Casablanca (film)

Casablanca is a 1942 American romance drama film directed by Michael Curtiz. It narrates a romantic drama in the Moroccan city of Casablanca under the control of the Vichy government. The film, based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's (Everybody Comes to Rick's Cafe) by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, stars Humphrey Bogart in the role Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. The development focuses on Rick's conflict between —using the words of one of the characters— love and virtue: Rick must choose between his beloved Ilsa or do the right thing. Her dilemma is whether or not to help her escape from Casablanca with her husband, one of the resistance leaders, so that he can continue his fight against the Nazis.

It is one of the most valued films in American cinematography, winner of several Oscars, including Best Picture in 1943.In its time the film had everything to stand out, with renowned actors and notable screenwriters, however none of those involved in its production expected that this could be something out of the ordinary. It was one of the dozens of annual productions of the Hollywood machine. Casablanca got off to a solid but not spectacular start, yet it gained popularity as it went, consistently ranking at the top of best picture lists. Critics have praised the charismatic performances of Bogart and Bergman and the chemistry between them, as well as the depth of the characterizations, the intensity of the direction, the wit of the script, and the emotional impact of the play as a whole.

Production

Picture of the film Casablanca (1942), one of the most representative films of Hollywood's classic cinema, whose era would range from the 1910s to the 1960s.

Casablanca is based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's Cafe by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, which was never staged.

When Warner Brothers literary analyst Stephen Karnot read the work, he called it "sophisticated nonsense" but gave it the thumbs-up nonetheless. Soon the editor in charge of the scripts, Irene Diamond, convinced the producer Hal B. Wallis to buy the rights for 20,000 US dollars at the time, the highest price ever paid for a theatrical work that had not been staged.

The film project renamed the play Casablanca, perhaps trying to imitate the success of the 1938 film Algiers. Thus, filming began on May 25, 1942 and ended on August 3 of the same year, reaching a production cost of US$1,039,000 (US$75,000 over budget). The cost was not high, but it was higher than expected. average of his time.

The film was shot in studios, except for a sequence showing the arrival of Major Strasser, which was shot at the Van Nuys Airport. The street scenery used for the exterior scenes had been built for another film, The Desert Song, and had to be redecorated for the Paris flashbacks. Said stage remained in the Warner warehouses until the 1960s. The set for Rick's Café was built in three unconnected parts, so it could not be determined on the layout what its plan would be. In fact, in one scene the camera is passed through a wall from the cafe area into Rick's office. The background for the final scene, which shows a Lockheed L-12 Electra Junior small plane with personnel walking around it, was assembled using short extras and a cardboard plane drawn to scale. Smoke, simulating mist, was used to cover the unconvincing appearance of the model.

Film critic Roger Ebert called Wallis the "key of the creative team" for his attention to production detail (even to the point of insisting on having a real parrot in the blue parrot bar, Blue Parrot Bar, in English).

On the other hand, actress Ingrid Bergman's height caused some problems. she towered over Bogart by almost two inches, so director Curtiz had to elevate the actor on bricks or sit him on cushions in scenes in which they appeared together.

The setbacks reached producer Hal B. Wallis when he decided, after filming had finished, that the film's final line would be: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" ("Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship»). Bogart had to be called in a month after filming wrapped to dub the line.

Later thought was given to introducing a scene showing Rick and Renault together with a detachment of Free French soldiers, on a ship, getting ready to join the 1942 invasion of North Africa by Allied troops. However, it proved very difficult to get actor Claude Rains for the film, and the idea was finally abandoned when another producer, David O. Selznick, pointed out that "it would be a terrible mistake to change the ending".

Script

The original play was inspired by Murray Burnett's 1938 trip to Europe, during which he was able to visit Vienna just before Austria's incorporation into Nazi Germany. Murray also visited the southern coast of France where Nazi settlements and refugees coexisted, not without difficulty. The area's nightlife venues thus inspired both Rick's Café (especially one called "Le Kat Ferrat") and the character of the character Sam the Pianist (based on a black pianist Burnett saw in Juan-les-Pins). In the play, Ilsa's character was an American named Lois Meredith and she did not meet Laszlo until after her Parisian relationship with Rick had ended. Also, in the play Rick's character was a lawyer.

The first writers to work on the script were the Epstein twins, Julius and Philip, who removed the background of the character Rick and increased the comedy elements. Then the other credited writer, Howard Koch, intervened, but working in parallel and emphasizing other aspects. Koch emphasized the political and melodramatic elements. Apparently it was director Curtiz who favored the romantic parts, insisting that the flashbacks to Paris remain. Despite the large number of writers involved, the film has what Ebert described as a script of "wonderful unity and consistency." Koch would later state that it was the tension between his own vision and Curtiz's that caused "surprisingly, these uneven approaches somehow became linked, and perhaps that was due in part to this back-and-forth between Curtiz and me.", which gave the film a certain balance." Julius Epstein would later note that the script contained "more corn than there is in Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there's nothing better.", spent, banal and sentimental.

The film ran into some trouble when Joseph Breen, a member of the Hollywood industry's self-censorship body (the Production Code Administration), expressed his opposition to the Captain Renault character requesting sexual favors in exchange for visas and to the Rick and Ilsa characters had slept together in Paris. Both points, however, remained implicit in the final version.

Address

Producer Hal Wallis's first choice to direct the film was William Wyler, but as he was unavailable Wallis decided to choose, after shuffling several names, his friend, director Michael Curtiz.

Curtiz was a Jewish immigrant of Hungarian origin who had come to the United States in the 1920s and who counted refugees from Nazi Europe among his family. According to Roger Ebert, in Casablanca "very few scenes are memorable as such...", Curtiz was concerned with using the images to tell a story rather than using them for themselves.

Either way, the director had little influence on the development of the plot. According to Casey Robinson, Curtiz "knew nothing at all about the story...he saw footage and you provided the story". Critic Andrew Sarris called the film "the most decisive exception to the auteur theory"., to whom Aljean Harmetz replied that "almost all Warner Bros. films were an exception to the auteur theory". However, other critics give Curtiz greater credit; Sidney Rosenzweig, in his study of the director's work, sees in the film a typical example of the way Curtiz highlights moral dilemmas.

Second unit montages, such as the opening sequence of the refugee train and the one showing the invasion of France, were directed by Don Siegel.

Direction of Photography

The cinematographer was Arthur Edeson, an experienced artist who had previously worked on The Maltese Falcon and a 1931 version of Frankenstein.

Ingrid Bergman, on his left profile.

A special mention deserves the photography of Ingrid Bergman, in which special care was taken. Ingrid was almost always photographed in her left profile, a profile preferred by the actress herself, and on many occasions a Gaussian-type smoothing filter was applied with catch lights to make her eyes sparkle. These effects were designed to give her face an "unspeakably sad, cute, and nostalgic" appearance.

There are also shadow bars crossing the characters and the background. These shadows, according to each case, have different meanings. Some show symbols of imprisonment, the crucifix, the symbol of Free France and even emotional turmoil. Additionally, film noir darkness and expressionist light is used in numerous scenes, mainly towards the end of the film. According to Rosenzweig, these lights and shadows are classic elements of Curtiz's style, along with the fluidity of the camerawork and the use of the environment as a framing tool.

Music

The music was written by Max Steiner (1888-1971), a composer who had risen to fame for having written the music for the film Gone with the Wind. Herman Hupfeld's song As Time Goes By had been chosen to be part of the original stage play, and Steiner planned to replace it with a work of his own. However, when the composer wanted to create his own work to replace it, he found that Ingrid Bergman had already cut her hair short to star in her next film role (Maria, in For Whom the Bell Tolls), so the scenes in which the song appeared could not be shot again. On the other hand, when the film was released the song enjoyed a resurgence that placed it 21 weeks at the top of the charts. So Steiner based the film's music entirely on that song and La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, transforming them to reflect various situations. Of exceptional note is the "dueling songs" in that The Marseillaise competes—played at the top of its lungs by a full orchestra—against a small group of Germans singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” (The guard on the Rhine River) on the piano. Originally the song «Horst-Wessel-Lied» (Horst Wessel Song) was intended for this master sequence, which was de facto the second national anthem of Nazi Germany, but it was still under copyright at least in non-Allied countries.

Other songs featured in the film include It Had to Be You, from 1924, with words by Gus Kahn and music by Isham Jones; Knock on Wood, with music by M.K. Jerome and lyrics by Jack Scholl, and Shine from 1910 by Cecil Mack and Lew Brown, with music by Ford Dabney. In one of the flashback scenes in Paris, Rick and Ilsa dance to the rhythm of Perfidia, a song by the Mexican composer Alberto Domínguez Borrás from Chiapas.

Cast

Three actors lead the film: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid.

A notable point of the cast of Casablanca is the wide variety of nationalities of the actors. In fact, only three of the credited actors were American actors.

• Humphrey Bogart Like Rick Blaine. At the beginning of his career, Bogart had fallen into gangster papers, interpreting characters in which he received names such as Bugs, Rocks, Turkey, Whip, Chips, Gloves and Duke (on two occasions). In the movie High Sierra of 1941 he was allowed to play a role with a certain charism. And the same year he played his first romantic role in the film The Maltese Falcon, interpreting Sam Spade, and this work put him in the look of the directors of black cinema and romantic cinema, to then become the most viable option to interpret Rick, who looked a lot like charisma and eloquence to his former character in John Huston's film.
• Ingrid Bergman like Ilsa Lund. Bergman’s official website mentions Ilsa as his “most famous and lasting papel”. The Dutch debut of the Swedish actress Intermezzo in 1939, he had been well received, but his later films were nothing extraordinary until Casablanca. Ebert qualifies her as "luminous," and comments the chemistry between her and Bogart: "She paints his face with her eyes." Other actresses considered to interpret Ilsa had been Ann Sheridan, Hedy Lamarr and Michèle Morgan; Wallis acquired Bergman's services through a contract with David O. Selznick, in exchange for lending it to Olivia de Havilland.

• Paul Henreid like Victor Laszlo. Henreid, an Austrian actor who had left his home country in 1935, initially rejected the role (since he thought that this "would lock him up forever," according to Pauline Kael's statements), and only accepted him when he received the promise to lead the cast together with Bogart and Bergman. Henreid did not take very well with his fellow actors and in fact considered Bogart only “a mediocre actor”, while Bergman described Henreid as a “first donna”.

The supporting actors were:

• Claude Rains like Captain Louis Renault. Rains, a London actor, had curiously served in the First World War, where he had indeed reached the rank of captain. Also, as an actor he had previously worked with Michael Curtiz on Robin of Forests. Curtiz was his teacher and it is said that he taught him “not to face a camera”.

• Sydney Greenstreet like Mr. Ferrari, owner of a competition club. He was also an English actor and had previously played The Maltese Falcon by Lorre and Bogart.

• Peter Lorre like Mr. Ugarte. Lorre was an Austrian Jewish actor who had worked in Germany, where he emigrated after the Nazis came to power in 1933. He had also worked on The Maltese Falcon.

• Conrad Veidt like the biggest Strasser of the Luftwaffe. Veidt, German actor, had appeared in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligariin 1920, before fleeing the Nazis (a week after marrying a Jewish woman), as well as in The thief of Baghdad and other movies.

Other actors credited in the film included Dooley Wilson, Joy Page, Madeleine LeBeau, S. Z. Sakall, Curt Bois and John Qualen.

• Dooley Wilson like Sam. Wilson, an American actor, was actually a drummer and could not play the piano. Hal Wallis previously considered the possibility of changing the male figure of the pianist by a female (a paper that could have been interpreted by Hazel Scott or Ella Fitzgerald), and even even after having finished the shoot, Wallis continued to consider folding Wilson's voice in the songs he played.

• Joy Page like Annina Brandel, in the movie a young Bulgarian refugee. Page, an American actress, was the stepdaughter of the studio president, Jack Warner, and at the beginning he thought the script Casablanca It was “fashioned” and was “stereotypical”. She was only 17 years old and she was recently graduated from high school.

• Madeleine LeBeau like Yvonne, who in the movie appears as girlfriend of Rick. during a very short space of time. LeBeau, a French actress who was 21 years old, was the second wife of actor Marcel Dalio, who was divorced while participating in the film.

• S. Z. (or S. K.) Sakall like Carl, the waiter. Hungarian Jewish actor who had been forced to leave Germany in 1933 and regularly participated in films in his homeland until he had to flee the Nazi persecution in 1939. He was a friend of Curtiz since his days in Budapest. His three sisters died in Nazi concentration camps.

• Curt Bois like the carterist. Bois, a Jewish German actor, was also a refugee. He had begun his career as a child, in 1907 (and would continue to act almost eighty years).

• John Qualen like Berger, character that appears as contact Rick. with the Resistance. Qualen was a Canadian actor who appeared in many John Ford movies.

• Leonid Kinskey like Sascha, who in the movie Rick. As a bodyguard in Yvonne's house. Kinskey, a Russian actor, had fled in his childhood from the Russian Revolution. It is said that it is very likely that it has been selected for this paper Casablanca Because he was Humphrey Bogart's cupmate.

Other notable actors whose credits do not appear in the film include: Marcel Dalio, Helmut Dantine, Norma Varden, Jean Del Val, Torben Meyer, Dan Seymour and Gregory Gaye.

• Marcel Dalio like Emil, the dealer. French actor who had participated in the films The great illusion and The rule of the game Director Jean Renoir. After having fled to the fall of France, he obtained only secondary papers in Hollywood and his role in Casablanca received only $667. In the film he participates in one of the most memorable scenes that explain the exercise of double morality: when Captain Renault closes the "Café de Rick" saying "I am stunned, stepping up to find that there are gambling games in this place!" Emil approaches him and gives him the usual bribe saying: "Your winnings, sir." On the other hand, on 22 June 1942 Dalio divorced Madeleine LeBeau, his second wife, who was also acting in the same film. Later, Dalio participated in another of the films that Bogart would play, Having and not having.

• Helmut Dantine like Jan Brandel, a Bulgarian roulette player. It was another Austrian actor who had been temporarily placed in a concentration camp after the "Anschluss".

• Norma Varden like the English lady whose husband have stolen the wallet. She was a famous English cast actress, who received little papers, almost always without credit, in more than 100 films.

• Jean Del Val as the French police who open Casablanca radio reports the news of the murder of two German messengers carrying two transit letters. It is that character who transmits the order to capture “all the suspect characters”, preying what will be the memorable and often quoted line of “capture the usual suspects”, which the captain will mention.

• Torben Meyer as the German banker sitting on the baccarat table at the "Rick Coffee." He will whisper to Carl, the waiter, the line: "Perhaps if you tell him that I handled the second largest bank in Amsterdam." Meyer was a Danish actor who acted for 50 years in more than 180 films.

• Dan Seymour like Abdul, the doorman. He was an obese American actor (he weighed 120 kilograms) who always received roles as a fat person, becoming more than 60 films for Warner Bros. for 35 years.

• Gregory Gaye like the German banker who is denied entry to the casino Rick.. He is a Russian actor who was exiled in the United States in 1917 after the Revolution and appeared in small papers in more than a hundred films. Along with Kinskey were the only two Russian actors in the film.

• Corinna Mura as the guitarist who sings "Tango Delle Rose" while Laszlo talks to Berger and then accompanies the song of "La Marsellesa".

Much of the film's emotional impact is attributed to the large proportion of European exiles and refugees who participated as extras and in minor roles. An eyewitness to the filming of the "song duel" sequence claimed to have seen many of the actors crying and realized "that they were all actually real refugees". small roles to Casablanca the understanding and desperation that the central actors of the cast could never have provided". The German citizens among them, for example, had to observe the curfew to be considered as enemy aliens. Ironically, moreover, they were almost always required to play Nazi soldiers, from whom they themselves had fled.

Some of the exiled actors who were part of the cast were:

• Wolfgang Zilzer, the actor who appears at the opening scene, had been a silent movie actor in Germany who ended up marrying another of the cast actresses, Lotte Palfi.

• Hans Twardowski like the Nazi officer who argues with a French officer about Yvonne. Twardowski was an actor born in Stettin, a city back then in Germany (now called Szczecin in Poland), who had to flee from Germany for his homosexuality.

• Ludwig Stössel like Mr. Leuchtag, the German refugee that is said in the film that his English «is not very good». Stössel, an Austrian actor, was Jewish and, therefore, after the Anschluss was imprisoned. When he regained his freedom he left his country and moved to England and then to the United States. There it reached fame after a long series of commercials for the vitivinicultors of an Italian-Swiss colony, in which it appeared with an alpine hat and dressed with lederhosen. In such commercials his phrase was “I, the little vitivinicultor!”.

• Ilka Grünig like the lady. Leuchtag. Grünig was born in Vienna (Austria) and was a silent film actress in Germany and was exiled in the United States after the Anschluss.

• Lotte Palfi like the refugee trying to sell her diamonds. Palfi, German Jewish actress, had played roles in a prestigious theatre of Darmstadt (Germany). He was forced to emigrate from his country, for being Jewish, on the arrival of the Nazis to power in 1933. In the United States he married another of the actors CasablancaWolfgang Zilzer.

• Trude Berliner as one of the baccarat players in the "Café de Rick". Berliner, a German actress, had been a famous actress in cabarets and movies. His Jewish religion was also forced to leave his country in 1933.

• Louis V. Arc as one of the refugees in the Rick Café. Arco was Austro-Hungarian but had participated in some films in Germany. In 1933 he preferred to move to his house, where he remained until 1938, when he finally fled to the United States after the Anschluss and changed his name.

• Richard Ryen like Colonel Heinze, Strasser's assistant. Richard Anton Robert Felix was a Hungarian Jewish actor who had acted in films and directed plays in Germany. When fleeing to the United States he changed his name. In Hollywood, he almost always played Nazi officer roles. In Casablanca earned $1,600 ($400 a week for four weeks of filming).

• Barry Norton as one of the card players in the Rick Café. Norton was an actor born in Argentina who made his career in the United States.

Plot

During World War II, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical and embittered American, an expatriate for unknown reasons, manages the most popular nightspot in Casablanca, Morocco, "Rick's Cafe." This is an exclusive place and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele: people from Vichy France, officers from Nazi Germany, political refugees and thieves. Despite the fact that Rick claims to be neutral in all fields, his participation in the illegal arms traffic to Abyssinia —which would have the objective of fighting the Italian invasion of 1935— and in the Spanish civil war, on the side of republican.

One night, a petty criminal named Ugarte (Peter Lorre), arrives at Rick's club carrying some "letters of transit", valuable documents he obtained after murdering two German couriers. These are safe-conducts that allow free transit through Nazi-controlled Europe and even reach neutral Lisbon (Portugal), from which one could leave for the United States. That is why the documents are invaluable to any of the refugees waiting in Casablanca for their chance to escape. Ugarte plans to sell the safe-conducts that night, but before that, Ugarte is arrested by the police under the command of Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), a corrupt Vichy French officer who just wants to please the Nazis in every possible way. Surreptitiously, Ugarte leaves the letters in Rick's care because "somehow, because you despise me, you're the only one I trust."

Scene of the trailer that shows Paul Henreid and Humphrey Bogart talking about the character of Ingrid Bergman, Ilsa.

Meanwhile, the reason for Rick's bitterness comes back into his life. It is about her ex-lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), who had abandoned him in Paris without giving explanations and who, together with her husband Víctor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), enters the Café that night to buy the cards. Laszlo is a renowned leader of the Czech resistance against the Nazis. The couple needs the letters to leave for the United States, from where he could continue his work. The next night, Laszlo, suspecting that Rick has the letters, meets with him, but Rick refuses to give him the laissez-passer, asking him to ask his wife why. (That is, only two people can leave, but at this point there are three people who want it). The dialogue is interrupted when Nazi officers, under the orders of Major Stresser (Conrad Veidt), begin to sing "Die Wacht am Rhein" (The Guard on the Rhine River), a hymn of Nazi Germany. Enraged, Laszlo asks the local band to perform La Marseillaise, the French national anthem until before the occupation. When the bandmaster looks around for Rick, he nods. Laszlo begins to sing, only at first, and soon the much-repressed patriotic fervor takes over the crowd and they all join in the singing, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has the club closed down.

Rick still resents Ilsa, but that night she confronts him after the Café is deserted. When he refuses to give her the documents, she threatens him with a gun but, unable to shoot, confesses that she still loves him, explaining that when she first met and fell in love with him in Paris, she thought her husband had been murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. But as soon as she found out that Laszlo had managed to escape from her,” she continues, “she left Rick without explanation and went back to her husband. She tells him that she pretended to have left town to prevent Rick from staying to look for her and getting captured. Rick changes his attitude when he learns the reason why she left her side and leads her to think that she will stay with him when Laszlo leaves.

Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart stare at one of the most famous kisses in the history of cinema.

Laszlo arrives at the cafe after Ilsa has left and tells Rick that he has realized that "something" is going on between her and Rick. In fact, he tries to provoke Ilsa and Rick into taking the letters of free passage, in order to save her life. However, the police arrive and Laszlo is arrested on a lesser charge. Rick intervenes and convinces Captain Renault to release Laszlo, promising that he will be able to accuse him to the Gestapo of a much more serious crime: possession of the letters. When Renault questions why he is doing this, Rick explains that he and Ilsa are leaving for the United States.

Laszlo later receives Rick's letters, but when Renault tries to arrest him, Rick betrays Renault, forcing him at gunpoint to allow the escape. At the last moment, Rick leads Ilsa to board the plane for Lisbon with her husband telling her that if she stays she will regret it. "Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your days. Rick had promised Ilsa that he would escape with her to Lisbon, however when he forces her to leave with her husband, she complains to him and he tells her one of the most unforgettable phrases in film romance: "We will always have Paris." ».

Major Strasser arrives in his vehicle, tipped off by Renault, but is shot by Rick when he tries to intervene. When the police arrive, Captain Renault saves Rick's life by ordering them to "capture the usual suspects." He recommends that Rick leave Casablanca, even suggesting that he join the Free French in Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo). They walk off into the mist with one of the most memorable final lines in movie history, with Rick telling the captain, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Historical assessment

The film was filmed in August of that year. The time that it recreates, the winter of 1941, was very close to the time in which it was recorded. This makes the fidelity to the historical facts quite wide, something rare in the cinema. We can see this in the relations between the forces of the French state and those of the Third Reich.

For a historical analysis, both in space and time, we must talk about World War II in North Africa: the territory of the French protectorate in Casablanca (Morocco).

The French protectorate of Morocco was located in Morocco during the first half of the 20th century. At the time described, France had just capitulated to Nazi Germany. This meant that the entire territory would be divided: on the one hand, France occupied by the German government, territories on the side of the Atlantic strip and the central-northern zone, and the free zone, with the capital in Vichy extending through the central zone. southern and Mediterranean area. Although it was independent, there would be a high collaboration of these territories with the Nazi government. All the colonies, including the French protectorate, remained under the rule of the Vichy capital until the arrival of the Americans.

The French part of the protectorate of Morocco, had the most important economy and the most populous. This was because it had the economic and demographic center in the city of Casablanca itself. This constant transfer of people would make it the perfect place for clandestine meetings, like the one in the movie. In the early part of the second world war, in which the future of the protectorate was in question due to the great expansion of the German army. In North Africa, Rommel's Afrika Korps was still an obvious threat to control of the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. Whereas in Europe the army had to rush south from Russia.

Another noteworthy event in relation to space and time would have to be the “Naval Battle of Casablanca”. This offense involved a series of encounters between American forces and the Vichy French-controlled protectorate between November 8 and 17, 1942. In 1942, American leaders agreed to make landings in northwestern Africa with the idea of eliminating the influence of the Axis troops on the continent. This is done with the idea of opening the way for the attack in southern Europe. According to Allied calculations, they anticipated that the Vichy French forces defending the area numbered 120,000 men, 500 aircraft and several ships. The main idea required a landing in the territories of Casablanca, Oran and Algiers. This would be beneficial for the German front, because this time given by the transfer of troops from Casablanca to Tunisia allowed the Germans to improve their defensive positions in Tunisia.

To defend Casablanca, the Vichy forces had the Jean Bart battleship which served the quad-15'' turret. At midnight on November 8, the American ships moved toward the Casablanca coast. So they began landing Patton's men. Coming out into the sun, the fire from the batteries became more intense, so Hewitt ordered four destroyers to take cover. They managed to silence the French guns.

Following that attack, Michelier ordered the rise of five submarines that morning along with a series of French fighters. A major clash ensued, both sides suffered losses. American planes attacked the port, causing the loss of French submarines and merchant ships. At around 9:00 AM, several destroyers surfaced and began sailing towards the American fleet. On November 10, the two French minesweepers left Casablanca with the aim of shelling American troops advancing on the city. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the SBD Dauntless with a series of bombardments will arrive to attack the battleship. Over the next several days, Hewitt lost four troopships and around 150 landing craft. On the French side, they totaled one light cruiser, four destroyers and five submarines. Taken Casablanca, the city became a key Allied base for the war. Later, in 1943, it would be the venue for the Casablanca Conference between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Filming locations

• Flagstaff, Arizona, United States.
• Metropolitan Airport - 6590 Hayvenhurst Avenue, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, United States.
• Van Nuys Airport - 6590 Hayvenhurst Avenue, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, United States.
• Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, United States (study).
• Waterman Drive, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, United States (at the airport).

Reception

The film was shown for the first time at the Hollywood Theater in New York on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied troops' invasion of the North African coast and the capture of the city of Casablanca. The general premiere was a little later, on January 23, 1943, to take advantage of the Anglo-American Summit, a high-level conference between Churchill and Roosevelt that took place at the Anfa Hotel, in the city of Casablanca. The film achieved substantial, if unspectacular financial results, grossing $3.7 million upon its US release. Critical reaction was generally positive, with Variety magazine describing it as as "splendid anti-Axis propaganda"; as Koch would later say, "it was a film that audiences needed... it had values... sacrifices worth making. And it showed it in a very entertaining way." Other magazines were less enthusiastic. The New Yorker rated it only as "barely tolerable". The United States Office of War Information prevented its screening for troops in North Africa, believing the film would cause resentment among Vichy supporters in the region.

The film has maintained its popularity. Murray Burnett has called it "true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow." By 1955, it had grossed $6.8 million, third among Warner Bros.' most profitable war films, behind only Shine On, Harvest Moon and This Is the Army. It soon began its journey in the memory of moviegoers. On April 21, 1957, the Brattle Theater in Cambridge (United States) exhibited it as part of the repertoire of the old film cycle. The inclusion was so popular that it began the tradition of displaying Casablanca during final exam week at Harvard University, a tradition that has continued to this day, imitated at many other colleges across the United States. Todd Gitlin, professor of sociology, after attending one of the showings, stated that it was "performing my very personal rite of passage". Tradition has helped the film remain in popular memory while the memory of other famous films from the same decade has faded, so that by 1977 Casablanca was the most widely broadcast movie on American television.

Be that as it may, there is anecdotal evidence that Casablanca has made more of an impression among moviegoers than among professionals in the film industry. Between November and December 1982, freelance writer and journalist Chuck Ross wondered: could Hollywood agents be able to recognize the tape? Or, failing that, could they at least recognize it as a great script? In order to find out, Chuck Ross wrote the same script for Casablanca but using the title Everybody Comes to Rick's Cafe (the original title of the play) and changing the name of the pianist from Sam to Dooley (Dooley Wilson had been the actor playing this character in the film) and sent it to 217 agencies passing it off as the script by an unknown writer, one Erik Demos. 97 agencies returned it unread, 7 never read it, and 18 copies would have been reported lost in the mail. Of the 85 agencies that read it, 38 disqualified it, 33 generally recognized it (of which 8 didn't even realize it was Casablanca), 3 declared it financially viable, and one suggested sending it to another agency for its transformation into a novel.

Awards and nominations

Oscar Awards

At the 1943 Academy Awards (delivered on March 2, 1944), Casablanca won three awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, and was nominated for five others (not won). Wallis, the producer, resented Studio President Jack Warner collecting the award instead of him; this slight triggered Wallis's rupture with the studio in April of that year.

Other acknowledgments

Other acknowledgments that the film has received are the inscription in the National Film Registry, a classification list that includes the best films in history, and the nomination for the high quality of its DVD edition to the DVD Exclusive Awards.

Casablanca is preserved in the Library of Congress archive.

• In 1989, Casablanca was selected by the National Film Registry to be preserved at the U.S. Congress Library, for being "cultural, historical or aesthetically significant".

• In 1997, the American Film Institute, after consulting 1500 experts from U.S. cinematography, placed the Casablanca in their lists as the second best American movie of all time behind just Citizen Kane. This status was ratified in the review that the Institute did in 2007, when it was placed in third place.

• In 2003, she was nominated at the DVD Exclusive Awards.

Category	Reason	Outcome
DVDX Award	60th Anniversary Special Edition	Candidate

• In 2005, she was rated as one of the 100 greatest films of the last 80 years by the magazine's website Time (the selected films are not placed in a specific order).

• In 2006, the west section of the Writers Guild of America trade union, grouping film and television writers as well as television and radio employees, chose the script Casablanca as the “best of all time” on its list of The 101 best scripts.

Critics' response

According to Roger Ebert, Casablanca is "likely to be on more 'great films of all time' lists than any other title, including Citizen Kane », because its appeal is very broad; while Citizen Kane is "great", Casablanca is adorable. One has never heard, Ebert continues, a negative review of the film, even though some specific points may be criticized as, for example, the implausible special effects and the stuffy performance of Laszlo's character. Rudy Behlmer emphasizes the great picture that is drawn: "It is a mixture of drama, melodrama, comedy and intrigue."

Casablanca It's the favorite movie by critic Leonard Maltin.

Leonard Maltin calls this his favorite movie of all time.

Ebert comments that the film is popular because "the people in it are so good." Considering that he is a resistance hero, Laszlo is conspicuously the noblest of all, and that is despite the fact that his character is so boxy that it can be hard to believe. The other characters are not, according to Behlmer, "made of one once forever": his good heart is revealed throughout the plot. Renault is an exemplary case. In the story he begins as a collaborator with the Nazis, extorting refugees in exchange for sexual favors and killing Ugarte. Rick, according to Behlmer himself, is "neither a hero... nor a villain": he does the bare minimum to make his life in front of the authorities and "doesn't risk himself for anyone." Even Ilsa, the least active of the main characters, finds herself "stuck in emotional difficulties" as she wonders which man she really loves. At the end of the film, however, "everyone sacrifices themselves".

A discordant note comes from the pen of Italian writer Umberto Eco, stating that "from a strictly critical point of view... Casablanca is a very mediocre film." Eco objects that the changes in the characters occur inconsistently, rather than as a result of a complex process: "It is a comic strip, a sancocho, lacking in psychological credibility and with little continuity in terms of dramatic effects." In any case, he concludes, it is this inconsistency that makes the film so accepted, since it allows it to include a long series of archetypes: unhappy love, flight, the rite of passage, waiting, desire, the triumph of purity, the faithful servant, the love triangle, beauty and the beast, the enigmatic woman, the ambiguous adventurer and the redeemed drunkard. It focuses primarily on the idea of sacrifice: "The myth of sacrifice runs through the entire plot of the film." This was the theme that resonated with a wartime audience who had been reassured that the sacrifice that hurts and continuing an armed struggle can be romantic gestures that would be worthwhile for the greater good.

The American critic Jonathan Rosenbaum refers to Casablanca as a "hastily assembled" film, and considers it inferior to To Have and Have Not (1944). For his part, the French critic Georges Sadoul does not even mention this film in his Dictionnaire des films, Seuil, 1965 (First Edition).

Proposals for interpretation keys

Critics have looked at Casablanca from many different perspectives.

Harvey Greenberg gives a Freudian reading of the tape according to which the transgressions that prevent Rick from returning to the United States are due to an Oedipus complex, which is only resolved when Rick begins to identify with his father in the figure of Laszlo and the cause he represents.

Sidney Rosenzweig answers these interpretive proposals by saying that they are reductive readings and that the most important aspect of the film is ambiguity, especially in Rick; for this he cites the different names each character gives Rick (Richard, Ricky, Mr. Rick, Herr Blaine and so on) as evidence of the many meanings he has for each person.

Famous quotes and phrases

Many of the lines from the Casablanca script have stuck with moviegoers around the world. Among these we can count the following.

• "Take it again, Sam"Play it again, Sam», in English. This is one of the phrases most widely associated with the film and yet it is actually a wrong quote, which is actually the original title of the film Dreams of a seductiveWoody Allen (1972). In Casablanca, being Ilsa for the first time in the coffee, he realizes that there is Sam, the pianist, and asks him: “Take it once, Sam, in memory of the old days” (“Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake», in English. Then he pretends to ignore her and she commands her: "Take it, Sam. Toca As time passes» («Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By », in English. Later that night, when Rick and Sam were alone, Rick asked her to touch her again: "You touched her for her and you can touch her for me" («You played it for her and you can play it for me"If she can stand it, I can! Play it!" and "If she can stand it, I can! Play it!"

• «This is for you, doll» («Here's looking at you, kid», in English. This is a phrase that Rick tells Ilsa and was not in the preliminary scripts. His appearance in the film has been attributed to the poker lessons that Bogart gave Bergman between take and take.

It was chosen by American experts as the fifth most memorable phrase in the history of cinema in that country in a survey carried out in 2005 by the American Film Institute.

A total of six sentences from this film, according to the Institute, appear on its lists as the most cited film lines in the United States, many more than any other film, for example more than Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, which have only three sentences each. The other quotes that appear in the lists are:

• «Louis, I think this is the beginning of a great friendship» («Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship», in English), with position 20;
• "Take it, Sam. Touch 'As time passes'" («Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'», in English) in place 28;
• “Capture the Suspects of Always” (“Round up the usual suspects», in English), in position 32;
• «We will always stay Paris» («We'll always have Paris», in English) in place 43;
• «From all the bars in all the towns around the world, she enters mine» («Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine», in English) at position 67.

Another phrase worth mentioning would be that of Rick remembering the day they met in Paris:

• «The Germans were gray and you were dressed in blue» («The Germans wore gray. You wore blue», in the original in English.

Censorship attempts and dubbing errors

The main character fought on the republican side in the Spanish civil war but in the first Spanish dubbing this reference was removed due to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, since the premiere was in 1946. The same happens with the reference to combat in Abyssinia against the fascist troops. In later dubbings, mention was made of Rick's activity with the Second Republic and with Abyssinia. In this regard, there are three different dubbings of the film into Spanish: the original, another from 1966 and another from 1983. The best-known dubbing is full of translation errors and causes, among other things, that the phrase «Here's looking at you, kid", which, as already mentioned, would ultimately be considered one of the best in the history of cinema. A scene in which French soldiers respond by singing La Marseillaise to Nazi soldiers was also censored.

Sequels and other versions

From the moment Casablanca was a success, talk began about producing a sequel. In fact, a movie called Brazzaville (after the name of the city to which Captain Renault recommends Rick to flee in the final scene of Casablanca) was planned. but this was never done. After this attempt and since then, no studio has ever seriously considered filming a sequel or a remake. In fact, French director François Truffaut turned down the invitation to create a remake in 1974, citing the film's already cult status among American students as the main reason for his refusal.

The novel As time goes by (As Time Goes By, in English, using the same title as the main song of Casablanca), written by Michael Walsh in 1998, was licensed by Warner to use that title. The play picks up right where the film left off and even tells the story of Rick's mysterious past in the United States. Be that as it may, the book did not achieve fame.

Earlier, David Thomson had written an unauthorized sequel to his 1985 novel Suspects.

There were also two short-lived television series based on Casablanca. They were actually prequels. The first was broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1956 and included among its cast Charles McGraw as Rick and Marcel Dalio himself (who had played Emil in the film), but now playing Captain Renault. This series was part of the episodes that were broadcast in the space of the programming entitled Warner Bros. Presents, in 10 programs lasting one hour each.

The other television series aired briefly on NBC in just 5 hour-long episodes in 1983 and starred David Soul as Rick, Ray Liotta as Sacha, and Scatman Crothers in a similar role to Sam.

Various adaptations of Casablanca have been recorded for radio. Two of the most popular were: one, the 30-minute adaptation for The Screen Guild Theater of April 26, 1943, starring Bogart, Bergman and Henreid; the other was the one-hour version for the Lux Radio Theater on January 24, 1944, which featured Alan Ladd as Rick, Hedy Lamarr as Ilsa, and John Loder as Laszlo.

Other adaptations for radio have included: the Philip Morris Playhouse version on September 3, 1943 and a version of the same length for Theater of Romance on December 19 1944, with Dooley Wilson as Sam.

Julius Epstein twice tried to turn it into a Broadway musical, in 1951 and 1967, but it was never staged. Instead, the original play, Everybody Comes to Rick's Cafe (Everybody Comes to Rick's, in English), was produced in Newport (United States) in August 1946 and later taken to London in April 1991. Despite the effort, the work it was unsuccessful.

The film was colorized for television in the 1980s, but the result was controversial. This version was even made available for sale, but only for a short time due to opposition among purists. Bogart's son, Stephen, noted that "if you're going to color Casablanca, why don't you put arms on the Venus de Milo?"

The Rick's Cafe Americain was an imaginary cabaret, but today, the Rick's cafe in Casablanca, Morocco, exists and It is decorated like the one in the movie.

Mistakes

The film has several logical flaws, the most notorious of which is about the "transit letters" that would allow bearers to leave the territory of Vichy France. It is not clear if Ugarte says the letters have been signed by Vichy French Army General Maxime Weygand or by General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French. Part of the confusion stems from the difference between what is written and what is said. The audio clearly mentions: "De Gaulle" and the English subtitles on the official DVD write: "De Gaulle". But the French version writes "Weygand." Weygand had been Vichy's general delegate for the North African colonies until a month before the film's production date. Instead, de Gaulle was at the time at the head of the Free French government and was the enemy of the Vichy regime (which controlled Morocco). In fact, a court-martial convicted De Gaulle on August 2, 1940 of treason in absentia and sentenced him to serve his sentence in prison. Relations between the two enemy sides being thus, it seems illogical that a letter signed by de Gaulle produced any benefit. In a true MacGuffin case, free transit letters were invented by Joan Allison for the original play and therefore its viability in real life was never questioned. Furthermore, even in the tape itself, Rick suggests to Renault that the letters would not allow Ilsa to leave, leaving only Laszlo: "People have been held in Casablanca for despite their legal rights.

Also, although Laszlo asserts that the Nazis cannot arrest him because “this is still unoccupied France; any violation of neutrality would be projected onto Captain Renault", Ebert points out that "it doesn't make sense that he could walk around freely... He would have been arrested as soon as he was seen". Given this, others, such as Harmetz, suggest that Strasser actually knowingly allows Laszlo to move freely, with the intention that he release the names of the Resistance leaders in occupied Europe in exchange for Ilsa being allowed to leave for Lisbon.

Among the errors is also a wrong version of the flag of French Morocco. Renault claims it was "with them [the Americans] when they 'botched' Berlin in 1918," but the German capital was not taken in World War I, any more than any uniformed German troops set foot in Casablanca during World War II. World War.

There are many who affirm that the city described was actually the international and cosmopolitan Tangier.

There were also unavoidable continuity errors. For example, in the scene where Rick leaves Paris on the train. There it is clearly appreciated that his coat is soaked by the abundant rain; but as soon as he sets foot on the train suddenly he appears dry. Curtiz's attitude to these details was simple: he said "I make it go so fast that nobody notices."

Rumors

Numerous rumors and stories have been woven around the tape.

It was even claimed that then-actor Ronald Reagan had originally been cast in the role of Rick Blaine. This rumor was born early, during one of the exhibitions that the studio gave to the press when the film was still in development, but by that time the studio already knew that Reagan was committed to the United States Air Force and was never taken into account. account.

Another of the famous rumors about the film is one that states that the actors did not know until the last day of filming how the story would end. In fact, the original play (which for technical reasons takes place entirely inside the cafe) ended with Rick sending Ilsa and Victor off to the airport. The option of having Laszlo die in Casablanca was discussed during the adaptation of the script, which would have allowed Rick and Ilsa to fly together, but—as Casey Robinson wrote to Hal Wallis prior to the start of filming—the end of the story "It's done so that there's a timely twist at the moment when Rick sends her on the plane with Victor. So like that, by doing that, you're not just resolving the love triangle. He is forcing the girl to live up to the idealism of her nature, forcing her to carry the weight of a job that these days is more important than the love between two insignificant people ». It would certainly have been impossible to present an Ilsa leaving Laszlo for Rick, since the 1930 American film production code forbade showing a woman leaving her husband for another man. The dispute as such was not, therefore, about whether Ilsa would go with Laszlo, but about how this solution could be presented in the script. So it is possible that the rumor spread from a statement by Ingrid Bergman in which She said that she didn't know which man to fall in love with. However, since the script is rewritten throughout filming, Aljean Harmetz's review concludes that many of the key scenes had already been filmed when Bergman made the comment, and that he already knew how the film would end: for Therefore, the confusion was, if anything, "emotional" and not "factual".

Premieres

• November 1942 in New York, United States.
• January 1943 in Los Angeles, United States.