Casablanca (1942): The Masterpiece Nobody Knew They Were Making

Here is the strangest thing about the most beloved movie Hollywood ever produced: nobody making it thought it was special. Roger Ebert put it plainly in his Great Movies essay. Casablanca was "simply another Warner Bros. release," an A-list picture, sure, but one made on a tight budget and sent out with modest expectations. The script was still being written while the cameras rolled. The ending wasn't settled until shooting was nearly over. The leading lady didn't know which man her character loved.

And yet, more than eighty years later, people who have never seen it can quote it. "Here's looking at you, kid." "Round up the usual suspects." "We'll always have Paris." If you've only absorbed Casablanca through parody and pop culture, the real thing will surprise you. It's quicker, funnier, and much sadder than its reputation.

The setup is simple. It is December 1941, and Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) runs a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Casablanca, a waiting room for refugees desperate to get to Lisbon and then America. Rick sticks his neck out for nobody. Then Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), the woman who left him in Paris, walks into his café with her husband, the Resistance hero Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). And Rick happens to be holding two letters of transit that could get them out.

Why It's a Masterpiece

Critics have argued for decades about whether Casablanca is a "great" film or just a perfect one. Jay Carr, writing the film's essay for the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, opened by saying it was never a great or profound film, merely "the most beloved movie of all time." His point was that the movie is about the hold movies have on us. It takes Hollywood's archetypes (the cynic with a secret heart, the woman between two men, the corrupt cop with a sense of humor) and draws them in such bold strokes that they turn into myth.

What makes it work is economy. Watch how fast the first twenty minutes move. We get the refugee crisis, the black market, the Nazis, the corrupt French, Rick's moral code, and a murder, all before Ilsa shows up. Every supporting character is sharply drawn: Peter Lorre's sweaty little Ugarte, Sydney Greenstreet's genial crook, and above all Claude Rains as Captain Renault, who gets many of the best lines. Ebert noted that none of the major characters is truly bad. Some lie, some cheat, some kill, but all of them are redeemed.

The film's reputation has only grown. It was in the very first class of 25 films chosen for the National Film Registry in 1989. The American Film Institute ranked it No. 2 on its 1998 list of the greatest American movies. The Writers Guild of America voted its script the greatest screenplay ever written. That last one is funny, given how the script was made.

Behind the Scenes

Warner Bros. bought an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick's, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, in January 1942. The twin writers Julius and Philip Epstein started the adaptation, then left to work on Frank Capra's Why We Fight war documentaries. Howard Koch took over until they came back. Casey Robinson, uncredited, spent three weeks on rewrites, including the scenes where Rick and Ilsa meet in the café. Carr counts even more hands, including producer Hal Wallis himself.

Shooting started on May 25, 1942, and, unusually for the era, the film was shot in sequence, largely because only the first half of the script was ready. The big question was how it would end. One idea was to have Laszlo killed so Rick and Ilsa could leave together. But the Production Code, Hollywood's censorship rulebook, forbade showing a wife leave her husband for another man. The question was never whether Ilsa would get on that plane, only how to make it feel right. According to Julius Epstein, he and his brother came up with "round up the usual suspects" while driving, and the rest of the ending fell into place from there.

That uncertainty reached the actors. Koch later recalled Bergman asking him which man she should love more, and telling her he didn't know, so she should play them both evenly. Ebert believed it helped. Because Bergman couldn't lean toward an ending she knew, every one of her scenes stays emotionally open.

Even the famous last line was a late addition. On August 7, 1942, after filming had wrapped, Wallis sent the editor two possible closing lines for Rick. He chose "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," and Bogart was called back to dub it about a month after shooting finished.

Hidden Details You Might Have Missed

Nobody says "Play it again, Sam." As Carr points out, Ilsa says "Play it once, Sam, for old time's sake," and then "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" The misquote took on a life of its own.

The song almost got cut. Composer Max Steiner wanted to replace "As Time Goes By" with his own melody. But Bergman had already cut her hair short for her next film, For Whom the Bell Tolls, so the scenes couldn't be reshot. Steiner gave in and built the whole score around that tune and "La Marseillaise."

Sam isn't really playing. Dooley Wilson, who plays Sam, was a singing drummer, not a pianist. Someone else dubbed the piano playing (sources disagree on who).

Look at Ingrid Bergman's eyes. Cinematographer Arthur Edeson mostly shot her from her preferred left side, often through a softening gauze filter, with small catch lights to make her eyes sparkle. The heights were adjusted too. Bergman was about two inches taller than Bogart, and she later said director Michael Curtiz had him stand on blocks or sit on cushions in their scenes together.

The croupier has a history. The man running Rick's roulette wheel is Marcel Dalio, who played the aristocrat in Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game (1939). Carr sees it as one of several nods to French cinema of the period.

The plot has a hole you could fly a plane through. In the English version, the precious letters of transit are signed by General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, whose signature would mean nothing to the Vichy authorities. (French subtitles on the official DVD say Weygand, a Vichy general.) The letters were a plot device invented for the original play, and hardly anyone noticed. As Koch remembered it, Curtiz's attitude was that if he made it go fast enough, nobody would.

The Director's Genius Moment

Michael Curtiz was a Warner Bros. workhorse. Carr notes he was himself a refugee from Hungary and had directed dozens of pictures for the studio. Critics have long debated how much credit he deserves, but one scene is hard to imagine without him: the "duel of the anthems."

German officers gather around Rick's piano and sing "Die Wacht am Rhein." Laszlo walks to the bandleader and orders "La Marseillaise." Rick gives a small nod of approval. The band starts, and slowly the whole room, every refugee and drinker and gambler, stands and sings the Germans down. Curtiz cuts between the faces, and the faces are what get you. Many of the extras and supporting players were real European exiles. Someone who watched the scene being filmed said many of the actors were crying, and realized they were real refugees. When you see tears on those faces, you are watching something that wasn't entirely acting.

It lasts barely two minutes, and it turns a love triangle into a story about which side you're on.

Another Way to See It

Spoiler warning: this section discusses the ending.

Ebert read the ending as the source of the film's power: we get to imagine winning the love of Bogart or Bergman, then nobly giving it up for the fight against fascism. History made that feeling stronger. Warner Bros. rushed the premiere to November 26, 1942, just after the Allied landings in North Africa and the capture of the real Casablanca, then put it into general release in January 1943, during the Casablanca Conference.

Carr isn't fully convinced by the romance. He argues that Ilsa's heroic exit leaves the heart feeling a little cheated, and that Rick seems happier walking into the fog with Renault than he ever was with her. Seen that way, the film's real love story is the "beautiful friendship" of two cynics who have finally found a cause. Watch it twice and decide for yourself.

Should You Watch It?

Yes, even if old movies usually bore you. Casablanca runs just 102 minutes and moves like a thriller. Carr loved one anecdote: in 1982, a writer retitled the script Everybody Comes to Rick's and sent it to 217 agencies. Most sent it back unread, and of the 85 that read it, only 33 recognized it. The story is familiar now because so much has borrowed from it, but nothing has quite matched it. Ebert said that the more he saw it, the more he liked it, like a favorite album. Start your own collection of viewings tonight.