Casablanca: Introduction

Director: Michael Curtiz

Producer: Hal Wallis

Screenplay: Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch

Main characters:

Academy awards: Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay

Casablanca  is a brilliant tale of two men in love with the same woman in a complicated love triangle shaped by the dramatic events of World War II. A story of intrigue and suspense, with its timeless themes of lost love, duty, self-sacrifice and passion, the film is set in the North African coastal city of Casablanca - located outside of war-torn Europe.at the time when the Nazis had overrun Europe.

Casablanca was based on an original play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, and it is said that the script was written from day to day as the filming progressed and no one knew just how the film would eventually end - who would end up with Ilsa,  Rick or Laszlo? With Max Steiner's wonderful musical score, its memorable characters and brilliant dialogue, it is one of the most popular and best-loved films of all time.

The story

Prolog

The film opens showing a map of map of the land mass of Nazi-occupied Europe, and shows the opposing sides in the conflict.

The dark areas show the Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, their allies (Hungary, Rumania, Slovakia, Croatia), and conquered territories (Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and parts of Poland, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia). Northwestern France is German occupied.

In the manner of newsreel narrations of the time, a narrator explains in ominous tones the violent Nazi takeover of Europe, the start of World War II, and the stream of refugees who were fleeing persecution in Hitler's occupied Europe, following a route which took them to Vichy France and North Africa, and then on to Lisbon and eventually to the Americas:

The refugee trail out of Nazi Europe

Narrator : 

With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But not everybody could get to Lisbon directly; and so a torturous, round-about refugee trail sprang up. Paris to Marseilles, across the Mediterranean to Oran [in Algeria], then by train or auto or foot across the rim of Africa to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here the fortunate ones through money or influence or luck might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca, and wait and wait and wait.

  Rick's Cafe

Rick's CafeThe story takes place in early December 1941,  and the action centres on Rick's Cafe, a social and gathering point for those who have come to Casablanca, Nazis and anti-Nazis alike, and which is a sort of  microcosm of the wartime world.

As well as describing the political and social situation in pro-Vichy Casablanca, the prolog tells of the key events and details around which the story develops. These are: