Casablanca

Casablanca is a 1942 romantic film set during World War II in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca . The film was directed by Michael Curtiz , and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund . It focuses on Rick 's conflict between , in the words of one character , love and virtue : he must choose between his love for Ilsa and his need to do the right thing by helping her husband Resistance hero Victor Laszlo , escape from Casablanca and continue his fight against the Nazis

The film was an

immediate hit , and it has remained consistently popular ever since . Critics have praised the charismatic performances of Bogart and Bergman , the chemistry between the two leads , the depth of characterization , the taut direction , the witty screenplay and the emotional impact of the work as a whole

The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison then-unproduced play everybody comes to Rick 's . The story analyst at Warner Brothers who read the play , Stephen Kernot , called it (approvingly "sophisticated hokum , and story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal Wallis to buy the rights for 20 ,000 , the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play . The project was renamed Casablanca , apparently in imitation of the 1938 hit Algiers . Shooting began on May 25 1942 and was completed on August 3

The entire film was shot in the studio , except for the sequence filmed at Van Nuys Airport showing the arrival of Major Strasser . The street used for the exterior shots had recently been built for another film The Desert Song , and was redecorated and used for the Paris flashbacks It remained on the Warner 's back lot until the 1960s . The set for Rick 's cafe was built in three unconnected parts , so the internal layout of the building is indeterminate . In a number of scenes , the camera looks through a wall from the cafe area into Rick 's office . The background of the final scene , which shows a Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior airplane with personnel walking around it , was staged using midget extras and a proportionate cardboard plane because of budgetary and wartime rationing constraints . Fog was used to mask the model 's unconvincing appearance

Bergman 's height caused some problems . She was one and a half inches taller than Bogart , so he sometimes had to stand on boxes or sit on cushions in their scenes together

The film cost a the time . Bogart was called in a month after shooting was finished to dub in the final line "Louis , I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship ) Later , there were plans for a further scene showing Rick , Renault and a detachment of Free French soldiers on a ship , to incorporate the Allies ' 1942 invasion of North Africa however it proved too difficult to get Claude Rains for the shoot , and the scene was finally abandoned after David O . Selznick judged that "it would be a terrible mistake to change the...