romance, Casablanca has only improved with age, boasting career-defining performances from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman." On Metacritic, the film has a perfect score of 100 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It is one of the few films in the site's history to achieve a perfect aggregate score.

In the November/December 1982 issue of Film Comment, Chuck Ross wrote that he retyped the Casablanca screenplay, reverting the title to Everybody Comes to Rick's and changing the name of Sam the piano player to Dooley (after Dooley Wilson, who played the character), and submitted it to 217 agencies. The majority of agencies returned the script unread (often because of policies regarding unsolicited screenplays) or did not respond. However, of those which did respond, only 33 specifically recognized it as Casablanca. Eight others observed that it was similar to Casablanca, and 41 agencies rejected the screenplay outright, offering comments such as "Too much dialogue, not enough exposition, the story line was weak, and in general didn't hold my interest." Three agencies offered to represent the screenplay, and one suggested turning it into a novel.