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Directed by: Michael Curtiz
Script by: Murray Burnett, Joan Alison
Genre: Drama (B&W)
Duration: 1 h 42’
Nationality: USA |
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| Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Richard 'Rick' Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund Laszlo), Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault), Conrad Veidt (Major General Heinrich Strasser), Sydney Greenstreet (Mr. Ferrari), Peter Lorre (Ugarte), S.Z. Sakall (Carl), Madeleine LeBeau (Yvonne), Dooley Wilson (Sam), Joy Page (Annina Brandel), John Qualen (Berger). |
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During the Second World War, American Rick Blaine’d bar (Bogart, more shattered than ever, in a part earlier rejected by Ronald Reagan, actor and future President of the United States) is an oasis for war refugees and spies: his old flame Ilsa comes there, completely unaware of finding him, in order to save herself and her husband from the Germans. But Rick bears her a grudge and this situation risks to lead them to the Germans’ hands. The movie is a tout court cinema masterpiece with an archetypal ending and an atmosphere characterized by an overturned epic and by subterfuges in the mist of a desert city. It is full of paradoxes and contradictions which increase its charme, also characterized by exaggerations and defects. The movie “Casablanca” is also remembered for the song “As time goes by”, which the black pianist Sam must play again and again (although the well-know sentence, which became the original title of the movie by Ross with Woody Allen starring in "Play it again, Sam", is never said in the exact way as everybody remembers it), as well as for the acting icons, for the hazardous theme and for many other aspects, provided it is watched with absolute and critical distance. What is important is not to change it for a true masterpiece. The movie can still fascinate and surprise the public. And Bogey (nickname of the shorty Bogart who had to wear wedge-heeled shoes or to be framed upwards not to make a poor impression next to a beanpole Bergaman), in any case, is Cinema, that is to say Shakespearean “substance of which dreams are made of”. The movie must be seen in the B&W original version and not with the colour manipulation. The comic-strip Mickey Mouse parody is very appreciable. In the technical cast we should mention Don Siegel. (www.centraldocinema.it)
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