Actors - Casablanca

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	Actors - Casablanca

Casablanca is a 1942 film set during World War II in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. It focuses on Rick's conflict between, in the words of one character, love and virtue: he must choose between his love for Ilsa and his need to do the right thing by helping her husband, Resistance hero Victor Laszlo, escape from Casablanca and continue his fight against the Nazis.

The film was an immediate hit, and it has remained consistently popular ever since. Critics have praised the charismatic performances of Bogart and Bergman, the chemistry between the two leads, the depth of characterisation, the taut direction, the witty screenplay and the emotional impact of the work as a whole.

Plot

Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, the owner of an upscale cafe/bar/gambling den in the Moroccan city of Casablanca which attracts a mixed clientele of Vichy French and Nazi officials, refugees and thieves. Rick is a bitter and cynical man, but still displays a clear dislike for the fascist part of his clientele.

A petty crook, Guillermo Ugarte (Peter Lorre), arrives in Rick's club with "letters of transit" he has obtained by killing some German couriers. The papers are signed by a French general (the pronunciation is muffled, it may be Charles de Gaulle or Maxime Weygand), and allow the bearer to travel at will around Nazi-controlled Europe, including to neutral Lisbon, Portugal, and from there to the United States. These papers 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, he is killed trying to evade the local police, under the command of Rick's close friend Captain Renault (Claude Rains). As a corrupt Vichy official, Renault accommodates the Nazis, but remains ambivalent about their influence in Casablanca. Unbeknownst to either Renault or the Nazis, Ugarte had left the letters with Rick for safekeeping.

At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover, Ilsa Lund (Bergman) arrives with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Henreid), to purchase the letters. Laszlo is an important Resistance leader from Czechoslovakia with a huge price on his head, and they must have the letters to escape. At the time Ilsa first met and fell in love with Rick in Paris, she believed her husband had been killed by the Nazis. When she discovered that Laszlo was in fact alive, she left Rick abruptly without explanation and returned to Laszlo, leaving Rick to feel betrayed.

The trio's awkward conversation is interrupted when a group of German officers, led by the Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt), begin to sing the Wacht am Rhein, a German patriotic song from the nineteenth century (the producers wanted to use the Nazi Horst Wessel Lied, but it was copyrighted by a German publisher). Laszlo tells the house band to play La Marseillaise. The French customers join in and drown out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser orders Renault to close the club.

Despite initially refusing to give the documents to Ilsa, even at gunpoint, Rick eventually decides to help Laszlo. He and Ilsa reaffirm their love for each other and she believes that she will stay with Rick when Laszlo leaves. Captain Renault is forced to assist in the escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa get on the plane with Laszlo, telling her that she would regret it later if she didn't. Rick shoots Major Strasser when he tries to intervene. When the police arrive, Renault saves his life by telling them to "round up the usual suspects". He then suggests that they both go join the Free French. They disappear into the fog with one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Production

The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's. The story analyst at Warner Brothers who read the play called it (approvingly) "sophisticated hokum", and it was agreed to buy the rights for $20,000. The project was renamed Casablanca, apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit Algiers
. Shooting began on May 25, 1942 and was completed on August 3. The entire film was shot in the studio, except for the sequence showing the arrival of Major Strasser (filmed at Van Nuys Airport). The street used for the exterior shots had recently been built for another film, The Desert Song
, and was redecorated and used again in Casablanca for the Paris flashbacks. It remained on the Warners backlot until the 1960s. The set for Rick's cafe was built in three unconnected parts, so the internal geography of the building is indeterminate, and in a number of scenes the camera looks through a wall from the cafe area into Rick's office. The final scene includes midget extras as aircraft personnel walking around a model cardboard plane, because of budgetary and wartime rationing constraints. The fog in the scene was there to mask the unconvincing appearance of the plane. Bergman's height caused some problems: she was somewhat taller than Bogart, so in their scenes together he sometimes had to be put on boxes or cushions.

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Actors - Casablanca

Plot

Production

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