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“We’ll Always Have Paris” is also on the AFI list but will be relegated to an honorable mention today for no good reason other than that there are five better quotes. The quote is delivered during the romantic climax of the movie, when Bogie and Ingrid face a life-changing decision. The entire romantic arc of the movie is that it is basically set over two tragic days (granted, with flashbacks as backstory), a device that is older than the movie and that is still used today (think Titanic) - even if audiences do not respond as well to it today. The heightened romanticism of the time and of a whirlwind two-day tryst is no more apparent than in this line, a classic that has been parodied and reused ten times over today.

Before we get into the final five, I’ll have to discuss what some consider the most classic line from the movie, and the highest on the aforementioned AFI list. “Here’s looking at you, kid” is clearly a classic line. But I have my doubts about it as a piece of writing. When I had the pipedream of becoming a novelist/screenwriter, I read in a book that an effective trick was to write into your characters a memorable quote, something that made them unique and interesting (think: Hercule Poirot and his little gray cells). In that sense, then, the line seems like writing by numbers. Why is Rick calling Ilsa, his lover, a kid? Why is an otherwise cynical, hardened man uttering such a cutsey line? And why does he say it so many times?

To be sure, the line delivers the effective emotional payout in the context of the final scene, where everything happens quickly and the gut punch of their separation hits the viewer. But, when it appears first it is arguably a lone choppy moment in an otherwise superbly tight script. Perhaps the fact that this line is rumored not to be in any of the draft screenplays, but rather inserted by Bogie during practice shoots, has helped its mysticism. Still, one must evaluate it on its merits, I posit, and not only on the folk tales that may surround its existence.

5. Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’

Speaking of misquotes, this line, which Bergman utters in one of her first scenes (to the piano player, Sam) is often remembered as “Play it again, Sam.” Perhaps the misquote happened over time because, later in the film, Bogart comes in and demands that Sam play it once more, demanding “You played it for her, you can play it for me!” But the Bergman quote is really the one that deserves to be on the list, because it is a moment that showcases her classic beauty and her soft romanticism, and augurs what’s to come - a melancholic, nostalgic remembrance of a time long gone, both literally and figuratively, both in the world and in the particular life of these lovers. The line and the song are really the beginning of the movie, and they strike the perfect chord of emotion as it takes off.

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