Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Beidt, Sydney Green Street and Peter Lorre. Set during World War II, 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 Resistance leader husband escape from the Vichy- controlled from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.
Review:
Bogart is wonderful as the mysterious café owner with a past, set up in the nightclub business with his long time friend and piano player, Sam (Dooley Wilson). As we meet his employees, we see Rick’s not quite the cynic he pretends to be. All are clearly refugees under his protection. The emotional Russian bartender, the polished French croupier, the grandfatherly German waiter and Sam at the keyboard make Rick’s café the only place to be.
His haven is disrupted when his one-time love Ilsa (the luminous Ingrid Bergman) arrives in the company of a world-renowned resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), whom the Nazis would very much like to get their hands on. She’s looking for safe passage, first from Rick, who believes she jilted him for Laszlo, and then from the marvelously sinister Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari, owner of the rival Blue Parrot club.
Claude Rains nearly steals the movie as Captain Renault, the deliciously corrupt prefect of police, who accepts money and the favors of especially lovely refugees to arrange escapes. Peter Lorre(Ugarte) runs a cut-rate smuggling trade, and Conrad veidt is a first-rate Nazi villain.
Bogart and Bergman shine in their only screen pairing, but it’s the flawless direction and ensemble cast that make this movie, from the nameless pickpocket in the opening sequence to the elderly Jewish couple earnestly fracturing English phrases as they prepare for the passage to America. With a few spare lines of dialog, a glimpsed gesture, a few moments on screen, all the characters are fully sketched, and Rick’s café seems very real.
Bogart is wonderful as the mysterious café owner with a past, set up in the nightclub business with his long time friend and piano player, Sam (Dooley Wilson). As we meet his employees, we see Rick’s not quite the cynic he pretends to be. All are clearly refugees under his protection. The emotional Russian bartender, the polished French croupier, the grandfatherly German waiter and Sam at the keyboard make Rick’s café the only place to be.
His haven is disrupted when his one-time love Ilsa (the luminous Ingrid Bergman) arrives in the company of a world-renowned resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), whom the Nazis would very much like to get their hands on. She’s looking for safe passage, first from Rick, who believes she jilted him for Laszlo, and then from the marvelously sinister Sydney Greenstreet as Signor Ferrari, owner of the rival Blue Parrot club.
Claude Rains nearly steals the movie as Captain Renault, the deliciously corrupt prefect of police, who accepts money and the favors of especially lovely refugees to arrange escapes. Peter Lorre(Ugarte) runs a cut-rate smuggling trade, and Conrad veidt is a first-rate Nazi villain.
Bogart and Bergman shine in their only screen pairing, but it’s the flawless direction and ensemble cast that make this movie, from the nameless pickpocket in the opening sequence to the elderly Jewish couple earnestly fracturing English phrases as they prepare for the passage to America. With a few spare lines of dialog, a glimpsed gesture, a few moments on screen, all the characters are fully sketched, and Rick’s café seems very real.
Cast:
Cast: Humphrey Bogard,
Ingrid Bergman,
Paul Henreid,
Claude Rains,
Conrad Veidt,
Sydney Greenstreet,
Peter Lorre,
Dooley Wilson
Cast: Humphrey Bogard,
Ingrid Bergman,
Paul Henreid,
Claude Rains,
Conrad Veidt,
Sydney Greenstreet,
Peter Lorre,
Dooley Wilson
Director: Michael Curtiz
Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch based on the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Music: Max Steiner
U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
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