Casablanca Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet Director: Michael Curtiz
Can there be a more potently romantic movie than Casablanca? Julius Epstein, one of the several screenwriters who worked on it, memorably observed that the film contained 'more corn than the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there's nothing better.'
A second world war melodrama that perfectly evokes the era, Casablanca's appeal is nevertheless timeless. It makes you want to be Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman. There is no more attractive Bogart role than Rick Blaine, the nightclub owner whose urbane cynicism cannot quite conceal his essential nobility. Bergman (right, with Bogart) underscores Ilsa Lund's vulnerable misty-eyed beauty with strength of character. We want to be looked at the way they look at each other.
Every element of the film is finely balanced - heroes and villains, cynicism and idealism, tragedy and comedy. Everything is exactly in its place and precisely serves its purpose. Yet it could all have been so horribly different. It in no way detracts from director Michael Curtiz's judgement in making the calls he did that the film came together so perfectly largely by chance.
Although it is widely believed Ronald Reagan was seriously considered for the role of Rick Blaine, he probably wasn't. George Raft, however, certainly was, and Hedy Lamarr and Ann Sheridan were both on the shortlist for Ilsa.
Although the screenplay was based on an unproduced stage play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, the script was incomplete when the movie started shooting, and was subject to constant revision by a team of writers, each with a different idea of the right tone.
The fog that establishes the atmosphere for the climactic airport sequence was there not for that reason but to conceal an unconvincing model of a plane.