CASABLANCA
Directed by: Michael Curtiz, Written by: Joan Allison, Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein, Howard Koch
Hal B. Wallis, STARRING: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt,
Sydney Greenstreet. Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson, Joy Page - AWARDS: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay
RELEASED: I942

Legend has it that Casablanca was written as production was going on; pages of dialogue rushed to the set. The American film studios of the time were still fleet of foot and receiving talent from around the world as the result of World War II. Casablanca is so popular that it hardly needs our puny efforts here to proselytize it. Women, men, young or old - it works for them.

Casablanca's merits start with A-list performers. Humphrey Bogart was entering his red-hot superstar days thanks to The Maltese Falcon; he was practically a national symbol for the next ten years. Ingrid Bergman was rising too. Claude Rains of the raised eyebrow, who was “shocked, shocked that gambling was going on" in Rick's niteclub was perhaps the best talent in the film.

Conrad Veidt plays the arch-Nazi (in reality he’d just escaped from the Nazis), plus Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre Paul Henreid, Dooley Wilson, Joy Page, to name a few more; almost the whole cast of Maltese Falcon. That’s what made Casablanca; the combination of top writers and top performers.

The film had more writers than McDonalds has hamburgers; they probably worked in shifts. Maybe that's the way movies should be written, because dialogue is the strongest element of Casablanca, with more quotable quotes than almost any other film. Questioner: "Why did you come to Casablanca". Rick: "For the waters". Questioner: "There are no waters in Casablanca." Rick: "I was misinformed."

In the studio's eyes a film tied in with a war could be yesterday’s news if the war suddenly ended. They didn’t think of films having much staying power in those days. A film had a run in the theaters, and then went into storage, often to rot away to dust. A star of that era said, “We didn’t know what we were doing would be around forever”. Casablanca deserves to be around. It works on many levels: love story, war thriller, mystery thriller, political primer, and laundry list of national stereotypes. Even the song As Time Goes By was a hit, and still is

Not that the story makes sense. We’re asked to believe that a high-minded woman, Ilsa, married to a national hero, is attracted to a shadowy arms dealer in Paris. We also find that Rick, the American gunrunner at the start of a war, an opportunity if ever there was one, opens instead a café and gambling hall, where the wheel is crooked, yet we’re still supposed to look up to him. But Bogey carries the film like a champ, we never question anything he does. No other American performer captured the imagination of movegoers of all generations like he did.

It's that old standby, the gangster with the heart of gold; the guy that carries a .38 and leaves town fast, transported to North Africa. If Rick had been a librarian, would we care about him? As for Major Strasser, we thankfully don't deal in national stereotypes that broad anymore, but Conrad Veidt had gotten out of Germany not too long before and knew how bad things had gotten there.

The French, as played by Claude Rains, are shown as playing the double game, as their government seems to specialize in doing. The other Europeans, stand-ins for the Jews of Europe, are trying to get out of a continent under the German boot, and have a fearful expression that conveys more than a thousand newspaper stories.

The black piano-player is Sam (Dooley Wilson). His thoughts about the white folks at war again go unrecorded. The idea that a white man and a black man could be pals in I942 was new, but American films show a better world, where the good guys always win. Play it, Sam.

Scenes from the film: Original Trailer --- Scenes --- Final Scene (spoiler alert)

(a) Woody Allen's homage to Casablanca not withstanding, Rick never orders his piano player to "Play it again, Sam".
(b) Director Michael Curtiz was born Mihály Kertész. He had one of the longest careers in films, directing from I9I2 till I96I.
(c) In the famous Battle of the Anthems, when the Germans sing their anthem, Victor Lazlo orders the band to strike up "Le Marsellaise" the French National Anthem, although he is not French and at the time the French Government was not at war with the Germans. But it was an anthem Americans were familiar with.