Casablanca

Director: Michael Curtiz

1942, 112 min

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, Paul Henreid

 

(1942) Director: Michael Curtiz. Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch based on the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. Musical Score: Max Steiner. Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson, Paul Henreid.

In peacetime, Casablanca stands as one of the best love stories on film. In wartime (when it was released), or times that feel dangerously close to war, it inspires with its moral stance for democracy in the face of brutality. In an occupied North African city during World War II, an apolitical American (Humphrey Bogart) runs Rick’s Cafe. Unfazed by his motley crew of customers (partisans, Nazis, desperate emigrés, swindlers, crooked police and more), Rick’s cool is shaken when the woman who left him in Paris (a luminous Ingrid Bergman) walks back into his life. Bogart’s jaded ambivalence is a kick, but it is his emerging conscience that still stands as a response to apathy and existential despair. Academy Awards®: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay. 112 min.