Ingrid Bergman

Alfred Hitchcock: the master of suspense. We grew up seeing his entertaining thrillers on TV, beautifully made movies about elegant people in danger. The glamour of To Catch a Thief; Cary Grant as the wrong man on the run in North by Northwest; Tippi Hedren looking chic with her chignon, brutally attacked in The Birds by the titular avian menace. Don’t look for heart, though. These were emotionally detached films, weren’t they? In his publicity Hitchcock joked about murder. He said that Psycho was a dark comedy. His TV programs were full of gallows humor. Critics said he had an ironic Englishness. Chilling and chilly. Maybe it’s the Celt in me, but I don’t quite see the films like that. Yes, I spot the irony, and that’s part of their appeal.

In considering what makes a masterpiece of film, the critical community has its shortlist of highly artistic favorites: Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Battleship Potemkin, the like. But in the hearts and minds of average moviegoers, another kind of picture has come to encapsulate “the big screen”: one with less aesthetic ambition, perhaps, but an exceptional dose of romance and style. For this set, Casablanca remains something like the main attraction. Eighty years ago this November, Warner Bros.