Casablanca (1942)directed by

Michael Curtiz

Michael Curtiz1886-1962

• Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary)

• Died of Cancer

• Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912.

• After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe.

• Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner Bros. and became thoroughly entrenched in the studio system. His films during the 1930s and '40s encompassed nearly every genre imaginable and some, including Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945), are considered to be film classics.

Tell us more about Casablanca!

• Nobody but Humphrey Bogart was considered for the part of Rick Blaine.

• The Allies invaded Casablanca in real life on 8 November 1942.

• The character Sam was almost made a female. Ella Fitzgerald was considered for the role.

• The script was based on the unproduced play "Everybody Comes to Rick's"

“Here’s looking at you kid.”In the German version, the immortal line "Here's lookin' at you, kid", became, "Ich

seh' Dir in die Augen, Kleines" which translates as "I look in your eyes, honey".

• "Rick's Café Américain" was modeled after Hotel El Minzah in Tangiers.

• Many of the actors who played the Nazis were in fact German Jews who had escaped from Nazi Germany.

• In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #3 Greatest Movie of All Time.

• To maximize profits from foreign distribution of the film, the studio suggested that any unpleasant characters other than the Nazis should also be from an enemy country, namely Italy. This is why Ugarte, Ferrari, and the dark European pickpocket are Italian.

Filming Techniques• Because the film was made during WWII they were not allowed to film

at an airport after dark for security reasons. Instead they used a sound stage with a small cardboard cutout airplane and forced perspective. To give the illusion that the plane was full-sized, they used little people to portray the crew preparing the plane for take-off. Years later the same technique was used in the film Alien (1979), with director Ridley Scott's son and some of his friends in scaled down spacesuits.

• Several times the writers discussed having Rick leave with Lois/Ilsa, but this was always rejected (and the censors would not have allowed it with her married to Victor). Their major problem was to make it plausible that despite clearly loving Rick, she would leave with Victor; the final scene was rewritten many times until this was achieved.

• Rick's Cafe was one of the few original sets built for the film, the rest were all recycled from other Warner Brothers productions due to wartime restrictions on building supplies.

Filming Techniques II

• There are several scenes where Bergman is centered between Paul Henreid and Bogart, suggesting the triangle nature of their relationship.

• A lot of actors were “borrowed” from other studios for this film. *

From their time to ours

• Captain Renault's line, "You like war. I like women," was changed from "You enjoy war. I enjoy women," in order to meet decency standards.

• The film's success led to plans for a sequel, which was to be called Brazzaville. It was not until the late 1990s and Michael Walsh's novel "As Time Goes By" that a true sequel ever came to pass.

Betcha didn’t know…• The film cost approximately

$950,000, some $100,000 over budget.

• When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt returned from a wartime conference in Casablanca with Winston Churchill, he asked for a screening of the film at the White House. In Spanish, "casa blanca" means "White House.“

• Ingrid Bergman considered her left side as her better side, and to the extent possible that was the side photographed throughout the film.