Casablanca is based on: Everybody Comes to Rick’s – An unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.

World Premiere: November 26, 1942 at New York City, USA.

Release Date: 23 January 1943 (USA).

Cast and Crew: On the poster above.

Most information can be found on Wiki here – Casablanca (film).

Awards: Oscars for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Writing, Screenplay.’ Rest details at IMDb.

Keyhole snaps

Official trailer

Why watch Casablanca?

WWII on the backdrop and the moment when Rick Blaine realises “Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World, She Walks Into Mine” is, I feel the most romantic moment of Casablanca. A dejected lover, world-weary and cynical, meets his beau, when in control of everything, but sacrificing it for a greater cause, is Rick Blaine. Slick and real, he says “I stick my neck out for nobody” and he doesn’t, but does for Ilsa.

A woman troubled and confused by circumstances, rendered a widow by rumours, falls in love with Rick Blaine and realising that her husband is alive, choosing her life, torn between priorities, using Rick to find her husband’s independence, is Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). Fiercely loyal to Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) and the revolution, the only way she can explain to Rick is by saying “We’ll Always Have Paris.” She is in love with both, tormented but keeping up the facade.

This love story between Rick, solitary, terse, generous and self-involved, and Ilsa, falling in love with Rick again, stressed about fate on all fronts, keeping a cold and detached attitude is an ode to realism driven love. The longing and craving for each other could not have been better expressed.

The excruciating pain that develops between them is what I find heart-wrenching. And, that makes me cry, every time I watch Casablanca. Irrespective, it is a part of my incessant watch-list because it grows on me, time and again. If you have already watched it, what does it make you feel?

Approaching the 80th anniversary of its world premiere, “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” takes on a different meaning. This iconic story of devastating romance is often talked about as ‘the best movie ever made.’

I feel we should all party at Rick’s Café Americain for the 80th. What do you say?

And, by the way, without Claude Rains as Captain Louis and a true French persona’s “I Think This Is The Beginning Of A Beautiful Friendship”, the film wouldn’t have had a future… No?

Little known trivia on Casablanca

• Writers Guild of America chose Casablanca’s script as the best all-time screenplay in 2006.
• Casablanca was filmed at a cost of nearly $1,100,000 and was considered over budget. In comparison, 2 other super hits, from 1939 Gone With The Wind and The Wizard of Oz, produced by MGM, cost about $4,000,000 each.
• Casablanca grossed about $4,000,000.
• As Time Goes By” is the 2nd most popular movie number, after “Somewhere Over The Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz.
• The plan for a sequel ‘Brazzaville’, where Rick and Louis join the French Resistance to fight Germans, never materialised.
• George Raft, a popular actor was approached to play Rick, but he turned it down. Humphrey Bogart was named the greatest actor in Hollywood history, and George Raft never got to be a star.
• Humphrey Bogart was a master-level chess player and a tournament director for the United States Chess Federation. It was his idea to make Rick Blaine a chess player. The game Bogie was playing on-screen in Casablanca was based on a real-life game he was playing by mail at the time he was shooting the film.

The second best song ever…

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