1. CASABLANCA

Story is change.

In this case, we have a character who changes throughout the course of the film for the better, for the greater good, against his basest instincts, and thus becomes noble.

"Everyone Comes To Rick's" was the original title, and while it's inelegant, it's correct: this movie revolves around Rick and his cafe. Rick, we are told by others, never has a drink with patrons, is attached to no woman, and is essentially a loner. Rick, by his own words, "sticks his neck out for no one." In this sense, Rick is a metaphor for America's isolationist policies.

But watch how things gradually change: from watching Rick brusquely escort a drunk one-night stand out of his cafe, to later passionately embracing Ilsa; from being business-like with his money throughout, to later helping a young woman cheat at roulette to buy passage out of Casablanca; from being resolutely apolitical, to helping a resistance fighter escape, risking his own life and giving up the woman he's pined for in the process.

There's another layer of change in this story, as well, the flashbacks to Paris where we see Rick and Ilsa in love. It is years prior, and they are carefree, the world is their oyster. That she leaves Rick with only a note at the train station is what changes him into the hardened, cyncical, jaded man he is at the start of the picture, and her reemergence in his life is what eventually spurns him to become a better man.

The changes continue at the end, where Rick has successfully risked everything to get Laszlo on the plane and sacrifices his own relationship with Ilsa for the greater good, for her to remain with Laszlo. To do all this required him to sell his cafe, so beyond changing internally, Rick must walk off into the uncertain future, a different and better man.