Casablanca is a 1942 American
romantic dramaRomance films are love stories that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes through courtship or marriage. Romance films make the love story or the search for love the main plot focus...
film directed by
Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...
, starring
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
,
Ingrid BergmanIngrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
and
Paul Henreid, and featuring
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
,
Conrad VeidtConrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
,
Sydney GreenstreetSydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor. He is best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca .-Biography:...
,
Peter LorrePeter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
and
Dooley WilsonArthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one character, love and virtue. He must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her
CzechCzechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
ResistanceResistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
leader husband escape from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of
CasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
to continue his fight against the
NazisNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
.
Although it was an A-list film, with established stars and first-rate writers—
Julius J. EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...
,
Philip G. EpsteinPhilip G. Epstein was an American screenwriter most known for his adaptation in partnership with his twin brother, Julius, and others, of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's which became the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film Casablanca .Epstein was born in New York City and...
and
Howard KochHoward E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Early Years:...
received credit for the screenplay—no one involved with its production expected
Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary; it was just one of hundreds of pictures produced by
HollywoodThe cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
every year. The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the
Allied invasion of North AfricaOperation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....
a few weeks earlier. Despite a changing assortment of screenwriters frantically adapting an unstaged play and barely keeping ahead of production, and Bogart attempting his first romantic lead role,
Casablanca won three Academy Awards, including
Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and the film has grown in popularity to the point that it now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.
Plot
Rick Blaine (
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
) is a cynical American
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
living in
CasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
in early December 1941. He owns and runs "Rick's Café Américain", an upscale nightclub and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele: Vichy French, Italian, and Nazi officials; refugees desperately seeking to reach the United States, as yet uninvolved in the war; and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed he
ran gunsArms trafficking, also known as gunrunning, is the illegal trafficking or smuggling of contraband weapons or ammunition.The 1997 Report of the UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms provides a more refined and precise definition, which has become internationally accepted...
to
EthiopiaThe Ethiopian Empire also known as Abyssinia, covered a geographical area that the present-day northern half of Ethiopia and Eritrea covers, and included in its peripheries Zeila, Djibouti, Yemen and Western Saudi Arabia...
to combat the
1935 Italian invasionThe Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a colonial war that started in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war was fought between the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy and the armed forces of the Ethiopian Empire...
and fought on the
RepublicanThe Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
side in the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
.
Ugarte (
Peter LorrePeter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
), a petty criminal, arrives in Rick's club with "letters of transit" obtained through the murder of two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe and to neutral
PortugalDuring World War II, the Portuguese Republic was a near-fascist political regime under António de Oliveira Salazar in the Estado Novo. Although Portugal was officially a neutral country, it exported goods to the Allies as well as Germany and other neutral countries...
, and from there to America. The letters are almost priceless to the continual stream of refugees who end up stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them to the highest bidder, who is due to arrive at the club later that night. Before the exchange can take place, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault (
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
), a self-confessed corrupt official. Ugarte dies in police custody without revealing that he had entrusted the letters to Rick.
At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover,
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
Ilsa Lund (
Ingrid BergmanIngrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
), walks into his establishment. Upon seeing the house pianist, Sam (
Dooley WilsonArthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
), Ilsa asks him to play
"As Time Goes By""As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became most famous in 1942 when it was sung by the character Sam in the movie Casablanca. The song was voted #2 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film. It was used as a fanfare for Warner...
. When Rick storms over, furious that Sam has disobeyed his order never to perform that song, he is shocked to see Ilsa. She is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo (
Paul Henreid), a fugitive Czech Resistance leader who has escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. The couple needs the letters to leave for America so he can continue his work. German Major Strasser (
Conrad VeidtConrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
) arrives in Casablanca to see to it that Laszlo does not succeed.
When Laszlo makes inquiries of Signor Ferrari (
Sydney GreenstreetSydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor. He is best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca .-Biography:...
), a major figure in the criminal underworld and Rick's friendly business rival, Ferrari divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. Laszlo meets with Rick privately, but Rick refuses to part with the documents, telling Laszlo to ask his wife for the reason. They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing "
Die Wacht am Rhein"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in historical conflicts with France, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War....
". In response, Laszlo orders the house band to play "
La Marseillaise"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
". When the band looks to Rick for guidance, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has Renault close the club.
That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted café. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but then confesses that she still loves him. She explains that when they first met and fell in love in Paris, she believed that her husband had been killed attempting to escape from the concentration camp. Later, while preparing to flee with Rick from the imminent fall of the city to the German army, she learned that Laszlo was in fact alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend to her ill husband.
With the revelation, the lovers are reconciled. Rick agrees to help, leading her to believe that she will stay behind with him when Laszlo leaves. When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S. K. Sakall) secretly take Ilsa back to the hotel while the two men talk.
Laszlo reveals he is aware of Rick's love for Ilsa and tries to persuade him to use the letters to take her to safety. When the police arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge, Rick convinces Renault to release him by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions, Rick explains he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.
When Renault tries to arrest Laszlo as arranged, Rick forces him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to
LisbonLisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
with her husband, telling her she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
Major Strasser, tipped off by Renault, drives up alone. Rick shoots Strasser when he tries to intervene. When his men arrive, Renault pauses, then tells them to "round up the usual suspects."
Once they are alone, Renault suggests to Rick that they join the Free French at
Brazzaville-Transport:The city is home to Maya-Maya Airport and a railway station on the Congo-Ocean Railway. It is also an important river port, with ferries sailing to Kinshasa and to Bangui via Impfondo...
. They walk off into the fog with one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Cast
The play's cast consisted of 16 speaking parts and several extras; the film script enlarged it to 22 speaking parts and hundreds of extras. The cast is notable for its internationalism: only three of the credited actors were born in the U.S. The top-billed actors were:
- Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
as Rick Blaine. Earlier in his career, he had been typecastIn TV, film, and theatre, typecasting is the process by which a particular actor becomes strongly identified with a specific character; one or more particular roles; or, characters having the same traits or coming from the same social or ethnic groups...
as a gangsterA gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
. High Sierra (1941) had allowed him to play a character with some warmth, but Rick was his first truly romantic role.
- Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
as Ilsa Lund. Bergman's official website calls Ilsa her "most famous and enduring role". The Swedish actress's Hollywood debut in IntermezzoIntermezzo is a romantic film made in the USA by Selznick International Pictures. It was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by David O. Selznick. It is a remake of the Swedish film Intermezzo . The screenplay by George O'Neil was based on the screenplay of the original film by Gösta Stevens...
had been well received, but her subsequent films were not major successes—until Casablanca. Film critic Roger Ebert calls her "luminous", and comments on the chemistry between her and Bogart: "she paints his face with her eyes". Other actresses considered for the role of Ilsa included Ann Sheridan-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a student at the University of North Texas when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a...
, Hedy LamarrHedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless...
and Michèle MorganMichèle Morgan is a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades.- Career :Morgan was born Simone Renée Roussel in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, a western suburb of Paris....
. Wallis obtained the services of Bergman, who was contracted to David O. Selznick, by lending Olivia de HavillandOlivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...
in exchange.
- Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo. Henreid, an Austrian actor who emigrated in 1935, was reluctant to take the role (it "set [him] as a stiff forever", according to Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
), until he was promised top billing along with Bogart and Bergman. Henreid did not get on well with his fellow actors; he considered Bogart "a mediocre actor", while Bergman called Henreid a "prima donna".
The second-billed actors were:
- Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor. He is best known for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, which include The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca .-Biography:...
as Signor Ferrari, a rival nightclub owner. Another Englishman, Greenstreet had previously starred with Lorre and Bogart in his film debut in The Maltese FalconThe Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
.
- Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
as Signor Ugarte. Lorre, who was born in Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
, had left Germany in 1933.
- Claude Rains
Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
as Captain Louis Renault. Rains was an English actor born in London. He had previously worked with Michael Curtiz on The Adventures of Robin HoodThe Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1938 American swashbuckler film directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley. Filmed in Technicolor, the picture stars Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, and Claude Rains.-Plot:...
. He later appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious with Ingrid Bergman.
- Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
as Major Heinrich Strasser. He was a German actor who had appeared in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari before fleeing from the Nazis and ironically was best known for playing Nazis in U.S. films.
Also credited were:
- Curt Bois as the pickpocket. Bois was a German Jewish actor and another refugee. He had one of the longest careers in film, making his first appearance in 1907 and his last in 1987.
- Leonid Kinskey
Leonid Kinskey was a Russian-born movie and television actor who enjoyed a long career. Kinskey is best known for his role as Sascha in the film Casablanca ....
as Sascha, the Russian bartender infatuated with Yvonne. He was actually born in Russia.
- Madeleine LeBeau
Madeleine LeBeau is a French actress.-Early life:...
as Yvonne, Rick's soon-discarded girlfriend. The French actress was Marcel DalioMarcel Dalio was a French character actor. He had major roles in two of Jean Renoir's most famous films, Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game.- Biography :...
's wife until their divorce in 1942.
- Joy Page
Joy Page was an American actress best known for her role as the Bulgarian bride Annina Brandel in the film Casablanca ....
as Annina Brandel, the young BulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n refugee. The third credited American, she was studio head Jack WarnerJack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
's stepdaughter.
- John Qualen
John Qualen was a Canadian-American character actor of Norwegian heritage who specialized in Scandinavian roles....
as Berger, Laszlo's Resistance contact. He was born in Canada, but grew up in America. He appeared in many of John FordJohn Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
's movies.
- S. Z. Sakall (credited as S. K. Sakall) as Carl, the waiter. He was a Hungarian actor who fled from Germany in 1939. His three sisters later died in a concentration camp.
- Dooley Wilson
Arthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
as Sam. He was one of the few American members of the cast. A drummerA drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
, he could not play the piano. Hal Wallis had considered changing Sam to a female character (Hazel ScottHazel Dorothy Scott was an internationally known, American jazz and classical pianist and singer.-Early years and education:...
and Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz and song vocalist...
were candidates), and even after shooting had been completed, Wallis considered dubbing over Wilson's voice for the songs.
Notable uncredited actors were:
- Leon Belasco
Leon Belasco was a Russian-American musician and actor who had a 60-year career in film and television from the 1920s to the 1980s, appearing in more than 100 films.-Musical career:Belasco attended St...
as a dealer in Rick's Cafe. A Russian-American character actor, he appeared in 13 films the year Casablanca was released.
- Marcel Dalio
Marcel Dalio was a French character actor. He had major roles in two of Jean Renoir's most famous films, Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game.- Biography :...
as Emil the croupierA croupier or dealer is someone appointed at a gambling table to assist in the conduct of the game, especially in the distribution of bets and payouts. Croupiers are typically employed by casinos.-Origin of the word:...
. He had been a star in French cinema, appearing in Jean RenoirJean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
's La Grande Illusion and La Regle de JeuThe Rules of the Game is a 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II...
, but after he fled the fall of France, he was reduced to bit parts in Hollywood. He had a key role in another of Bogart's films, To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not is a 1944 romance-war-adventure film. The movie was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall in her first film...
.
- Helmut Dantine
Helmut Dantine was a film actor remembered for playing many Nazis in thriller films of the 1940s. The Vienna-born actor appeared uncredited in Casablanca early in his career .Dantine's father was the head of the Austrian railway system...
as Jan Brandel, the Bulgarian roulette player married to Annina Brandel. Another Austrian, he had spent time in a concentration camp after the AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, the annexation of Austria.
- William Edmunds
William Edmunds was a stage and screen character actor, typically playing roles with heavy accents . Born as Guillermo Bocconcini in Italy, he immigrated to the United States and was a New York City based actor, receiving his first credited role in the Bob Hope film Going Spanish...
as a contact man at Rick's. He usually played characters with heavy accents, such as Martini in It's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
(1946).
- Gregory Gaye
Gregory Gaye was a Russian-American actor. The son of an actor, he was born Gregory De Gay in Petrograd, now known as St. Petersburg....
as the German banker who is refused entry to the casino by Rick. Gaye was a Russian-born actor who went to the United States in 1917 after the Russian Revolution.
- Torben Meyer
Torben Emil Meyer was a Danish character actor who appeared in over 190 films in a 55-year career.-Early career:...
as the Dutch banker who runs "the second largest banking house in Amsterdam". Meyer was a Danish actor.
- Georges Renavent
Georges Renavent was an actor in American classic films, Broadway plays and operator of American Grand Guignol. He was born in Paris, France....
as Conspirator.
- Dan Seymour
Dan Seymour was a character actor who frequently played villains in Warner Bros. films. He appeared in several Humphrey Bogart films, including Casablanca, Key Largo, and To Have and Have Not....
as Abdul the doorman. He was an American actor who, at 265 pounds, often played villains, including the principal one in To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not is a 1944 romance-war-adventure film. The movie was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall in her first film...
, and one of the secondary ones in Key LargoKey Largo is a 1948 film noir directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor...
, both opposite Bogart.
- Norma Varden
Norma Varden was an English actress with a long film career in Hollywood.Born in London, the daughter of a retired sea-captain, Varden was a child prodigy. She trained as a concert pianist in Paris and performed in England before deciding to take up acting...
as the Englishwoman whose husband has his wallet stolen. She was a famous English character actress.
- Jean Del Val
Jean Del Val was a French-born actor. He has also been credited as Jean Gauthier and Jean Gautier.He has played roles during the Hollywood silent era, beginning with The Fortunes of Fifi in 1917...
as the French police radio announcer who (following the opening montage sequence) reports the news of the murder of the two German couriers.
- Leo White
Leo White was a stage performer and appeared as a character actor in many Charlie Chaplin films. He started his film career in 1911 and in 1913 moved to the Essanay Studios. In 1915, he began appearing in Chaplin's comedies and continued through Chaplin's Mutual Film comedies...
as the waiter Emile (not to be confused with the croupier Emil), from whom Renault orders a drink when he sits down with the Laszlos. White was a familiar face in many Charlie Chaplin two-reelers in the 1910s, usually playing an upper-class antagonist.
- Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
may have had an unbilled cameo role (claimed by a contemporary newspaper advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book). When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", critic Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." In response to a follow-up question in his next column, he stated, "I think you're right."
Part of the emotional impact of the film has been attributed to the large proportion of European exiles and refugees among the extras and in the minor roles. A witness to the filming of the "duel of the anthems" sequence said he saw many of the actors crying and "realized that they were all real refugees". Harmetz argues that they "brought to a dozen small roles in
Casablanca an understanding and a desperation that could never have come from Central Casting". The German citizens among them nevertheless had to keep
curfewA curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...
as
enemy alienIn law, an enemy alien is a citizen of a country which is in a state of conflict with the land in which he or she is located. Usually, but not always, the countries are in a state of declared war.-United Kingdom:...
s. Ironically, they were frequently cast as the Nazis from whom they had fled.
Some of the exiled actors were:
- Louis V. Arco
Louis V. Arco was an Austrian-born actor who was born Lutz Altschul in Baden, Austria-Hungary , about 5 miles south of Vienna....
as another refugee in Rick's. Born Lutz Altschul in Austria, he moved to America shortly after the Anschluss and changed his name.
- Trude Berliner
Trude Berliner was a German actress. She was one of many Jewish actors and actresses that were forced to flee Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933....
as a baccaratBaccarat is a card game, played at casinos and by gamblers. It is believed to have been introduced into France from Italy during the reign of King Charles VIII , and it is similar to Faro and Basset...
player in Rick's. Born in Berlin, she was a famous cabaret performer and film actress. Being Jewish, she left Germany in 1933.
- Ilka Grünig
Ilka Grüning Born in Vienna in the old Austrian-Hungarian Empire. She was one of many Jewish actors and actresses that were forced to flee Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933.-Career:...
as Mrs. Leuchtag. Born in ViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, she was a silent movie star in Germany who came to America after the Anschluss.
- Lotte Palfi as the refugee trying to sell her diamonds. Born in Germany, she played stage roles at a prestigious theater in Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
, Germany. She journeyed to America after the Nazis came to power in 1933. She later married another Casablanca actor, Wolfgang Zilzer.
- Richard Ryen
Richard Ryen was an Hungarian born actor who was expelled from Germany by the Nazis prior to World War II....
as Strasser's aide, Captain Heinze. The Austrian Jew acted in German films, but fled the Nazis.
- Ludwig Stössel
Ludwig Stössel was an actor born in Lockenhaus, Austria. He was one of many Jewish actors and actresses that were forced to flee Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933....
as Mr. Leuchtag, the German refugee whose English is "not so good". Born in Austria, the Jewish actor was imprisoned following the AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, the annexation of Austria. When he was released, he left for England and then America. Stössel became famous for doing a long series of commercials for Italian Swiss Colony wine producers. Dressed in an Alpine hat and lederhosenLederhosen are breeches made of leather; they may be either short or knee-length. The longer ones are generally called Bundhosen....
, Stössel was their spokesman with the slogan, "That Little Old Winemaker, Me!"
- Hans Twardowski as a Nazi officer who argues with a French officer over Yvonne. He was born in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin
Szczecin , is the capital city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland. It is the country's seventh-largest city and the largest seaport in Poland on the Baltic Sea. As of June 2009 the population was 406,427....
, Poland).
- Wolfgang Zilzer
Wofgang Zilzer was a German-American stage and film actor.-Career:Zilzer was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to German-Jewish emigrant Max Zilzer, who was engaged at the local theater. Zilzer's mother died soon after his birth and his father returned to Germany in 1905...
as a Free French agent who is shot in the opening scene of the movie, was a silent movie actor in Germany who left when the Nazis took over. He later married Casablanca actress Lotte Palfi.
Production
The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced
playA play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
Everybody Comes to Rick'sEverybody Comes to Rick's is an unpublished play which was the basis for the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It was written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison...
. The
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
story analyst who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokum", and story editor
Irene DiamondIrene Diamond was a Hollywood talent scout and later in life a prominent philanthropist.She was married to prominent realtor Aaron Diamond and lived in New York City....
convinced
producerA film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
Hal Wallis to buy the rights in January 1942 for $20,000, the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. The project was renamed
Casablanca, apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit
AlgiersAlgiers is a 1938 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and starring Charles Boyer, Sigrid Gurie, and Hedy Lamarr. The Walter Wanger production was a remake of the successful 1937 French film Pépé le Moko, which derived its plot from the Henri La Barthe novel of the same name...
. Although an initial filming date was selected for April 10, 1942, delays led to a start of production on May 25. Filming was completed on August 3, and the production cost $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget), above average for the time. The film was shot in sequence, mainly because only the first half of the script was ready when filming began.
The entire picture was shot in the studio, except for the sequence showing Major Strasser's arrival, which was filmed at
Van Nuys AirportVan Nuys Airport is a public airport located in Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley section of the city limits of Los Angeles, California, United States. No major commercial airlines fly into this airport; it is used by private, chartered, and small commercial aircraft...
, and a few short clips of stock footage views of Paris. The street used for the exterior shots had recently been built for another film,
The Desert SongThe Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Moroccan fighters, against French colonial rule. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of...
, and
redressed-In Film:Set dressers arrange objects on a film set before shooting. They work under the direction of a leadman, a set decorator and a production designer. Set dressers place furniture, hang pictures, and put out decorative items. They are also responsible for some light construction and assembly...
for the Paris flashbacks. It remained on the Warners
backlotA backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio, containing permanent exterior buildings for outdoor scenes in filmmaking or television productions, or space for temporary set construction....
until the 1960s. The set for Rick's was built in three unconnected parts, so the internal layout of the building is indeterminate. In a number of scenes, the camera looks through a wall from the cafe area into Rick's office. The background of the final scene, which shows a
Lockheed Model 12 Electra JuniorThe Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, more commonly known as the Lockheed 12 or L-12, is an eight-seat, six-passenger all-metal twin-engine transport aircraft of the late 1930s designed for use by small airlines, companies, and wealthy private individuals...
airplane with personnel walking around it, was staged using
midgetA midget is a short person with relatively average bodily proportions in comparison with other human beings. The term is often improperly used to describe a person with the medical condition dwarfism. The two terms are often used synonymously because both terms originate as words defining small...
extrasA background actor or extra is a performer in a film, television show, stage, musical, opera or ballet production, who appears in a nonspeaking, nonsinging or nondancing capacity, usually in the background...
and a proportionate cardboard plane. Fog was used to mask the model's unconvincing appearance. Nevertheless, the
Disney's Hollywood StudiosDisney's Hollywood Studios is a theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort. Spanning 135 acres in size, its theme is show business, drawing inspiration from the heyday of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s...
theme park in
Orlando, FloridaOrlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
purchased a Lockheed 12A for its Great Movie Ride attraction, and initially claimed that it was the actual plane used in the film. Film critic
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
called Hal Wallis the "key creative force" for his attention to the details of production (down to insisting on a real parrot in the Blue Parrot bar).
The difference between Bergman's and Bogart's height caused some problems. She was some two inches (5 cm) taller than Bogart, and claimed Curtiz had Bogart stand on blocks or sit on cushions in their scenes together.
Later, there were plans for a further scene, showing Rick, Renault and a detachment of Free French soldiers on a ship, to incorporate the Allies'
1942 invasion of North AfricaOperation Torch was the British-American invasion of French North Africa in World War II during the North African Campaign, started on 8 November 1942....
; however, it proved too difficult to get Claude Rains for the shoot, and the scene was finally abandoned after
David O. SelznickDavid O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:...
judged "it would be a terrible mistake to change the ending."
Writing
The original play was inspired by a trip to Europe made by Murray Burnett in 1938, during which he visited Vienna shortly after the
AnschlussThe Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, where he saw discrimination by Nazis first-hand. In the south of France, he came across a nightclub, which had a multinational clientele and the prototype of Sam, the black piano player. In the play, the Ilsa character was an American named Lois Meredith and did not meet Laszlo until after her relationship with Rick in Paris had ended; Rick was a lawyer. To make Rick's motivation more believable, Wallis, Curtiz, and the screenwriters decided to set the film before the
events of Pearl HarborThe attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
.
The first writers assigned to the script were the Epstein twins,
JuliusJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...
and
PhilipPhilip G. Epstein was an American screenwriter most known for his adaptation in partnership with his twin brother, Julius, and others, of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's which became the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film Casablanca .Epstein was born in New York City and...
who, against the wishes of Warner Brothers, left the project after the
attack on Pearl HarborThe attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
to work with
Frank CapraFrank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
on the
Why We FightWhy We Fight is a series of seven war information training films commissioned by the United States government during World War II whose purpose was to show American soldiers the reason for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S...
series in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
. While they were gone, the other credited writer,
Howard KochHoward E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Early Years:...
was assigned to the script and produced some thirty to forty pages. When the Epstein brothers returned after a month, they were reassigned to Casablanca and—contrary to what Koch claimed in two published books—his work was not used. In the final Warner Brothers budget for the film, the Epsteins were paid $30,416 and Koch $4,200.
The uncredited
Casey RobinsonCasey Robinson was an American producer and director of mostly B movies and a screenwriter responsible for some of Bette Davis' most revered films...
assisted with three weeks of rewrites, including contributing the series of meetings between Rick and Ilsa in the cafe. Koch highlighted the political and melodramatic elements, while Curtiz seems to have favored the romantic parts, insisting on retaining the Paris flashbacks. Wallis wrote the final line ("Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.") after shooting had been completed. Bogart had to be called in a month after the end of filming to dub it. Despite the many writers, the film has what Ebert describes as a "wonderfully unified and consistent" script. Koch later claimed it was the tension between his own approach and Curtiz's which accounted for this: "Surprisingly, these disparate approaches somehow meshed, and perhaps it was partly this tug of war between Curtiz and me that gave the film a certain balance." Julius Epstein would later note the screenplay contained "more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there's nothing better."
The film ran into some trouble from Joseph Breen of the Production Code Administration (the Hollywood self-censorship body), who opposed the suggestions that Captain Renault extorted sexual favors from his supplicants, and that Rick and Ilsa had slept together in Paris. Extensive changes were made, with several lines of dialogue removed and/or altered, and all direct references to sex in the film removed. Additionally, when Sam played "As Time Goes By" in the original script, Rick had remarked "What the —— are you playing?" This line implying a curse word was removed at the behest of the Hays Office, and both Renault's selling of visas for sex, and Rick and Ilsa's previous sexual relationship were implied elliptically rather than referenced explicitly.
Direction
Wallis' first choice for
directorA film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
was
William WylerWilliam Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
, but he was unavailable, so Wallis turned to his close friend
Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...
. Curtiz was a Hungarian Jewish émigré; he had come to the U.S. in the 1920s, but some of his family were refugees from Nazi Europe.
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
has commented that in
Casablanca "very few shots... are memorable as shots," Curtiz being concerned to use images to tell the story rather than for their own sake. However, he had relatively little input into the development of the plot: Casey Robinson said Curtiz "knew nothing whatever about story...he saw it in pictures, and you supplied the stories." Critic
Andrew SarrisAndrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
called the film "the most decisive exception to the
auteur theoryIn film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...
", of which Sarris was the most prominent proponent in the United States, to which
Aljean HarmetzAljean Harmetz is a Hollywood journalist and film historian. She has written as a Hollywood film correspondent for The New York Times since 1981....
responded, "nearly every Warner Bros. picture was an exception to the auteur theory". Other critics give more credit to Curtiz; Sidney Rosenzweig, in his study of the director's work, sees the film as a typical example of Curtiz's highlighting of moral dilemmas.
The
second unitIn film, the second unit is a team that shoots subsidiary footage for a motion picture. Its work is distinct from that of the first unit, which shoots all scenes involving principal actors...
montageFilm editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
s, such as the opening sequence of the refugee trail and that showing the invasion of France, were directed by
Don SiegelDonald Siegel was an influential American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.-Early life:...
.
Cinematography
The
cinematographerA cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
was
Arthur EdesonArthur Edeson, A.S.C. was a film cinematographer, born in New York City.He was nominated for three Academy Awards in his career in cinema.-Career:...
, a veteran who had previously shot
The Maltese FalconThe Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
and
FrankensteinFrankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
. Particular attention was paid to photographing Bergman. She was shot mainly from her preferred left side, often with a softening gauze filter and with
catch lightCatch light or catchlight is a photography term used to describe either the specular highlight in a subject's eye from a light source, or the light source itself. They are also referred to as eye lights or Obies, the latter a reference to Merle Oberon, who was frequently lit using this technique...
s to make her eyes sparkle; the whole effect was designed to make her face seem "ineffably sad and tender and nostalgic". Bars of shadow across the characters and in the background variously imply imprisonment, the
crucifixA crucifix is an independent image of Jesus on the cross with a representation of Jesus' body, referred to in English as the corpus , as distinct from a cross with no body....
, the symbol of the
Free French ForcesThe Free French Forces were French partisans in World War II who decided to continue fighting against the forces of the Axis powers after the surrender of France and subsequent German occupation and, in the case of Vichy France, collaboration with the Germans.-Definition:In many sources, Free...
and emotional turmoil. Dark
film noirFilm noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
and expressionist lighting is used in several scenes, particularly towards the end of the picture. Rosenzweig argues these shadow and lighting effects are classic elements of the Curtiz style, along with the fluid camera work and the use of the environment as a framing device.
Music
The music was written by
Max SteinerMax Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
, who was best known for the
scoreA film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
for
Gone with the WindGone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
. The song "
As Time Goes By"As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became most famous in 1942 when it was sung by the character Sam in the movie Casablanca. The song was voted #2 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film. It was used as a fanfare for Warner...
" by
Herman HupfeldHerman Hupfeld was an American songwriter whose most notable composition was "As Time Goes By."-Biography:Hupfeld studied violin in Germany at 9. He was in the military during World War I, and he entertained camps and hospitals during World War II...
had been part of the story from the original play; Steiner wanted to write his own composition to replace it, but Bergman had already cut her hair short for her next role (María in
For Whom the Bell TollsFor Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1943 film in Technicolor based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. It stars Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff and Katina Paxinou. This was Ingrid Bergman's first technicolor film. Hemingway handpicked Cooper and Bergman for their roles. The film...
) and could not re-shoot the scenes which incorporated the song, so Steiner based the entire score on it and "
La Marseillaise"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France. The song, originally titled "Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin" was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. The French National Convention adopted it as the Republic's anthem in 1795...
", the French
national anthemA national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
, transforming them to reflect changing moods.
Particularly notable is the "duel of the songs" between Strasser and Laszlo at Rick's cafe. In the soundtrack, "La Marseillaise" is played by a full orchestra. Originally, the opposing piece for this iconic sequence was to be the "Horst Wessel Lied", a Nazi anthem, but this was still under international copyright in non-Allied countries. Instead "
Die Wacht am Rhein"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in historical conflicts with France, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War....
" was used. The opening bars of the "Deutschlandlied", the national anthem of Germany, is featured throughout the score as a motif to represent the Germans, much as "La Marseillaise" is used to represent the Allies.
Other songs in the film include "
It Had to Be You"It Had to Be You" is a popular song written by Isham Jones, with lyrics by Gus Kahn, and was first published in 1924.The song was performed by Priscilla Lane in the 1939 film The Roaring Twenties and by Danny Thomas in the 1951 film I'll See You in My Dreams. The latter film was based loosely upon...
" from 1924 (music by
Isham JonesIsham Jones was a United States bandleader, saxophonist, bassist and songwriter.-Career:Jones was born in Coalton, Ohio, to a musical and mining family, and grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, where he started his first band...
, lyrics by
Gus KahnGustav Gerson Kahn was a musician, songwriter and lyricist.-Biography:Kahn was born in Koblenz, Germany in 1886. The family emigrated from there to the United States and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890...
), "
Shine"Shine" is a popular song with lyrics by Cecil Mack and Tin Pan Alley songwriter Lew Brown and music by Ford Dabney...
" from 1910 (music by Ford Dabney, lyrics by
Cecil MackCecil Mack was an American composer, lyricist and music publisher....
and
Lew BrownLew Brown was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States.Brown was born as Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Russian Empire...
), "
Avalon"Avalon" is a 1920 popular song written by Al Jolson, Buddy DeSylva and Vincent Rose. It was introduced by Jolson and interpolated in the musicals Sinbad and Bombo. Jolson's recording rose to number two on the charts in 1921. The song was possibly written by Rose, but Jolson's popularity as a...
" from 1920 (music and lyrics by
Al JolsonAl Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, Buddy DeSylva and
Vincent RoseVincent Rose was a musician and band leader.Vincent Rose has one of the longest histories as a band leader. He achieved much popularity with his Montmartre Orchestra in the 1920s, and recorded with the group for RCA...
), "
Perfidia"Perfidia" is a popular song written by Alberto Domínguez , a Mexican composer and arranger born in the state of Chiapas, about love and betrayal. Aside from the original Spanish, other renditions exist, including English and instrumental versions. The English lyrics are by Milton Leeds...
" by Alberto Dominguez, "
The Very Thought of You"The Very Thought of You" is a pop standard published in 1934, with music and lyrics by Ray Noble. In addition to Noble's own hit recording of the song with his orchestra, featuring the vocals of Al Bowlly, there was also a popular version recorded that same year by Bing Crosby. A decade later, the...
" by
Ray NobleRay Noble was an English bandleader, composer, arranger and actor. Noble studied music at the Royal Academy of Music and became leader of the HMV Records studio band in 1929. The band, known as the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, featured members of many of the top hotel orchestras of the day...
, and "Knock on Wood" (music by M.K. Jerome, lyrics by Jack Scholl), the only original song in the film.
Timing of release
Although an initial release date was anticipated for spring 1943, the film premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca. In the 1,500-seat theater, the film grossed $255,000 over ten weeks. It went into general release on January 23, 1943, to take advantage of the Casablanca conference, a high-level meeting between
ChurchillSir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and
RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
in the city. It was a substantial but not spectacular box-office success, taking $3.7 million on its initial U.S. release, making it the seventh best-selling film of 1943. The
Office of War InformationThe United States Office of War Information was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945...
prevented screening of the film to troops in North Africa, believing it would cause resentment among Vichy supporters in the region.
Initial response
Casablanca received "consistently good reviews".
Bosley CrowtherBosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
of
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote, "The Warners... have a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap." The newspaper applauded the combination of "sentiment, humor and pathos with taut melodrama and bristling intrigue". While the
Times noted its "devious convolutions of the plot", the newspaper praised the screenplay quality as "of the best" and the cast's performances as "all of the first order". The trade paper
VarietyVariety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
commended the film's "combination of fine performances, engrossing story and neat direction" and the "variety of moods, action, suspense, comedy and drama that makes
Casablanca an A-1 entry at the b.o". The paper applauded the performances of Bergman and Henreid and analyzed Bogart's own: "Bogart, as might be expected, is more at ease as the bitter and cynical operator of a joint than as a lover, but handles both assignments with superb finesse."
Variety wrote of the film's real-world impact, "Film is splendid anti-Axis propaganda, particularly inasmuch as the propaganda is strictly a by-product of the principal action and contributes to it instead of getting in the way." Some other reviews were less enthusiastic:
The New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
rated it only "pretty tolerable".
Lasting impact
The film has grown in popularity. Murray Burnett called it "true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow". By 1955, the film had brought in $6.8 million, making it only the third most successful of Warners' wartime movies (behind
Shine On, Harvest MoonShine On, Harvest Moon, starring Ann Sheridan, is a 1944 musical film biography of the vaudeville team of Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth, who wrote the popular song "Shine On, Harvest Moon".-Cast:*Ann Sheridan as Nora Bayes*Dennis Morgan as Jack Norworth...
and
This is the ArmyThis Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime motion picture produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz, and a wartime musical designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Sgt. Ezra Stone...
). On April 21, 1957, the Brattle Theater of Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed the film as part of a season of old movies. It was so popular that it began a tradition of screening
Casablanca during the week of final exams at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
which continues to the present day, and is emulated by many colleges across the United States.
Todd GitlinTodd Gitlin is an American sociologist, political writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He has written widely on the mass media, politics, intellectual life and the arts, for both popular and scholarly publications.-New Left activist:...
, a professor of sociology who himself attended one of these screenings, had said that the experience was, "the acting out of my own personal rite of passage". The tradition helped the movie remain popular while other famous films of the 1940s have faded away, and by 1977,
Casablanca was the most frequently broadcast film on American television.
On the film's 50th anniversary, the
Los Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
called
Casablancas great strength "the purity of its Golden Age Hollywoodness [and] the enduring craftsmanship of its resonantly hokey dialogue". The newspaper believed the film achieved a "near-perfect entertainment balance" of comedy, romance, and suspense.
According to
Roger EbertRoger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
,
Casablanca is "probably on more lists of the greatest films of all time than any other single title, including
Citizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
" because of its wider appeal. Ebert opined that
Citizen Kane is generally considered to be a "greater" film but
Casablanca is more loved. Ebert said that he has never heard of a negative review of the film, even though individual elements can be criticized, citing unrealistic
special effectThe illusions used in the film, television, theatre, or entertainment industries to simulate the imagined events in a story are traditionally called special effects ....
s and the stiff character/portrayal of Laszlo.
Rudy BehlmerRudy Behlmer is an American film historian and writer. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, he is an expert in the history and evolution of the motion picture industry....
emphasized the variety in the picture: "it's a blend of drama, melodrama, comedy [and] intrigue".
Ebert has said that the film is popular because "the people in it are all so good" and that it is "a wonderful gem". As the Resistance hero, Laszlo is ostensibly the most noble, although he is so stiff that he is hard to like. The other characters, in Behlmer's words, are "not cut and dried": they come into their goodness in the course of the film. Renault begins the film as a collaborator with the Nazis, who extorts sexual favors from refugees and has Ugarte killed. Rick, according to Behlmer, is "not a hero,... not a bad guy": he does what is necessary to get along with the authorities and "sticks his neck out for nobody". Even Ilsa, the least active of the main characters, is "caught in the emotional struggle" over which man she really loves. By the end of the film, however, "everybody is sacrificing."
There are a few dissenting reviewers. According to
Pauline KaelPauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, "It's far from a great film, but it has a special appealingly schlocky romanticism..."
Umberto EcoUmberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
wrote that "by any strict critical standards...
Casablanca is a very mediocre film." He viewed the changes the characters undergo as inconsistent rather than complex: "It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects."
There is anecdotal evidence that
Casablanca may have made a deeper impression among film-lovers than within the professional movie-making establishment. In the November/December 1982 issue of
American Film, Chuck Ross claimed that he retyped the screenplay to Casablanca, only changing the title back to
Everybody Comes to Rick'sEverybody Comes to Rick's is an unpublished play which was the basis for the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It was written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison...
and the name of the piano player to
Dooley WilsonArthur "Dooley" Wilson was an American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is remembered as piano-player "Sam" who sings "As Time Goes By" at the request of Ilsa Lund in the 1942 film, Casablanca - the Sam in the famously misremembered line "Play it again, Sam" -- a phrase which...
, and submitted it to 217 agencies. Eighty-five of them read it; of those, thirty-eight rejected it outright, thirty-three generally recognized it (but only eight specifically as
Casablanca), three declared it commercially viable, and one suggested turning it into a novel.
Hugh HefnerHugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...
cited it as part of his motivation to open up the
Playboy ClubThe Playboy Club initially was a chain of nightclubs and resorts owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first club opened at 116 E. Walton Street in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States, on February 29, 1960. Each club generally featured a Living Room, a Playmate Bar, a Dining Room...
.
Influence on later works
Many subsequent films have drawn on elements of
Casablanca.
Passage to MarseillePassage to Marseille is a 1944 war film made by Warner Brothers, directed by Michael Curtiz and produced by Hal B. Wallis with Jack L. Warner as executive producer. The screenplay was by Casey Robinson and Jack Moffitt from the novel Sans Patrie by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall...
reunited Bogart, Rains, Curtiz, Greenstreet and Lorre in 1944, while there are many similarities between
Casablanca and two later Bogart films,
To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not is a 1944 romance-war-adventure film. The movie was directed by Howard Hawks and stars Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, and Lauren Bacall in her first film...
(1944) and
SiroccoSirocco is an American film noir directed by Curtis Bernhardt and written by A.I. Bezzerides and Hans Jacoby. It is based on the novel Coup de Grace written by Joseph Kessel. The drama features Humphrey Bogart, Märta Torén, Lee J. Cobb, among others.-Plot:In 1925 Damascus, the natives are engaged...
(1951). Parodies have included the
Marx BrothersThe Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
'
A Night in CasablancaA Night in Casablanca was the twelfth Marx Brothers movie, starring Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, and Harpo Marx. The picture was directed by Archie Mayo and written by Joseph Fields and Roland Kibbee, and is generally considered one of the better of the Marx Brothers' later films.-Plot:Set in...
(1946),
Neil SimonNeil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...
's
The Cheap DetectiveThe Cheap Detective is a 1978 American satirical comedy film written by Neil Simon and directed by Robert Moore as a follow-up to their successful Murder by Death ....
(1978),
Barb Wire-Cast:* Pamela Anderson Lee as Barbara "Barb Wire" Kopetski* Temuera Morrison as Axel Hood* Victoria Rowell as Dr. Corrina "Cora D" Devonshire* Jack Noseworthy as Charlie Kopetski* Xander Berkeley as Alexander Willis* Udo Kier as Curly...
(1996), and
Out ColdOut Cold is a 2001 American comedy film about a group of snowboarders in Alaska. It is the first feature film by the music video directing team The Malloys. The movie presents itself as something of a parody of 1980's "ski school" movies and makes a number of references to the film Casablanca...
(2001), while it provided the title for the 1995 hit
The Usual SuspectsThe Usual Suspects is a 1995 American neo-noir film written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Spacey and Pete Postlethwaite....
.
Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
's
Play It Again, Sam (1972) appropriated Bogart's
Casablanca persona as the fantasy mentor for Allen's
nebbishy character, featuring actor
Jerry LacyGerald LeRoy "Jerry" Lacy is an American soap opera actor best known for playing the roles of Tony Peterson, Reverend Trask, Reverend Gregory Trask, Mr. Trask, and Lamar Trask on the cult TV serial Dark Shadows...
in the role of Bogart.
Casablanca itself was a plot device in the science-fiction television movie
Overdrawn at the Memory BankOverdrawn at the Memory Bank was a 1983 television movie. It was produced by Canada’s RSL Productions in Toronto. Financing was provided by WNET/PBS New Jersey, which had hoped to create an entire science fiction series adapting famous works, but due to lack of funding this was the last of three...
(1983), based on
John VarleyJohn Herbert Varley is an American science fiction author.-Biography:Varley grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Port Arthur in 1957, and graduated from Nederland High School. He went to Michigan State University on a National Merit Scholarship because, of the schools that he could afford, it...
's story, and made a similar, though much less pivotal, appearance in
Terry GilliamTerrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
's
dystopiaA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
n
BrazilBrazil is a 1985 British science fiction fantasy/black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam. It was written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard and stars Jonathan Pryce. The film also features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm...
(1985).
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
produced its own parody of the film in the homage
CarrotblancaCarrotblanca is a 1995 8-minute Looney Tunes cartoon. It was originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure and The Pebble and the Penguin...
, a 1995
Bugs BunnyBugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...
cartoonA cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
. In
CasablancaCasablanca is a novella written by Edgar Brau in Nevada, United States, in November–December 2002. In the story, set in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, a rich Argentine ranch owner builds a replica of Rick's Café Américain on his estate, with the idea of reproducing in it, by means of doubles,...
, a novella by Argentine writer
Edgar Brau- Biography :Edgar Brau was born in Argentina. He engaged in different occupations: he was an actor, a stage director, a painter of icons, a photographer, until he completely devoted himself to writing literature...
, the protagonist somehow wanders into Rick's Café Americain and listens to a strange tale related by Sam.
Interpretation
Casablanca has been subjected to many different readings.
SemioticiansSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
account for the film's popularity by claiming that its inclusion of a whole series of
stereotypeA stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
s paradoxically strengthens the film. Umberto Eco explained:
Eco also singled out sacrifice as one of the film's key themes: "the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film." It was this theme which resonated with a wartime audience that was reassured by the idea that painful sacrifice and going off to war could be romantic gestures done for the greater good.
Koch also considered the film a political
allegoryAllegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
. Rick was compared to President
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, who gambled "on the odds of going to war until circumstance and his own submerged nobility force him to close his casino (partisan politics) and commit himself—first by financing the Side of Right and then by fighting for it." The similarity was reinforced by the film's title, as it was compared to its English equivalent:
White HouseThe White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
.
William Donelley, in his
Love and Death in Casablanca, argues that Rick's relationship with Sam, and subsequently with Renault, is, "a standard case of the repressed homosexuality that underlies most American adventure stories". Harvey Greenberg presents a Freudian reading in his
The Movies on Your Mind, in which the transgressions which prevent Rick from returning to the U.S. constitute an
Oedipus complexIn psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...
, which is resolved only when Rick begins to identify with the father figure of Laszlo and the cause which he represents. Sidney Rosenzweig argues that such readings are reductive, and that the most important aspect of the film is its ambiguity, above all in the central character of Rick; he cites the different names which each character gives Rick (Richard, Ricky, Mr Rick, Herr Blaine and so on) as evidence of the different meanings which he has for each person.
Accolades
Because of its November 1942 release, the New York Film Critics decided to include the film in its 1942 award season for best picture.
Casablanca lost to
In Which We ServeIn Which We Serve is a 1942 British patriotic war film directed by David Lean and Noël Coward. It was made during the Second World War with the assistance of the Ministry of Information ....
. However, the Academy stated that since the film went into national release in the beginning of 1943, it would be included in that year's nominations.
Casablanca was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won three. When the award for
Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
was announced producer
Hal B. WallisHal B. Wallis was an American film producer.-Career:Harold Brent Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros...
got up to accept, only to find
Jack WarnerJack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
had rushed onstage to take the trophy. Wallis later recalled, "I had no alternative but to sit down again, humiliated and furious. ... Almost forty years later, I still haven't recovered from the shock." This incident would lead Wallis to leave Warner Bros. in April.
| Award |
Category |
Nominee |
Result |
| 16th Academy Awards The 16th Academy Awards, in 1944, was the first Oscar ceremony held at a large public venue, Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Free passes were given out to men and women in uniform...
|
Outstanding Motion Picture The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
|
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
(Hal B. WallisHal B. Wallis was an American film producer.-Career:Harold Brent Wallis was born in Chicago in 1898. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros...
, Producer) |
|
| Best Director |
Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was an Academy award winning Hungarian-American film director. He had early creditsas Mihály Kertész and Michael Kertész...
|
|
| Best Actor Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
|
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
|
|
| Best Writing, Screenplay |
Julius J. Epstein Julius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...
, Philip G. EpsteinPhilip G. Epstein was an American screenwriter most known for his adaptation in partnership with his twin brother, Julius, and others, of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's which became the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film Casablanca .Epstein was born in New York City and...
, and Howard KochHoward E. Koch was an American playwright and screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s.-Early Years:...
|
|
| Best Supporting Actor Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
|
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 66 years. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man , a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington , Mr...
|
|
| Best Cinematography The Academy Award for Best Cinematography is an Academy Award awarded each year to a cinematographer for work in one particular motion picture.-History:...
|
Arthur Edeson Arthur Edeson, A.S.C. was a film cinematographer, born in New York City.He was nominated for three Academy Awards in his career in cinema.-Career:...
|
|
| Best Film Editing |
Owen Marks |
|
| Best Music (Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture) The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
|
Max SteinerMax Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
|
|
In 1989, the film was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film RegistryThe National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2005 it was also named one of the 100 greatest films of the last 80 years by
TimeTime is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
.com (the selected films were not ranked). In 2006, the
Writers Guild of America, westWriters Guild of America, West is a labor union representing film, television, radio, and new media writers. The Guild was formed in 1954 from five organizations representing writers, which include the Screen Writers Guild...
voted the
screenplayA screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
of
Casablanca the best of all time in its list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays. The film has been recognized multiple times by the
American Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
in many of their lists.
| Year |
Category |
Nominee |
Rank |
| 1998 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
|
|
2 |
| 2001 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills is a list of the top 100 heart-pounding movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 12, 2001, during a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford....
|
|
37 |
| 2002 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Passions is a list of the top 100 greatest love stories in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 11, 2002, in a CBS television special hosted by American film and TV actress Candice Bergen.-The...
|
|
1 |
| 2003 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains is a list of the 100 greatest screen characters chosen by American Film Institute in June 2003. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series. The series was first presented in a CBS special hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger...
|
Rick Blaine (hero) |
4 |
| 2004 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Songs is a list of the top 100 songs in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute June 22, 2004 in a CBS special hosted by John Travolta, who appeared in two films honored by the list, Saturday Night Fever and...
|
"As Time Goes By "As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became most famous in 1942 when it was sung by the character Sam in the movie Casablanca. The song was voted #2 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film. It was used as a fanfare for Warner...
" |
2 |
| 2005 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema. The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS...
|
|
5, 20, 28, 32, 43, and 67 (see Quotations section below) |
| 2006 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers 100 Years…100 Cheers: America's Most Inspiring Movies is a list of the most inspiring films as determined by the American Film Institute. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series, which has been compiling lists of the greatest films of all time in various categories since 1998...
|
|
32 |
| 2007 |
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) |
|
3 |
Home media releases
Casablanca was initially released on
BetamaxBetamax was a consumer-level analog videocassette magnetic tape recording format developed by Sony, released on May 10, 1975. The cassettes contain -wide videotape in a design similar to the earlier, professional wide, U-matic format...
and
VHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
by
Magnetic VideoMagnetic Video was a home video/audio duplication service established by Andre Blay in 1968 and based in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1977 it became the first corporation to release theatrical motion pictures onto Betamax and VHS videocassette for consumer use. Magnetic Video was a home...
and later by
CBS/Fox VideoCBS/Fox Video was a home video company formed and established in 1982, as a merger between 20th Century Fox Video, formerly Magnetic Video Corporation, and CBS Video Enterprises....
(as
United ArtistsUnited Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
owned the rights at the time). It was next released on
laserdiscLaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
in 1991, and on VHS in 1992—both from MGM/UA Home Entertainment (distributing for
Turner EntertainmentTurner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
), which at the time was distributed by
Warner Home VideoWarner Home Video is the home video unit of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., itself part of Time Warner. It was founded in 1978 as WCI Home Video . The company launched in the United States with twenty films on VHS and Betamax videocassettes in late 1979...
. It was first released on
DVDA DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in 1997 by MGM, containing the trailer and a making-of featurette (Warner Home Video reissued the DVD in 2000). A subsequent two-disc special edition, containing audio commentaries, documentaries, and a newly remastered visual and audio presentation, was released in 2003.
An
HD DVDHD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
was released on November 14, 2006, containing the same special features as the 2003 DVD. Reviewers were impressed with the new high-definition transfer of the film.
A Blu-ray release with new special features came out on December 2, 2008; it is also available on DVD. The Blu-ray was initially only released as an expensive gift set with a booklet, a luggage tag and other assorted gift-type items. It was eventually released as a stand-alone Blu-ray in September 2009. Warner Bros put the film into moratorium in 2011 for an eventual re-release in 2012.
Sequels and other versions
Almost from the moment
Casablanca became a hit, talk began of producing a sequel. One titled
Brazzaville (in the final scene, Renault recommends fleeing to that
Free French-held city-Transport:The city is home to Maya-Maya Airport and a railway station on the Congo-Ocean Railway. It is also an important river port, with ferries sailing to Kinshasa and to Bangui via Impfondo...
) was planned, but never produced. Since then, no studio has seriously considered filming a sequel or outright remake.
François TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
refused an invitation to remake the film in 1974, citing its cult status among American students as his reason. Attempts to recapture the magic of
Casablanca in other settings, such as
CaboblancoCaboblanco is an American drama film directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Charles Bronson, Dominique Sanda and Jason Robards. The film has often been described as a remake of Casablanca.-Plot:...
(1980), "a South American-set retooling of
Casablanca", and
HavanaHavana is a drama film starring Robert Redford, Lena Olin and Raúl Juliá, directed by Sydney Pollack with music by Dave Grusin, and released in 1990. In the film, an American professional gambler named Jack Weil decides to visit Havana, Cuba to gamble. On the boat to Havana, he meets Roberta Duran...
(1990), have been poorly received.
The novel
As Time Goes By, written by
Michael WalshMichael A. Walsh is a music critic, author, screenwriter, and media critic. After graduating from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1971, he became a reporter for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in February 1972, where he shared the New York State Publishers Association...
and published in 1998, was authorized by Warner. The novel picks up where the film leaves off, and also tells of Rick's mysterious past in America. The book met with little success.
David ThomsonDavid Thomson is a film critic and historian based in the United States and the author of more than 20 books, including The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.-Career:...
provided an unofficial sequel in his 1985 novel
Suspects.
There have been two short-lived television series based upon
Casablanca, both considered
prequelA prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
s. The first aired from 1955 to 1956, with
Charles McGrawCharles Butters , best known by his stage name Charles McGraw, was an American actor, who made his first film in 1942, albeit in a small, uncredited role. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa.-Career:...
as Rick and
Marcel DalioMarcel Dalio was a French character actor. He had major roles in two of Jean Renoir's most famous films, Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game.- Biography :...
, who played Emil the
croupierA croupier or dealer is someone appointed at a gambling table to assist in the conduct of the game, especially in the distribution of bets and payouts. Croupiers are typically employed by casinos.-Origin of the word:...
in the movie, as Renault; it aired on
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
as part of the
wheel seriesA wheel series is a term applied in the broadcast television industry to a television program in which two or more regular series are rotated with the same time slot...
Warner Bros. PresentsWarner Bros. Presents is the umbrella title for three series telecast as part of the 1955-56 season on ABC: Cheyenne, a new Western series that originated on Presents, and two based on classic Warner Bros. films, Casablanca and Kings Row....
. It produced a total of ten hour-long episodes. Another, briefly broadcast on
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
in 1983, starred
David SoulDavid Soul is an American-British actor and singer, best known for his role as Detective Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchinson in the television programme Starsky and Hutch . He gained British citizenship in 2004.-Early life:...
as Rick,
Ray Liotta[File:Ray Liotta is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese and his role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams...
as Sacha, and
Scatman CrothersBenjamin Sherman "Scatman" Crothers was an American actor, singer, dancer and musician known for his work as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and as Dick Hallorann in The Shining in 1980...
as a somewhat elderly Sam. A total of five hour-long episodes were produced.
There were several radio adaptations of the film. The two best-known were a thirty-minute adaptation on
The Screen Guild TheaterThe Screen Guild Theater was a popular radio anthology series during the Golden Age of Radio, broadcast from 1939 until 1952, with leading Hollywood actors performing in adaptations of popular motion pictures such as Going My Way and The Postman Always Rings Twice.The show had a long run, lasting...
on April 26, 1943, starring Bogart, Bergman, and Henreid, and an hour-long version on the
Lux Radio TheaterLux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
on January 24, 1944, featuring
Alan Ladd-Early life:Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He was the only child of Ina Raleigh Ladd and Alan Ladd, Sr. He was of English ancestry. His father died when he was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter...
as Rick,
Hedy LamarrHedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless...
as Ilsa, and
John LoderJohn Loder was a British-American actor. He was born William John Muir Lowe in London.-Early life:Loder's father was General W. H. M. Lowe, the British officer to whom Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, Ireland, surrendered...
as Victor Laszlo. Two other thirty-minute adaptations were aired: on
Philip Morris Playhouse on September 3, 1943, and on
Theater of Romance on December 19, 1944, in which Dooley Wilson reprised his role as Sam.
Julius EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...
made two attempts to turn the film into a Broadway musical, in 1951 and 1967, but neither made it to the stage. The original play,
Everybody Comes to Rick'sEverybody Comes to Rick's is an unpublished play which was the basis for the movie Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It was written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison...
, was produced in
Newport, Rhode IslandNewport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...
, in August 1946, and again in London in April 1991, but met with no success. The film was adapted into a musical by the
Takarazuka RevueThe Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theater troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals, and sometimes stories adapted from shōjo manga and Japanese folktales. The troupe takes its name...
, an all-female Japanese musical theater company, and ran from November 2009 through February 2010.
Colorization
Casablanca was part of the
film colorizationFilm colorization is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, or to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films...
controversy of the 1980s, when a colorized version aired on the television station WTBS. In 1984,
MGM-UAMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
hired Color Systems Technology to colorize the film for $180,000. When
Ted TurnerRobert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
of
Turner EntertainmentTurner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
purchased MGM-UA's film library two years later, he canceled the request, before contracting American Film Technologies (AFT) in 1988. AFT completed the colorization in two months at a cost of $450,000. Turner later reacted to the criticism of the colorization, saying, "[
Casablanca] is one of a handful of films that really doesn't have to be colorized. I did it because I wanted to. All I'm trying to do is protect my investment."
The
Library of CongressThe Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed that the color change differed so much from the original film that it gave a new copyright to Turner Entertainment. When the colorized film debuted on WTBS, it was watched by three million viewers, not making the top-ten viewed cable shows for the week. Although Jack Matthews of the
Los Angeles Times called the finished product "state of the art", it was mostly met with negative critical reception. It was briefly available on home video. Gary Edgerton, writing for the
Journal of Popular Film & TelevisionJournal of Popular Film and Television is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Routledge, which purchased it from Heldref Publications in 2009. Michael Marsden, who was the dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at Northern Michigan University in the late 1990s, co-founded the...
criticized the colorization, "...
Casablanca in color ended up being much blander in appearance and, overall, much less visually interesting than its 1942 predecessor." Bogart's son Stephen said, "if you're going to colorize
Casablanca, why not put arms on the
Venus de MiloAphrodite of Milos , better known as the Venus de Milo, is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty. It is a marble sculpture, slightly...
?"
Rumors
Several rumors and misconceptions have grown up around the film, one being that
Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
was originally chosen to play Rick. This originates in a press release issued by the
studioA movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
early on in the film's development, but by that time the studio already knew that he was due to go work for the army, and he was never seriously considered.
George RaftGeorge Raft was an American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s...
claimed that he had turned down the lead role. Studio records make clear, however, that Wallis was committed to Bogart from the start.
Another well-known story is that the actors did not know until the last day of shooting how the film was to end. The original play (set entirely in the cafe) ended with Rick sending Ilsa and Victor to the
airportAn airport is a location where aircraft such as fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and blimps take off and land. Aircraft may be stored or maintained at an airport...
. During scriptwriting, the possibility was discussed of Laszlo being killed in Casablanca, allowing Rick and Ilsa to leave together, but as Casey Robinson wrote to Hal Wallis before filming began, the ending of the film "set up for a swell twist when Rick sends her away on the plane with Victor. For now, in doing so, he is not just solving a love triangle. He is forcing the girl to live up to the idealism of her nature, forcing her to carry on with the work that in these days is far more important than the love of two little people." It was certainly impossible for Ilsa to leave Laszlo for Rick, as the production code forbade showing a woman leaving her husband for another man. The concern was not whether Ilsa would leave with Laszlo, but how this result could be engineered. The problem was solved when the Epstein brothers,
JuliusJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for the adaptation - in partnership with his twin brother, Philip, and others - of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's that became the screenplay for the film Casablanca , for which its team of writers...
and
PhilipPhilip G. Epstein was an American screenwriter most known for his adaptation in partnership with his twin brother, Julius, and others, of the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's which became the Academy Award-winning screenplay of the film Casablanca .Epstein was born in New York City and...
, were driving down
Sunset BoulevardSunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades...
and stopped for the light at Beverly Glen. At that instant the identical twins turned to each other and simultaneously cried out, "Round up the usual suspects!" By the time they had driven past Fairfax and the
Cahuenga PassThe Cahuenga Pass is a mountain pass through the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains in the Hollywood district of the City of Los Angeles, California....
and through the
Warner Brothers studio'sThe Old Warner Brothers Studio, officially called today Sunset Bronson Studios and also known as KTLA Studios and Tribune Studios, is a motion picture, radio and television production facility located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The studio was the site where the first talking...
portals at
BurbankBurbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, in the words of Julius Epstein, "the idea for the farewell scene between a tearful Bergman and a suddenly noble Bogart" had been formed and all the problems of the ending had been solved.
The confusion was probably caused by Bergman's later statement that she did not know which man she was meant to be in love with. While rewrites did occur during the filming, Aljean Harmetz's examination of the scripts has shown that many of the key scenes were shot after Bergman knew how the film would end: any confusion was, in Ebert's words, "emotional", not "factual".
In any case, the famed teacher of screenwriting, Robert McKee, is widely quoted for maintaining that the script for
Casablanca is "the greatest screenplay of all time".
Errors and inaccuracies
The film has several logical flaws, the foremost being the two "letters of transit" which enable their bearers to leave
Vichy FrenchVichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
territory. According to the , Ugarte says the letters had been signed by (depending on the listener) either Free French General
Charles de GaulleCharles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
or Vichy General
Maxime WeygandMaxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II.Weygand initially fought against the Germans during the invasion of France in 1940, but then surrendered to and collaborated with the Germans as part of the Vichy France regime.-Early years:Weygand was born in Brussels...
. The English subtitles on the official DVD read de Gaulle, while the French subtitles specify Weygand. Weygand had been the Vichy Delegate-General for the
North African coloniesThe French colonial empire was the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 17th century to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second-largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire...
until a month before the film is set (and a year after it was written). De Gaulle was the head of the Free French
government in exileA government in exile is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their...
. A Vichy court martial had convicted de Gaulle of treason
in absentia and sentenced him to life imprisonment on August 2, 1940, so a letter signed by him would have been of no benefit. A classic
MacGuffinA MacGuffin is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction". The defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is...
, the letters were invented by Joan Allison for the original play and never questioned. Even in the film, Rick suggests to Renault that the letters would not have allowed Ilsa to escape, let alone Laszlo: "People have been held in Casablanca in spite of their legal rights."
In the same vein, though Laszlo asserts that the Nazis cannot arrest him as "This is still unoccupied France; any violation of neutrality would reflect on Captain Renault," Ebert points out that "It makes no sense that he could walk around freely....He would be arrested on sight." Harmetz, however, suggests that Strasser intentionally allows Laszlo to move about, hoping that he will tell them the names of Resistance leaders in occupied Europe in exchange for Ilsa being allowed to leave for Lisbon.
Other mistakes include the wrong version of the flag for French Morocco and the fact no uniformed German troops ever set foot in Casablanca during the Second World War.
According to Harmetz, in reality few of the refugees depicted would actually have gone to Casablanca. The usual route out of Germany was through
ViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
,
PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, Paris, and London, although the film's technical advisor, Robert Aisner, did follow the path to Morocco given in
Casablanca's opening scene.
Quotations
One of the lines most closely associated with the film — "Play it again, Sam" — is a
misquotation.
When Ilsa first enters the Café Americain, she spots Sam and asks him to "Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake." After he feigns ignorance, she responds, "Play it, Sam. Play '
As Time Goes By"As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld in 1931. It became most famous in 1942 when it was sung by the character Sam in the movie Casablanca. The song was voted #2 on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Songs special, commemorating the best songs in film. It was used as a fanfare for Warner...
'." Later that night, alone with Sam, Rick says, "You played it for her, you can play it for me," and "If she can stand it, I can! Play it!"
Rick's remark to Ilsa, "Here's looking at you, kid", is not in the draft screenplays, but has been attributed to something Bogart said to Bergman as he taught her poker between takes. It was voted the most memorable line in cinema in AFI's 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes by the
American Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
.
Six lines from
Casablanca appeared in the AFI list, the most of any film (
Gone with the WindGone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
and
The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
tied for second with three apiece). The other five are:
- "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - 20th
- "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'" - 28th
- "Round up the usual suspects" - 32nd
- "We'll always have Paris" - 43rd
- "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine" - 67th
External links