Interestingly, Bogart lost the Oscar for Best Actor (his first nomination) to Paul Lukas in the film Watch on the Rhine (which itself has some similarities to Casablanca, though nowhere nearly as good).
In the movie, everybody (major Strasser-an evil-looking nazi if there ever was one, capt. Reynaud, etc,) are looking to recover the stolen letters of transit-signed by “General” deGaulle himself. What was the big deal? If you needed an exit visa to leave Morocco, why would anyone steal these stolen documents? I realize the wrters had to have a story-but why wouldn’t Strasser just have had somebody shoot a pesky anti-nazi, and be done with it? but the lines were classic:
(Captain Reynaud): Signor Ferrara is dead. We can’t decide if he died attempting escape, or committed suicide!" or:
(Capt. Reynaud): “You must report to my office tomorrow”
(Victor Lazlo): “Is this an order?”
(Capt. Reynaud)-“A request, that’s a much nicer way of saying it”
And one of the neat ironies was that Conrad Veidt, playing the Nazi Major Strasser, was a anti-Nazi whose first wife was Jewish. According to the IMDB trivia on him,
It was General Weygand, who was working for Vichy France. Why would anything signed by De Gaulle, who was working with the Allies, have any value in Vichy-controlled Casablanca?
I have a book about the making of Casablanca, although I cannot remember the name of it (it is even signed by the author), but as mentioned before the making of the movie was not by design by really the result of dedicated and talented craftsmen from the actors to the director to the screenwriters the editors, the cinematographhers all coming to together in an almost haphazard way to produce a masterpiece.
it is so good that even the parts that shouldn’t work work great, like the Bulgarian girl who seeks Rick’s advice:
This part of the scene is actually pretty heavy handed and almost too “on the nose” as they say. Clealry it is there to act as a catalyst for Rick to do something. It is obviously supposed to be a parallel to the story Rick has in his head. So that scene, it’s purpose seems to be too relevant, if I am making any sense.
Yet, I think it still works wonderfully. The deftness with the way it plays out for before this snippet through the whole thing. It seems forced, yet it also seems honest. Kind of like, “What a convenient conversation for Rick to have” while at the same time seeming wholly appropriate and not out of place.
The letters of transit were a classic McGuffin, and a pretty nonsensical one at that. If Strasser and his contingent wanted Lazlo dead, they surely could have found a way in Casablanca (where, as it was noted, life is cheap) to do him in. And it’s clear in the penultimate scene that Strasser isn’t going to let Lazlo escape, letters of transit or no.
I’d be lying if I said that I hate to be the voice of contention, but in the case of Casablanca I’m sincere: it has some great quotable lines, and the backdrop is iconic, but the story is mediocre at best, and the acting of the principals is somewhat wooden; Bogart is playing Bogart, Paul Henreid is remote as Lazlo, Conrad Veidt is almost a cartoon Nazi, and Ingrid Bergman is just kind of useless (or, at least the character she’s playing is). The supporting players, however, are fantastic, especially Claude Rains, Greenstreet, and Lorre.
Maybe it’s just my cynicism, but I think the post-war The Third Man is a vastly superior film. Anna is far more believable and appealing, Joseph Cotton plays the credulus would-be American optimist who thinks if he can solve the murder of his old friend all will be put right, and Orson Welles has a magnificent turn as a villian who can rationalize his crimes with a grin and an apt metaphor in turning the horrors of mass murder into shining profits. “Free of income tax, old man, free of income tax.” The story certainly presages the post-war world far better than Casablanca.
I wondered about this myself, and launched (several years ago) a thread on this topic here. Part of my confusion stems from Howard Koch’s book/screenplay which I’ve owned for years. It gives the line as “DeGaulle”…but after listening closely (on the 51st viewing, after hearing “degaulle” 50 times) I think it is “Weygand”.
I love this movie. Everytime I go on a rant about movies by committe and how too many writers or the use of a common workman like director are a sure sign of a bad movie my wife says “Cassablanca” Then I have to shut up.
I overlook the huge plothole of the Letters of Transit or that the Nazis released Lazlow in the first place because this movie seems to be more than the sum of its parts. I don’t know why I give it so much leway but I do. There must be something subliminal or subconcious at work here!
Apparently, when Casablanca was first released in West Germany in 1952, all references to Nazis were removed (for obvious reasons). Victor Laszlo became a Norwegian scientist named Victor Larsen, who was attempting to escape from the police who were trying to find out the secret of his delta rays.
And my favorite fact of all is that the plane at the end is a half-size replica of a real plane. The crewmen are midgets (to use the un-PC term).
And this was because movies were made to appeal to the general audience, not just “markets.” We should count ourselves lucky nothing was thrown into Casablanca to bring in the kids, too.
Apparently that poster didn’t realize what the US was like during WWII-- Jim Crow laws in the South, and thousands of US citizens held in detention camps because of their ethnic background, to name just 2 glaring examples.
As for the film, I remember thinking it was corny when I saw it as a teenager, but I’ve definitely grown to like it quite a bit. I think it reminds us of a time when there were grown-ups around. Everyone is like a kid today (well, all of us boomers and all those who came after). Not that the former situation was necessarily better, just different.
Oh, I like Casablanca well enough (I own the Special Edition DVD) but I just don’t rank it as highly as most people do, I guess. I don’t think it’s Bogart’s best work (which would probably be Key Largo or In A Lonely Place) and it’s definitely not Ingrid Bergman’s best performance. It has some good scenes and some laugh out loud dialogue–especially the banter between Sam and Cpt. Renault–but in my opinion it just grinds to a halt any time Bergman or Henreid is on screen. The love triangle just seems terribly flat and unconvincing, and Henreid doesn’t really seem all that interested in escaping, or indeed anything; he certainly doesn’t come off as a charismatic leader about which all the intrigue would revolve around. A good film that is actually better than the sum of its parts, but I’d rank many higher.
Sam was the piano player. It would be difficult to pick a single “best” Bogart film. He had a long career that went all the way back to 1920 when He appeared in an uncredited bit part in Life. His real career started in Up The River in 1930 and he made 74 more movies. He wasn’t always great or even good in every scene of every movie but he did have some high spots. For example, I think his portrayal of the breakdown on the witness stand of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny hit exactly the right tenor.
I also agree about Claude Raines. We don’t seem to have many like Raines orFrederic March or, on the lighter side, Jack Carson around. Nobody could play a two-bit grifter quite like Carson.
