CASABLANCA

Director: Michael Curtiz

1942, 112, PG

Screenwriter: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch based on the play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.

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

 

In days of peace, Casablanca is loved as one of the best acted-and-scripted love stories ever made. In an unsettled world, it inspires with its stand for freedom and democracy. It is set in an occupied North African city during World War II, where an apolitical American (Humphrey Bogart) runs Rick’s Cafe. Unfazed by his motley crew of customers (partisans, Nazis, desperate refugees, swindlers, and more), Rick’s cool is only shaken when the woman who left him in Paris (a luminous Ingrid Bergman) walks back into his life.

Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay. “A brilliant film that merits inclusion in every self-respecting film critic’s top three.” – William Mager, BBC