I didn’t see the movie Casablanca until I was almost forty years old. Despite being an avid TV watcher in my youth I don’t ever recall it being on here in NZ.

Nor do I recall my parents ever talking about it. Perhaps it was just another piece of their wartime background, a bit of fluff they enjoyed and then forgot.

And even though my university had movie nights I never saw it advertised there. But eventually I did see it in a theatre as part of a classics weekend. Even then it feels like I missed so much on that first viewing. It’s a movie that can be viewed many times and little touches revealed each time.

Perhaps I would not have got it in my youth. It may be that you have to have had loss in your life to get it; loss of love, loss of life.

But having seen it and having seen many of the other “great” movies, including other Golden Age of Hollywood classics, and not being one who likes to rank any such thing – usually a Top 10 or Top 100 with no further assessment – I have to say that it is probably the greatest movie I’ve ever seen and I’ve watched it dozens of times by now.

So in honour of it being 80 years since it was released I’ll probably watch it again tonight and once more marvel at its genius.

Whoever edited this trailer for the 4K release of the movie is a bit of a genius themselves.