Casablanca is a
1942The year 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest films of all time, Casablanca..-Events:...
AmericanThe cinema of the United States 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...
romantic drama film directed by
Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was a Hungarian-American filmmaker. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States. The best-known were The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday...
, starring
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor.After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film...
,
Ingrid BergmanIngrid Bergman was a Swedish actress. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress in the first Tony Award ceremony in 1947. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
and
Paul HenreidPaul Henreid , whose birthname was Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau, was an Austrian actor and film director.-Early life:...
and featuring
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 47 years; he later held American citizenship. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them The Invisible Man, the corrupt senator in Mr...
,
Conrad VeidtConrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his films roles, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
,
Sydney GreenstreetSydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor, best known for his work with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in the 1940s.-Biography:...
and
Peter LorrePeter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He made an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
. Set during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, 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
ResistanceResistance 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
VichyVichy France, or the Vichy regime are the common terms used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944. This government, which succeeded the Third Republic, officially called itself the French State , in contrast with the previous designation, "French Republic." Marshal...
-controlled
MoroccanMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
city of
CasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean...
to continue his fight against the
NazisNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
.
Although it was an A-list movie, with established stars and first-rate writers—
Julius J. EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, most noted 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...
,
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 that became the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning 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....
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 dozens of pictures being churned out by
HollywoodThe cinema of the United States 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.
Casablanca is a
1942The year 1942 in film involved some significant events, in particular the release of a film consistently rated as one of the greatest films of all time, Casablanca..-Events:...
AmericanThe cinema of the United States 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...
romantic drama film directed by
Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was a Hungarian-American filmmaker. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States. The best-known were The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday...
, starring
Humphrey BogartHumphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor.After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film...
,
Ingrid BergmanIngrid Bergman was a Swedish actress. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress in the first Tony Award ceremony in 1947. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
and
Paul HenreidPaul Henreid , whose birthname was Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau, was an Austrian actor and film director.-Early life:...
and featuring
Claude RainsClaude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 47 years; he later held American citizenship. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them The Invisible Man, the corrupt senator in Mr...
,
Conrad VeidtConrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his films roles, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...
,
Sydney GreenstreetSydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor, best known for his work with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in the 1940s.-Biography:...
and
Peter LorrePeter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He made an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
. Set during
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, 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
ResistanceResistance 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
VichyVichy France, or the Vichy regime are the common terms used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944. This government, which succeeded the Third Republic, officially called itself the French State , in contrast with the previous designation, "French Republic." Marshal...
-controlled
MoroccanMorocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 32 million and an area just under . Its capital is Rabat, and its largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a coast on the Atlantic Ocean that reaches past the Strait of Gibraltar into the...
city of
CasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean...
to continue his fight against the
NazisNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
.
Although it was an A-list movie, with established stars and first-rate writers—
Julius J. EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, most noted 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...
,
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 that became the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning 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....
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 dozens of pictures being churned out by
HollywoodThe cinema of the United States 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 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 AwardsThe Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is...
, including
Best PictureThe Academy Award for Best Motion 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...
. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, and
Casablanca 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 Bogart) is a bitter, cynical American
expatriateAn expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence...
in Casablanca. He owns and runs "Rick's Café Américain", an upscale nightclub and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele of Vichy French and Nazi officials, refugees and thieves. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed that he had
run gunsFor the fictional character see Gunrunner .Illegal arms trafficking, also known as Gunrunning, is trafficking in contraband weapons and ammunition.-Areas:...
to
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
to combat the
1935 Italian invasionThe Second Italo–Abyssinian War was a brief 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 system of government in Spain between April 14, 1931, when King Alfonso XIII left the country following local and municipal elections in which republican candidates won the majority of votes in urban areas and April 1, 1939, when the last of the Republican ...
side in the
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
against
Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco Bahamonde, commonly known as Francisco Franco , or simply Franco, was a military general and dictator of Spain from October 1936, and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in 1975...
's Nationalists.
Ugarte (Peter Lorre), 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
PortugalPortugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east...
, and from there to America. The letters are almost priceless to any of the continual stream of refugees who end up stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to make his fortune by selling them to the highest bidder, who is due to arrive at the club later that night. However, before the exchange can take place, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), a corrupt opportunist who later says of himself, "I have no convictions... I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy." Unbeknownst to Renault and the Nazis, Ugarte had entrusted the letters to Rick because "... somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust." Ugarte dies in police custody without revealing the location of the letters.
At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) arrives with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a fugitive Czech Resistance leader long sought by the Nazis. The couple need the letters to leave Casablanca for America to continue his work. German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) arrives to ensure that Laszlo does not succeed.
When Laszlo speaks with Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), a major figure in the criminal underworld and Rick's 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 a group of Nazi officers led by Strasser begins to sing "
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....
", a German patriotic song. In response, Laszlo orders the house band to play "
La Marseillaise"La Marseillaise" is the national anthem of France.- History :"La Marseillaise" is a song written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg on April 25, 1792...
", the French national anthem. The band looks to Rick for permission, and he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then long-suppressed patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser orders Renault to close the club.
That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted cafe. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but is unable to shoot, confessing that she still loves him. She explains that when she first met and fell in love with him in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, she believed that her husband had been killed trying to escape from a Nazi concentration camp. Later, with the German army on the verge of capturing the city, she learned that Laszlo was in fact alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend to an ill Laszlo.
With the revelation, Rick's bitterness dissolves and 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, after having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S. Z. Sakall) secretly take Ilsa back to the hotel while the two men talk.
Laszlo reveals that he is aware of Rick's love for Ilsa and tries to get Rick to use the letters to take her to safety. However, the police arrive and arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge. Rick convinces Renault to release Laszlo by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions about his motives, Rick explains that he and Ilsa will be leaving for America.
However, when Renault tries to arrest Laszlo, Rick double crosses Renault, forcing him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her that she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."
Major Strasser drives up by himself, having been tipped off by Renault, but Rick shoots him when he tries to intervene. When police reinforcements arrive, Renault pauses, then tells his men to "Round up the usual suspects." Once they are alone, Renault suggests to Rick that they leave Casablanca and join the Free French at
Brazzaville||-||}Brazzaville is the capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo and is located on the Congo River. As of the 2001 census, it has a population of 1,018,541 in the city proper, and about 1.5 million in total when including the suburbs located in the Pool Region...
. They both walk off into the fog as Rick says one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
Production
The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced 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...
. The
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
story analyst who read the play, Stephen Karnot, called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokumHokum is a song type in American blues music.In the United States, it is also a euphemism for "bullshit" . "Hokum" is also used as another term for kitsch. Compare also the common misuse of the word "hokum" interchangeably with the slang expression "hokey", meaning mawkish, maudlin or fake, as in a...
", 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 or movie producer is someone who creates the scenes and conditions for making movies. The producer initiates, co-ordinates, supervises and controls matters such as fund-raising, hiring key personnel and arranging for distributors...
Hal Wallis to buy the rights 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 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. John Howard Lawson wrote the...
.
Shooting began on May 25, 1942 and was completed on August 3. The film cost a total of $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget), not exceptionally high, but above average for the time.
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 ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. 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 and Otto Harbach, 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 Arabia aiding native...
, and redressedSet 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 of small...
for the Paris flashbacks. It remained on the Warners backlotA backlot is an area behind or adjoining a movie studio with space to build or with permanent exterior sets for outdoor scenes in motion picture and/or television productions....
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 12 Electra Junior was an eight-seat, six passenger all-metal transport designed for use by smaller airlines and private owners. Developed as a scaled-down version of the Lockheed 10 Electra, the prototype made its first flight on June 27, 1936, piloted by Marshall Headle.British...
airplane with personnel walking around it, was staged using midgetMidget is a term used to describe an exceptionally short person. The terms "midget" and "dwarf" are often used synonymously, as both terms mean someone who has been short in stature since birth, but those terms were not originally synonyms....
extrasAn extra, also called a background actor, 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 major 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 region...
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 known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
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.
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.
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 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, born David Selznick , was one of the iconic Hollywood producers of the Golden Age. He is best known for producing the epic blockbuster Gone with the Wind which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture. Not only did Gone with the Wind gross the highest amount of money in the U.S...
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 ' , also known as the ', was the 1938 de facto annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime....
, where he saw discrimination by Nazis first-hand. In the south of France, he came across a nightclub, which had a multi-national clientele and the prototype of Sam, the black piano player. In the play, the Ilsa character was an American named Lois MeredithLois Meredith was a stage and movie actress.She infrequently appeared on Broadway from 1911-26...
and did not meet Laszlo until after her relationship with Rick in Paris had ended; Rick was a lawyer.
The first writers to work on the script were the Epstein twins, JuliusJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, most noted 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...
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 that became the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning film Casablanca .Epstein was born in New York City and...
, who removed Rick's background and added more elements of comedy. 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....
, came later, but worked in parallel with them, despite their differing emphases; Koch highlighted the political and melodramatic elements. 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...
contributed to the series of meetings between Rick and Ilsa in the cafe. Curtiz seems to have favored the romantic parts, insisting on retaining the Paris flashbacks. 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 AdministrationThe Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry censorship guidelines which governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It was originally popularly known as the Hays Code, after its creator, Will H...
(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. Some changes were made, but both remained strongly implied in the finished version.
Direction
Wallis' first choice for directorA film director, or filmmaker is a person who directs the making or production of a film. Some also consider a film producer to be a filmmaker....
was William WylerWilliam Wyler was a motion picture director.-Early life:Wyler was born Wilhelm Weiller to a Swiss father and a German mother, in Mulhouse in the French region of Alsace...
, but he was unavailable, so Wallis turned to his close friend Michael CurtizMichael Curtiz was a Hungarian-American filmmaker. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States. The best-known were The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday...
. Curtiz was a HungarianHungary , in English officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its capital is Budapest. Hungary is a member of OECD, NATO, EU, V4 and is a Schengen state...
JewThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
ish 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 known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
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 a U.S. film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism. He is generally credited with popularizing this theory in the Americas and coining the term "auteur theory" in his essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory," which was inspired by critics writing in Cahiers du...
called the film "the most decisive exception to the auteur theoryIn film criticism, the 1950s-era Auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he 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 footage which is of lesser importance for the final motion picture, as opposed to the first unit, which shoots all scenes involving actors, or at least the stars of the film...
montageFilm editing is part of the post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selecting and joining together shots, connecting the resulting 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 appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel....
.
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 American Warner Bros. film based on novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. Written and directed by John Huston, the movie stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, and Peter...
and FrankensteinFrankenstein is a horror film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley as well as the play adapted from it by Peggy Webling. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features Dwight Frye...
. 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 a cross with a representation of Jesus' body, or corpus. It is a principal symbol of the Christian religion...
, the symbol of the Free French 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 stretching 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 American composer of music for theatre productions and films. He probably is known best for the score he composed for Gone with the Wind and for the score and theme song for the film A Summer Place.Steiner was born Maximilian Raoul Steiner in Vienna, Austria-Hungary...
, who was best known for the scoreA film score is an alternative word used for the background music of a film . The term soundtrack is often confused with film score, though a soundtrack may also include songs featured in the film as well as previously released music by other artists, while the score does not...
for Gone with the WindGone with the Wind is a 1939 American drama romance film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name and directed by Victor Fleming...
. The song "As Time Goes By"As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld for the 1931 Broadway musical, Everybody's Welcome. In the original show it was sung by Frances Williams. It was recorded that year by several artists, including Rudy Vallee....
" by Herman HupfeldHerman Hupfeld was an American songwriter. His most notable composition was "As Time Goes By" .Hupfeld never wrote a whole Broadway score, but he became known as a composer who could write a song to fit a specific...
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 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 was adapted for...
) 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.- History :"La Marseillaise" is a song written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in Strasbourg on April 25, 1792...
", 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". At Rick's cafe, Strasser and a small group of fellow officers start 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....
" ("The Watch on the Rhine"). Laszlo rouses the rest of the patrons to join him in defiantly responding with "La Marseillaise", drowning the Germans out. In the soundtrack "La Marseillaise" is played by a full orchestra. Originally, the piece intended for this iconic sequence was the "Horst Wessel Lied", the de facto second national anthem of Nazi Germany, but this was still under international copyright in non-Allied countries. The opening bars of the "Deutschlandlied", the national anthem of GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, is featured throughout the score as a motif to represent the Germans, much as La Marseillaise is used to represent the Allies. This famous section of the film strongly resembles a long anecdote in the novel The Devils by Dostoevsky – the key difference being that in the novel it is the German song that drowns out the Marseillaise.
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 immigrated to the United States and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1890...
), "Knock on Wood" (music by M.K. Jerome, lyrics by Jack Scholl), the only original song in the film, and "Shine"Shine" is a jazz 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.Born Richard C. McPherson in Norfolk, Virginia, Mack co-founded the Gothum-Attucks Music Publishing Company in 1905, likely the first black owned music publishing company in the city of New York...
and Lew BrownLew Brown was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States.Brown was born as Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Russian Empire...
).
Since 1999, "As Time Goes By" has been used as the opening theme for Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
films. The first film to adopt this new theme was Lethal Weapon 4Lethal Weapon 4 is a 1998 buddy cop martial arts action-comedy film directed by Richard Donner and starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock and Jet Li...
. A truncated version of the theme debuted in 2003 as the closing logo for Warner Bros. TelevisionWarner Bros. Television is the television production and distribution arm of Warner Bros. Entertainment, itself part of Time Warner. Alongside CBS Television Studios, it serves as a television production arm of The CW Television Network , though it also produces shows for other networks, such as...
.
Cast
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.After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film...
as Rick Blaine. The New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
-born Bogart became a star with Casablanca. Earlier in his career, he had been typecastTypecasting is the process by which a film, TV, or stage actor is strongly identified with a specific character, one or more particular roles, or characters with the same traits or ethnic grouping....
as a gangsterA Gangster is a criminal who is a member of a crime organization, such as a gang. The terms are most commonly used in reference to members of the criminal organizations associated with American prohibition and the American offshoot of the Italian Mafia, such as the Chicago Outfit, the Philadelphia...
. 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. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress in the first Tony Award ceremony in 1947. 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 SwedishSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe...
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...
had been well received, but her subsequent films were not major successes—until Casablanca. 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 had included Ann Sheridan-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas, she was a college student 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 Paramount film...
, Hedy LamarrHedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress and scientist. Though known primarily for her acting , she also co-invented an early form of spread spectrum communications technology, a key to modern wireless communication.-Early life and career in Europe:Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler...
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, a western suburb of Paris....
; Wallis obtained the services of Bergman, who was contracted to David O. Selznick, by loaning Olivia de HavillandOlivia Mary de Havilland is an actress. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. De Havilland is one of the last surviving female stars from 1930s Hollywood. She is also the last living lead from Gone with the Wind....
in exchange.
- Paul Henreid
Paul Henreid , whose birthname was Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau, was an Austrian actor and film director.-Early life:...
as Victor Laszlo. Henreid, an AustrianAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
actor who emigrated in 1935, was reluctant to take the role (it "set [him] as a stiff forever", 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 she was published by 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:
- Claude Rains
Claude Rains was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 47 years; he later held American citizenship. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them The Invisible Man, the corrupt senator in Mr...
as Captain Louis Renault. Rains was an English actor, born in London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
. 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 films roles, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , 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.
- Sydney Greenstreet
Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was an English actor, best known for his work with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre in the 1940s.-Biography:...
as Signor Ferrari, a rival clubowner. Another Englishman, Greenstreet had previously starred with Lorre and Bogart in his own film debut in The Maltese FalconThe Maltese Falcon is a 1941 American Warner Bros. film based on novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. Written and directed by John Huston, the movie stars Humphrey Bogart as private investigator Sam Spade, Mary Astor as his femme fatale client, Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, and Peter...
.
- Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He made 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 was a Hungarian character actor who had left Germany in 1933.
Also credited were:
- Dooley Wilson
Arthur "Dooley" Wilson was an African American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is most famous for playing "Sam" in the 1942 film Casablanca.-Career:...
as Sam. He was one of the few American members of the cast. A drummerA drummer is a person who plays drums, particularly a drum kit , marching percussion or hand drums. The term percussionist applies to a musician performing on any percussion instrument, but usually refers to one who plays classical or Latin percussion. Most bands for Rock, Pop, Jazz, R&B etc...
, he could not play the piano. Hal Wallis had considered changing Sam to a female character (Hazel ScottHazel Dorothy Scott was a jazz and classical pianist and singer.-Early years:She was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and raised in New York City from the age of four. She performed extensively on piano as a child, then trained at the Juilliard School...
and Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald , also known as "Lady Ella", and the "First Lady of Song", was an American jazz vocalist....
were candidates), and even after shooting had been completed, Wallis considered dubbing over Wilson's voice for the songs.
- 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 BulgarianBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a country in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe. Bulgaria borders five other countries: Romania to the north , Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia to the west, and Greece and Turkey to the south...
refugee. The third credited American, she was studio head Jack WarnerJack Leonard "J.L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, Canada, was the president and driving force behind the successful development of Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
's stepdaughter.
- 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 Jewish 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 divorceDivorce or dissolution of marriage is the final termination of a marriage, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between two persons...
in 1942.
- S. Z. 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. A friend of Curtiz's since their days in Budapest, he is billed as "S. K. Sakall".
- Curt Bois
Curt Bois was a German actor.Bois was born in Berlin and began acting in 1907, becoming one of the film world's first child actors, with a role in the silent movie Bauernhaus und Grafenschloß...
as the pickpocket. Bois was a German JewishThe Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
actor and another refugee. He had one of the longest careers in film, making his first appearance in 1907 and his last in 1987. (He has since been surpassed by Mickey RooneyMickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. During his career he has won multiple awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...
.)
- John Qualen
John Qualen was a Canadian character actor.Qualen was born Johan Mandt Kvalen in Vancouver, British Columbia, the son of immigrants from Norway; his father was a Lutheran minister and changed the family's original surname, "Kvalen", to "Qualen"...
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 of Irish heritage famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
's movies.
- Leonid Kinskey
Leonid Kinskey was a Russian-born movie and television actor who enjoyed a long career.Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He fled the Russian Revolution and acted on stage in Europe and South America before arriving in New York City in 1921...
as Sascha, whom Rick assigns to escort Yvonne home. He was born in Russia.
Notable uncredited actors were:
- Marcel Dalio
Marcel Dalio was a French Jewish 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 a casino employee who takes and pays out bets or otherwise assists at a gambling table. In American usage, dealer may imply a card game, but this is not always the case. For example it is common to refer to a craps dealer.- Tipping :In general, croupiers work only for their...
. He had been a star in French cinema, appearing in Jean RenoirJean Renoir , born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France, was a film director, actor and author. He was the second son of Aline Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir...
's La Grande Illusion and La Regle de JeuThe Rules of the Game is a 1939 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 thriller romance war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is nominally based on the novel To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway.-Plot:...
.
- 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...
as Jan Brandel, the Bulgarian roulette player married to Annina Brandel (Page). Another Austrian, he had spent time in a concentration camp after the AnschlussThe ' , also known as the ', was the 1938 de facto annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime....
.
- 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.
- 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.
- Dan Seymour
Dan Seymour was a Warner Bros. character actor who starred in Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, and Key Largo.-Early life:...
as Abdul the doorman. He was an American actor who, at 265 pounds, often played villains.
- Gregory Gaye
Gregory Gaye was a Russian-born actor. Born Gregory De Gay in St. Petersburg, Gaye came to the United States after the Russian Revolution in 1917. He appeared in small roles in over a hundred movies....
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.
Part of the emotional impact of the film has been attributed to the large proportion of European exilesExile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened by prison or death upon return...
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 refers to one of the following:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time. It can be imposed to maintain public order , or suppress targeted groups...
as enemy aliensIn 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.-Australia:...
. Ironically, they were frequently cast as the Nazis from whom they had fled.
Some of the exiled foreign actors were:
- 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...
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.
- Hans Twardowski as a Nazi officer who argues with a French officer over Yvonne. Born in Stettin, Germany (today Szczecin
Szczecin - is the capital city of 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 the 2005 census the city had a total population of 420,638. In 2007 its population was 407,811.Szczecin is located on the...
, PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
).
- 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 Nazi Anschluss. 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 knee-breeches made of leather.The word Lederhosen is frequently misspelled Leiderhosen , or Liederhosen . The German pronunciation is...
, Stössel was their spokesman with the slogan, "That Little Old Winemaker, Me!"
- 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....
as Mrs. Leuchtag. Born in ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
, 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 city of Darmstadt was founded by the Counts of Katzenelnbogen in 1330, though settlement in the area is known to have been present as early as the late 11th century...
, Germany. She journeyed to America after the Nazis came to power in 1933. She later married another Casablanca actor, Wolfgang Zilzer.
- 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 casino card game. It is believed to have been introduced into France from Italy during the reign of Charles VIII of France , and it is similar to Faro and to Basset. There are three accepted variants of the game: baccarat chemin de fer, baccarat banque , and punto banco...
player in Rick's. Born in Berlin, she was a famous cabaret performer and film actress. Being Jewish, she left Germany in 1933.
- Louis V. Arco
Louis V. Arco was an Austrian-born actor who was born Lutz Altschul in Baden, Austria-Hungary , about five 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.
- 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.
Reception
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; 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 KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC was a British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II. He served as Prime Minister from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer...
and RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , the only U.S. President elected to more than two terms, was 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). Initial critical reaction was generally positive, with VarietyVariety is a 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 Daily...
describing it as "splendid anti-Axis propaganda"; as Koch later said, "it was a picture the audiences needed... there were values... worth making sacrifices for. And it said it in a very entertaining way." 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 Publications...
rated it only "pretty tolerable". The Office of War InformationOWI the government agency should not be confused with OWI the hobby robotics companyThe 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.
At the 16th Academy AwardsThe 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...
, the film won three awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best DirectorBest Director may refer to:* Academy Award for Best Director, the Oscar* Golden Globe Award for Best Director* Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series* Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series...
, and Best Picture. Wallis was resentful when Jack WarnerJack Leonard "J.L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, Canada, was the president and driving force behind the successful development of Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
, rather than he, collected the best picture award; the slight led to Wallis severing his ties with the studio in April that year.
The film has grown in popularity. Murray Burnett has 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 Moon"Shine On, Harvest Moon" is the name of a popular early-1900s song credited to Jack Norworth and his wife Nora Bayes. It was one of a series of moon related Tin Pan Alley songs of the era. The song was debuted by the composers in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908 to great acclaim...
and This is the ArmyThis Is the Army is a 1943 American 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. The screenplay by Casey Robinson and Claude Binyon was based...
). 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 university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
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.
However, there has been 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 African American actor and singer. He was born in Tyler, Texas, and is most famous for playing "Sam" in the 1942 film Casablanca.-Career:...
, 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.
Critical reception
When Casablanca was released in 1942, it was not a box office hit, but it received "consistently good reviews". The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record...
wrote at the time of the film's release, "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 a 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 Daily...
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 performances by 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." 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 is distributed throughout the Western United States. It is the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States and the fourth-most widely distributed newspaper in the United States...
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 known for his film review column and for two television programs Sneak Previews and Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel...
, 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, and the first feature film directed by Orson Welles. It was nominated for Academy Awards in nine categories, but won only for Best Original Screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz and Welles...
" because of its wider appeal; while Citizen Kane is "greater", 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, theater, 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 Behlmer emphasized the variety in the picture: "it's a blend of drama, melodrama, comedy [and] intrigue". Leonard MaltinLeonard Maltin is an American film critic and film historian. He has authored several mainstream books on the cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...
has stated that this is his favorite movie of all time.
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 she was published by 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 is an Italian medievalist, semiotician, 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."
Interpretation
Casablanca has been subjected to many different readings. SemioticiansSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, signs and symbols, into three branches:...
account for the film's popularity by claiming that its inclusion of a whole series of stereotypeA stereotype is a commonly held public belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals.The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups, based on some prior...
s paradoxically strengthens the film. Umberto Eco explained:
- Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. [...] When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homer
Homer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
ic depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.
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.
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 complexThe Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a group of largely unconscious ideas and feelings which centre around the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex....
, 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.
Influence
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 , while there are many similarities between Casablanca and two later Bogart films, To Have and Have NotTo Have and Have Not is a thriller romance war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is nominally based on the novel To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway.-Plot:...
(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 engage in a...
. 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. The film stars Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, and Harpo Marx. It was directed by Archie Mayo and written by Joseph Fields and Roland Kibbee. It is generally considered one of the better of the Marx Brothers' later films.-Plot:The story takes...
, Neil SimonMarvin Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. His numerous Broadway succcesses have led to his work being among the most regularly performed in the world...
's The Cheap DetectiveThe Cheap Detective is a 1978 Columbia Pictures spoof comedy film, written by Neil Simon and directed by Robert Moore as a follow-up to their successful Murder by Death, . It stars Peter Falk as Lou Peckinpaugh, a detective in the Humphrey Bogart mould, and is an affectionate parody of Bogart...
, Barb WireBarb Wire is a 1996 film based on the Dark Horse comic book series Barb Wire. The film was produced by Brad Wyman and starred Pamela Anderson...
, and Out ColdOut Cold is a 2001 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 could also be considered a parody or modernization of the film...
, while it provided the title for the hit The Usual SuspectsThe Usual Suspects is a 1995 American neo-noir film written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. The film tells the story of Roger "Verbal" Kint , a small-time con man who is the subject of a police interrogation. He tells his interrogator, U.S...
. Woody AllenWoody Allen is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, comedian, writer, musician, and playwright....
's Play It Again, Sam appropriated Bogart's Casablanca persona as the fantasy mentor for Allen's nebbishy character, featuring actor Jerry LacyGerald LeRoy 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. 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:...
was "a South American-set retooling of Casablanca".
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...
, 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 writer, filmmaker, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several well-regarded films including Time Bandits , Brazil , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
's dystopiaA dystopia is the vision of a society in which conditions of life are miserable and characterized by poverty, oppression, war, violence, disease, pollution, nuclear fallout and/or the abridgement of human rights, resulting in widespread unhappiness, suffering, and...
n BrazilBrazil is a 1985 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...
. Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
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 Bugs BunnyBugs Bunny is a fictional character who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, which became Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1945. In 2002, he was named by TV Guide as the greatest cartoon character of all time, an honor he shares...
cartoonThe word cartoon has various meanings, based on several very different forms of visual art and illustration. The term has evolved over time....
included on the special edition DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
release. Another cartoon version was produced by 30-Second Bunnies Theatre. It also figured prominently in Black Cat, White CatBlack Cat, White Cat is a Yugoslav Romantic comedy film directed by Emir Kusturica in 1998. It won the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the Venice Film Festival....
, where one of the characters is obsessed with the closing line.
Steven SoderberghSteven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director...
paid homage to Casablanca with The Good GermanThe Good German is a 2006 feature film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire...
, a post-World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
-set murder mystery shot in black and white using technology from the period in which Casablanca was made. The film ends with a scene between two former lovers (played by George ClooneyGeorge Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Clooney has balanced his performances in big-budget blockbusters with work as a producer and director behind commercially riskier projects, as well as social and liberal political activism...
and Cate BlanchettCatherine Élise "Cate" Blanchett is an Australian actress and theatre director. She has won multiple acting awards, most notably two SAGs, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTAs, an Academy Award, as well as the Volpi Cup at 64th Venice International Film Festival.Blanchett came to international...
) at an airport. The film's poster echoes the iconic one for Casablanca.
Television has also drawn on the fame of this film. For example, an episode of the American TV series MoonlightingMoonlighting was an American television series that first aired on ABC from March 3, 1985 to May 14, 1989 with a total of 67 episodes. The show starred Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd as private detectives and was a mixture of drama, comedy and romance that is considered a classic spoof of...
, parodied Casablanca, with Curtis Armstrong-Early life:Curtis Armstrong was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Norma E. , a teacher, and Robert Leroy Armstrong. He graduated from Berkley High School in Berkley, Michigan and later attended and graduated from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.-Career:Armstrong's first role came in...
as "Rick" and Allyce BeasleyAllyce Beasley is an American actress. She is known for her role as rhyming, love-struck receptionist Agnes DiPesto in the television series Moonlighting. For several years she has been the announcer on Playhouse Disney, a morning lineup of programming for toddlers on The Disney Channel...
as "Agnes". Also, the Star Trek: Deep Space NineStar Trek: Deep Space Nine is a science fiction television program that premiered in 1993 and ran for seven seasons, ending in 1999. Rooted in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek universe, it was created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller, at the request of Brandon Tartikoff, and produced by Paramount...
episode "Profit and Loss" has many plot elements in common with the film.
In literature, Robert CooverRobert Lowell Coover is an American author and professor in the Literary Arts program at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.-Life and works:...
's short story "You Must Remember This" (from the book A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This) uses exact quotes from the movie and includes an explicit sex scene between Rick and Ilsa, while the science-fiction novella "The Children's Hour" in the series The Man-Kzin Wars, created and edited by Larry NivenLaurence van Cott Niven is a US science fiction author. Perhaps his best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics. It also often includes elements of detective...
, has a plot which draws many elements from Casablanca.
Several video games have made use of themes, quotes and characters from the film. Discworld NoirDiscworld Noir is a computer game based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld comic fantasy novels, and unlike the previous Discworld games is both an example and parody of the noir genre. The game was developed by Perfect Entertainment and published by GT Interactive. It was originally released in 1999...
borrows its ending verbatim, while Grim FandangoGrim Fandango is a personal computer game in the graphic adventure genre released by LucasArts in and primarily written by Tim Schafer. It is the first adventure game by LucasArts to use 3D computer graphics overlaid on pre-rendered 2D backgrounds...
features a suspiciously familiar chief of police raiding a nightclub due to illegal gambling.
Awards and honors
Casablanca won three Oscars:
- Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Motion 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...
– Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. (also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, or simply Warner Bros.—the shortened form of the former official, sometimes still used, formal corporate name: Warner Brothers
(Hal B. WallisHal B. Wallis, C.B.E. was an Academy Award-winning American motion picture producer.-Career:...
, producer)
- Academy Award for Best Director – Michael Curtiz
Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian-American filmmaker. He directed more than fifty films in Europe and more than one hundred in the United States. The best-known were The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Casablanca, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and White Christmas. He thrived in the heyday...
- Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
The Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay is one of the Academy Awards, the most prominent film awards in the United States. It is awarded each year to the writer of a screenplay adapted from another source...
– Julius J. EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, most noted 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...
, 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 that became the screenplay for the Academy Award-winning 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....
It was also nominated for another five Oscars:
- Academy Award for 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.After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film...
- Academy Award for 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 47 years; he later held American citizenship. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them The Invisible Man, the corrupt senator in Mr...
- Academy Award for 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....
, black-and-white – 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:...
- Academy Award for Film Editing
The Academy Award for Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; it was first given for films released in 1934. The name of this award is occasionally changed; in 2008, it was listed as the Academy Award for Achievement in Film Editing. The New York...
– Owen Marks
- Academy Award for Original Music Score
The Academy Award for Original Music 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.-Winners with multiple nominations:...
– Max SteinerMax Steiner was an Austrian American composer of music for theatre productions and films. He probably is known best for the score he composed for Gone with the Wind and for the score and theme song for the film A Summer Place.Steiner was born Maximilian Raoul Steiner in Vienna, Austria-Hungary...
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 a component of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify the motions of objects...
.com (the selected films were not ranked). In 2006, the Writers Guild of America, westWriters Guild of America, West is a labor union that represents entertainment writers in the negotiation and enforcement of contracts with producers. WGAW supports writers in the areas of screen, television, and new media. WGAW succeeded the Screen Writers Guild in 1954...
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. A play for television is known as a teleplay.- Format and style :...
of Casablanca the best of all time in its list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays.
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...
recognition
- 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 thrilling 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.-The List:...
- #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 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 movie heroes and villains 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...
:
- 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 British sitcom that aired on BBC One from 1992 to 2005. Starring Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer, it follows the relationship between two former lovers who meet unexpectedly after not being in contact for 38 years....
" #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 in June of 2005 in a three-hour television program on CBS...
- #5, 20, 28, 32, 43, 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 movies as determined by the American Film Institute. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series, which has been compiling lists of the greatest movies of all time in various categories since 1998...
- #32
- 2007 - AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)
AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies — 10th Anniversary Edition was the 2007 updated version of 100 Years… 100 Movies. The original list was first unveiled in 1998....
- #3
Home video releases
Casablanca was released on laserdiscThe Laserdisc is an obsolete home video disc format, and was the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially marketed as Discovision in 1978, the technology was licensed and sold as Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Videodisc, Laservision, Disco-Vision, DiscoVision, and MCA...
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.-Background:Turner Entertainment Co...
), 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 . It was re-named Warner Home Video in 1980...
. It was first released on DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
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 envisaged to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
was released on November 14, 2006, containing the same special features as the 2003 DVD. DVD Reviewers were extremely 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.
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||-||}Brazzaville is the capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo and is located on the Congo River. As of the 2001 census, it has a population of 1,018,541 in the city proper, and about 1.5 million in total when including the suburbs located in the Pool Region...
) 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 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...
refused an invitation to remake the film in 1974, citing its cult statusCult Status is the debut album from Philadelphia hip hop artist Chief Kamachi.-Track listing:...
among American students as his reason. However, it has been reported that BollywoodBollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the Indian film industry. Bollywood is the largest film producer in India and one of the...
filmmaker Rajeev Nath is remaking the film, describing it as a "tribute to the original."
The novel, As Time Goes By, written by Michael Walsh and published in , was authorized by Warner. The novel picks up where the movie 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, lauded as one of the best reference works on the cinema.-Career:...
provided an unofficial sequel in his 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 .-History:Though the word "Prequel" is of...
s to the movie. The first aired from to , 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 cameo role. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa.-Career:...
as Rick and Marcel DalioMarcel Dalio was a French Jewish 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 a casino employee who takes and pays out bets or otherwise assists at a gambling table. In American usage, dealer may imply a card game, but this is not always the case. For example it is common to refer to a craps dealer.- Tipping :In general, croupiers work only for their...
in the movie, as Renault; it aired on ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American 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. It first broadcast on television 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 television series which were aired as part of the 1955-56 season on ABC: Cheyenne, a concept that originated on Presents, and two others based on classic Warner Bros. films, Casablanca and Kings Row.While neither a critical or popular success,...
. It produced a total of 10 hour-long episodes. Another series, briefly broadcast on NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
in , starred David SoulDavid Soul is an American actor and singer, best known for his role as the California police Det. Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchinson in the television program Starsky and Hutch . He became a British citizen in 2004....
as Rick, Ray LiottaRaymond Liotta is an American actor, best known for his portrayal of Henry Hill in the crime-drama Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese...
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 5 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 for...
on April 26, 1943The year 1943 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history.-Events:*May 2 - Fireside chat: On the Coal Crisis....
, starring Bogart, Bergman and Henreid, and an hour-long version on the Lux Radio TheaterLux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series [NBC Blue Network ; CBS ; NBC ] which first adapted Broadway stage works, and then films to hour-long radio programs performed live before studio audiences...
on January 24, 1944The year 1944 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history.-Events:*January 11 – Fireside chat: State of the Union Message to Congress....
, featuring Alan LaddAlan Walbridge Ladd was an American film actor.-Early life:Ladd was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas to an American father and an English-American mother . His father died when the boy was four, and his mother relocated to Oklahoma City, where she married Jim Beavers, a housepainter...
as Rick, Hedy LamarrHedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born American actress and scientist. Though known primarily for her acting , she also co-invented an early form of spread spectrum communications technology, a key to modern wireless communication.-Early life and career in Europe:Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler...
as Ilsa, and John LoderJohn Loder was an English actor best known for his tall, debonair and suave looks and his marriage to Hedy Lamarr....
as Victor Laszlo. Two other thirty-minute adaptations were aired: on the Philip Morris Playhouse on September 3, 1943The year 1943 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history.-Events:*May 2 - Fireside chat: On the Coal Crisis....
and on the Theater of Romance on December 19, 1944The year 1944 saw a number of significant happenings in radio broadcasting history.-Events:*January 11 – Fireside chat: State of the Union Message to Congress....
, in which Dooley Wilson reprised his role as Sam.
Julius EpsteinJulius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, most noted 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...
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 30 miles 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...
in August 1946, and again in London in April 1991, but met with no success. The film will be adapted into a musical by Takarazuka RevueThe Takarazuka Revue is a Japanese all-female musical theater in the city of Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play both male and female roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions — most of their plays are Western-style musicals, and sometimes they are stories adapted from shōjo manga...
, an all-female Japaneseis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
musical theater company, and is slated to run from November 2009 through February 2010.
Casablanca was also part of the film colorizationFilm colorization is any process that add 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 during the 1980s, when a colorized version aired on television. This was briefly available on home video, but it was unpopular with purists. 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 BCE, it is believed to depict Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty...
?"
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 and the 33rd Governor of California .Born in Tampico, Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s...
was originally chosen to play Rick. This originates in a press release issued by the studioA movie studio is, in the established sense of the term, a company that distributes films. Literally, however, the term denotes a controlled environment for the making of a motion picture. This environment may be interior , exterior , or both...
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.
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. Such dispute as there was concerned not whether Ilsa would leave with Laszlo, but how this result could be engineered. The confusion was most 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".
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, or the Vichy regime are the common terms used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944. This government, which succeeded the Third Republic, officially called itself the French State , in contrast with the previous designation, "French Republic." Marshal...
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...
or Vichy General Maxime WeygandMaxime Weygand was a French military commander in World War I and World War II. Weygand is remembered for initially fighting the German invasion of France in 1940, then surrendering to and collaborating 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 colonies 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...
, the enemy of the Vichy regime controlling Morocco. 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."Sometimes, the specific nature of the MacGuffin is not important to the plot such that anything that serves as a motivation serves its purpose...
, 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. There are also the inevitable continuity errorsIn fiction, continuity is consistency of the characteristics of persons, plot, objects, places and events seen by the reader or viewer. It is of relevance to several media....
; for example, in the final scene, Major Strasser's military overcoat is seen both with and without epaulets. Also, during the scene where Rick leaves Paris on the train, it can clearly be seen that Rick's coat gets sopping wet from the heavy rain, but when he boards the train, the coat suddenly appears dry.
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 of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
, PraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Nicknames for Prague have included "the mother of cities" , "city of a hundred spires", or Stověžatá Praha in Czech and "the golden city" or Zlaté město in Czech.Situated on the River Vltava in central Bohemia, Prague has been the...
, ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
, 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, SamPlay it again, Sam is originally a misquotation from the 1942 film Casablanca. It may also refer to:* A misquotation from the 1946 Marx Brothers' movie A Night in Casablanca...
"—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." When he feigns ignorance, she responds, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By"As Time Goes By" is a song written by Herman Hupfeld for the 1931 Broadway musical, Everybody's Welcome. In the original show it was sung by Frances Williams. It was recorded that year by several artists, including Rudy Vallee....
.'" Later that night, alone with Sam, Rick says, "You played it for her and 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 in the 2005 pollPart 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 in June of 2005 in a three-hour television program on CBS...
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...
as the fifth most memorable line in cinema history.
Six lines from Casablanca appeared in the AFI top 100, the most of any film (Gone with the WindGone with the Wind is a 1939 American drama romance film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name and directed by Victor Fleming...
and The Wizard of OzThe Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical / fantasy film directed mainly by Victor Fleming from a script by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, and others and based on the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum...
were next, with three apiece). The others were: "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), and "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." (67th).
External links