Humphrey Bogart Classic Just Ranked No. 1 ‘Most Impactful Movie Ending'
More than 80 years after its release, Casablanca is still widely considered one of the greatest films ever made-and now its legendary final moments have earned another major honor.
MsMojo recently ranked the 1942 Humphrey Bogart classic No. 1 on its list of the "Most Impactful Movie Endings," praising the film's unforgettable closing scene between Bogart's Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa Lund and Claude Rains' Captain Louis Renault.
"Do movies get any more romantic than this?" the video asked while discussing the film's emotional final sequence.
Directed by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca follows American nightclub owner Rick Blaine, who finds himself torn between rekindling his romance with Ilsa and helping her husband, resistance leader Victor Laszlo, escape Nazi-controlled territory during World War II.
The film builds toward one of Hollywood's most iconic endings as Rick ultimately sacrifices his own happiness to help Ilsa and Laszlo flee Casablanca safely. After shooting Nazi Major Strasser and sending Ilsa away on the plane, Rick walks off into the fog alongside Renault and delivers the immortal line: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
The ending has remained one of the most celebrated moments in movie history for decades thanks to its mix of romance, heartbreak, sacrifice and hope.
Roger Ebert once famously wrote on his list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, "If there is ever a time when they decide that some movies should be spelled with an upper-case M, Casablanca should be voted first on the list of Movies."
Released in 1942 during World War II, Casablanca was initially expected to be just another studio film among dozens produced each year by Hollywood. Instead, it became a cultural phenomenon that won the Academy Award for Best Picture and gradually developed a reputation as one of the defining films of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
The movie's influence has only grown with time. The American Film Institute ranked Casablanca No. 2 on its list of the greatest American films ever made and named several of its lines among the most famous movie quotes in history, including "Here's looking at you, kid" and "We'll always have Paris."
Much of the film's enduring power comes from its emotionally layered ending, which balances love and loss without offering a traditional Hollywood happy ending. Instead of choosing romance, Rick chooses sacrifice-a decision that helped transform the film into an enduring classic.
More than eight decades later, audiences are clearly still captivated by that final foggy walk into the night.
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This story was originally published May 16, 2026 at 7:26 AM.