Casablanca

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Film Description

The dialogue, characters and Rick's 'Café Americain' setting are the stuff of legend. Decades after it was made all the cinematic elements that make this an unbeatable classic are just as seductive and entertaining as they always were.

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DVD Extras

Trailer, featurette.

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Review by Andrew Hoellering on 3rd April 2006

What is the perennial appeal of Michael Curtiz’s magical film?

Screenwriter Howard Koch says that none of those involved even suspected Casablanca would have an illustrious future, for this hardiest of Hollywood perennials had a precarious origin.

Julius and Philip Epstein improvised the semblance of a story to get Selznick to agree to loan Ingrid Bergman to Warner.

Koch was assigned to write the film with shooting only six weeks away He spent a day gazing out of the studio window, then wrote “fade in.”

The Epsteins provided incidents that evoked the time, place and situation –there was little to choose between the Vichy authorities who enforced the laws and the criminals who made a living by breaking them. Everything could be bought and sold –currency, jewels, visas, girls, with the atmosphere of corruption as pervasive as that of the war.

When shooting started there were 65 pages of script and tensions were building.Scenes were written on the morning they were to be shot. Many contributed ideas. Curtiz: “Don’t worry what’s logical. I make it go so fast nobody notices.”The tug of war between Curtiz (romantic interest) and Koch( character and political intregues) balanced and pays off.

Most of the tension derives from dangers implicit in the tightly structured situations,dialogue and ideas(the three scenes with gunplay are brief and understated.)

Koch picked Peter Lorre (Ugate) to initiate the action.Because two German couriers have been killed and to impress Strasser (Conrad Veidt) Renault makes a big show of arresting Ugarte. Koch wrote that he deliberately played down the violence as it was not unusual in wartime. Strasser must be in Casablanca for a reason, so Koch invented Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) the crusading leader of Europe’s anti-Nazis.

Where does Rick, the hero who defies officialdom, stand at this point?”I stick my neck out for nobody,”Bogart declares.Questioned about his presence, he informs the police, “I came to Casablanca for the waters.” ”But there are not waters in Casablanca.””I was misinformed.” The dialogue alone has made the film famous.

Koch plants a woman(lovely Ingrid Bergman) with whom Rick had an affair in Paris, with Laszlo.

Forty pages of script with two weeks to go. In place were the bad guys, the good guy, and Rick and Renault in an equivocal position in between –two professional cynics only out for themselves. How would Rick react when forced to choose between his own interests and sympathies, especially with Ilse complicating the choice?

Bergman’s question to Koch, “how do I play the love scene when I don’t know whether I am going to end up with Rick or Laszlo?" is understandable. Koch couldn’t make up his mind, and the uncertainty marks the last scene of the film.

Koch mentions the devotion the film continues to inspire as helping us understand its place in film history.Without such a passionate following it would surely have been forgotten - suggesting that a film is only as good as the loyalty it attracts.

View more reviews by Andrew Hoellering

Review by Barry Forshaw on 26th April 2004

An unmissable, extras-packed 2-DVD set of everyone’s favourite movie from Hollywood’s classic era – the deluxe treatment indeed for Bogart and Bergman.

View more reviews by Barry Forshaw

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Article - "23 Must-See Films" by John Davies
Thursday 1st January 2004

23. PIERROT LE FOU (GODARD, 1965)


A delight for intellectuals, hedonists and video store film geeks-turned-director alike, here's the quintessential Godard; less famous than the groundbreaking Breathless, less masterfully controlled than...  View article in full

Article - "In praise of supporting actors" by James Oliver
Friday 9th March 2007

Supporting actors seldom get their due. Oh, there are all those awards – Best Supporting so-and-so – but those are usually reserved for stars who’ve taken a pay cut and reduced billing to show – look! – they can act too! The real supporting actors – the charac...  View article in full

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This film is part of the following Film Collections

Academy Award Best Picture Winners

Including: A Man For All Seasons, All About Eve, All Quiet On The Western Front (1930), All The Kings Men, Amadeus, American Beauty, An American In Paris, Annie Hall, Around The World In Eighty Days, Ben Hur.

Classic Romances

Including: A Matter of Life and Death , An Affair To Remember, An American In Paris, Breakfast at Tiffanys, Brief Encounter (Lean, 1945), Carousel, Casablanca, Doctor Zhivago, Full Moon In Paris, Gone With The Wind.

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Leslie Halliwell was one of the most authoritative of film critics and a new edition of the film bible lists the Top 1000 movies of all time. Here we list the Top 100, all of which are undoubted classics that stand up to repeated viewings and which are testament to the brilliance that cinema can achieve.

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Many of this list are about violence. Violence is natural and has its uses, but it is mostly stupid.

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