CASABLANCA DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CURTIZ 1942

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS Won Best Picture Won Best Director - Curtiz Won Best Screenplay –Julius & Phillip Epsein, Howard Koch Best Actor - Humphrey Bogart Best Supporting Actor - Claude Rains Best B & W Cinematography Best Editing Best Musical Score

THEMES *Lost love *Honor and duty *Self-sacrifice *Romance within a chaotic world

BACKGROUND The film is set in Casablanca, Morocco, just before the beginning of America’s involvement in WWII. Many Americans believed in strict Isolationism, wishing to stay out of “Europe’s war.” Rick’s line, “I stick my neck out for nobody” echoes this mindset, but we also see that Rick has a nobility that leads him to assist those in need and to do the right thing.

Casablanca is controlled by the Vichy French, a government that has been supportive of the Nazis, mostly due to self-preservation. We see that the Vichy are really puppets for the Nazis, in that it is truly Strasser, not Renault, who controls Casablanca. The French Resistance are the Gaullists, or supporters of Charles de Gaulle. President Roosevelt wavered between which group he support prior to U.S. Involvement in the war.

HOLLYWOOD STYLE Casablanca is often looked at as the quintessential example of the Hollywood Style.

In the early years of World War II, the Moroccan city of Casablanca attracts people from all over. Many are transients trying to get out of Europe; a few are just trying to make a buck. Most of them -- gamblers and refugees, Nazis, resistance fighters, and plain old crooks -- find their way to Rick's Café Américain, a swank nightclub owned by American expatriate Rick Blaine. Though we learn later that Rick once harbored enough idealism to put himself at risk to fight facism, he's now embittered and cynical, professing to be neutral in all matters. PLOT INTRODUCTION

Ugarte comes to Rick's with letters of transit he obtained by killing two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German- controlled Europe, including to neutral Lisbon, Portugal; from Lisbon, it's relatively easy to get to the United States. They are almost priceless to any of the refugees 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, Ugarte is arrested by the police under the command of Captain Louis Renault. A corrupt Vichy official, Renault accommodates the Nazis. Unbeknownst to Renault and the Nazis, Ugarte had left the letters with Rick for safekeeping, because "...somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust."

At this point the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. Ilsa Lund arrives with her husband Victor Laszlo to purchase the letters. Laszlo is a renowned Czech Resistance leader who has escaped from a Nazi concentration camp. They must have the letters to escape to America to continue his work. At the time Ilsa first met and fell in love with Rick in Paris, she believed her husband had been killed. When she discovered that he was still alive, she left Rick abruptly without explanation and returned to Laszlo, leaving Rick feeling betrayed.

The script was written from day to day as the filming progressed, and no one knew how the film would end - who would use the two exit visas? Would Ilsa, Rick's lover from a past romance in Paris, depart with him or leave with her husband Victor, the leader of the underground resistance movement? Bergman's face reflects confusing emotions. And well she might have been confused, since neither she nor anyone else on the film knew for sure until the final day who would get on the plane. Bergman played the whole movie without knowing how it would end, and this had the subtle effect of making all of her scenes more emotionally convincing. TRIVIA

The movie, much like the setting of Casablanca, was a real international melting pot, with 34 nationalities represented by the actors and crew. TRIVIA

CASABLANCA