Casablanca

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Kristi M. Wilson

The script for Casablanca (1942), one of the most successful films of all time, arrived at the Warner Brothers Studio the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1941. Timing is just one of the many reasons why this legendary film about patriotism, love, exile, and sabotage is often referred to as the happy result of a series of accidents. If the studio had carried out its original plans to cast Ronald Reagan as Rick Blaine or Ella Fitzgerald as Sam, now infamous lines and lyrics like "Here's lookin' at you, kid" and "As Time Goes By" may never have attained the same powerful significance they have had for generations of movie fans. Set in French Morocco during WWII, Casablanca was directed by Michael Curtiz and starred Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Conrad Veidt. Based loosely on a play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's, Casablanca profiles the life of Rick Blaine (Bogart), an embittered nightclub owner with a broken heart and a checkered past. Blaine is exiled in Casablanca as a result of the Nazi invasion in Europe. His elegant casino/bar, Café Americain, is the unofficial meeting point for war refugees attempting to purchase exit visas on the black market to reach the United States. Rick's life comes to a halt when when his long lost love, Ilsa (Bergman) comes into town in search of exit papers for herself and her husband, famed resistance fighter Victor Laszlo (Henreid).

This comparatively low-budget, romance/adventure film was recognized as a masterpiece from the beginning. Casablanca won several Oscars at the 1943 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing. The film also received nominations for Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Music of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Some critics attribute the timeless freshness of the movie's dialogue to the fact that nobody working on the film, including the scriptwriters, knew how the film would turn out until the last minute. In spite of the relatively low-budget of the film, playwrights Murray Burnett and Joan Alison were offered the highest fee ever paid for an unproduced play--$20,000--for Everybody Comes to Rick's.

Filmed almost entirely in the Warner Brothers soundstage in Burbank, Casablanca is one of the most popular films of all time. In 1973, a Los Angeles Times headline announced that Casablanca was ranked as Warner Brothers' most popular film in fifty years. The runners-up in this public poll were The Maltese Falcon (1941), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948). In 1977, the American Film Institute disclosed its list of the best American films of all time before President Carter and a television audience at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Casablanca came in third place, behind Gone With the Wind (1939) and Citizen Kane (1941).

The film's director, Michael Curtiz, was born Mihaly Kertesz in Hungary. Curtiz came to Warner Brothers from Austria in 1926, having already made 62 silent pictures, and went on to become one of the studio's top money-earners. Between the period of 1930 and 1940 alone, he directed 45 talking films ranging in genre from horror to westerns to gangster films. Curtiz's Mission to Moscow (1943) was listed in the FBI's "Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry" file as a source of Communistic propaganda. Though Jack Warner defended the film while it was in production in a letter to Ambassador Davies, his later humiliation and fear as a result of making the movie have been attributed to his readiness to turn dozens of employees over to the House Committee on Un-American Activites (HUAC) in 1947.

Given the fact that most Americans resisted the idea of U.S. involvement in the war in Europe at the time during which Casablanca was set, Jack Warner has been viewed as having declared war on Germany early, not only with Casablanca, but with earlier films like Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Underground (1941). Of all the Hollywood moguls at the beginning of the war, Harry and Jack Warner were anti-Nazi at a time when opposition to Hitler was far from common. In July 1934, Warner Brothers became the first studio to close down operations and leave Germany. MGM, Fox, and Paramount, by contrast, continued to operate in Germany up to 1939. Between the period of 1942 and 1945, Hollywood produced 500 features films which dealt with war subjects directly and were designed to foster the nation's support for the Allied war effort.

One of the more popular interpretations of Casablanca's success posits that it is a political movie centered around resistance to fascism. A 1942 Motion Picture Herald article portrayed the film as a tribute to the occupied people of France. Its opening night performance in New York was sponsored by the organizations "France Forever" and "Free French War Relief." A French delegation of Foreign Legionnaires, recently returned from battle, as well as leaders from the DeGaulle movement, marched in a parade from Fifth Avenue to the opening of the film at the Hollywood Theater. The political film interpretation focuses on the anti-fascist aspects of Casablanca and places importance on Ingrid Bergman's character and her relationship to fascism.