Movies

mahatmakanejeeves

(61,298 posts) Tue Nov 26, 2024, 11:13 AM Nov 26

On this day, November 26, 1942, "Casablanca" had its world premiere.

Theatrical release poster by Bill Gold

Release dates:
November 26, 1942 (Hollywood Theatre)
January 23, 1943 (United States)

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Filmed and set during World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate (Bogart) who must choose between his love for a woman (Bergman) and helping her husband (Henreid), a Czechoslovak resistance leader, escape from the Vichy-controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Germans. The screenplay is based on Everybody Comes to Rick's, an unproduced stage play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. The supporting cast features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson.

Warner Bros. story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to purchase the film rights to the play in January 1942. Brothers Julius and Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script. However, despite studio resistance, they left to work on Frank Capra's Why We Fight series early in 1942. Howard Koch was assigned to the screenplay until the Epsteins returned a month later. Principal photography began on May 25, 1942, ending on August 3; the film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, with the exception of one sequence at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles.

Although Casablanca was an A-list film with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to stand out among the many pictures produced by Hollywood yearly. Casablanca was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier. It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943. The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run.

Exceeding expectations, Casablanca went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, while Curtiz was selected as Best Director and the Epsteins and Koch were honored for Best Adapted Screenplay. Its reputation has gradually grown, to the point that its lead characters, memorable lines, and pervasive theme song have all become iconic, and it consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films in history. In 1989, the United States Library of Congress selected the film as one of the first for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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Soundtrack

The music was written by Max Steiner, who wrote scores for King Kong and Gone with the Wind. The song "As Time Goes By" by Herman Hupfeld had been part of the story from the original play; Steiner wanted to write his own composition to replace it, but Bergman had already cut her hair short for her next role (María in For Whom the Bell Tolls) and could not reshoot the scenes that incorporated the song,[a] so Steiner based the entire score on it and "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem, transforming them as leitmotifs to reflect changing moods. Even though Steiner disliked "As Time Goes By", he admitted in a 1943 interview that it "must have had something to attract so much attention". Dooley Wilson, who played Sam, was a drummer but not a pianist, so his piano playing was performed by Jean Plummer.

Particularly memorable is the "duel of the anthems" between Strasser and Laszlo at Rick's cafe. In the soundtrack, "La Marseillaise" is played by a full orchestra. Originally, the opposing piece for this iconic sequence was to be the "Horst Wessel Lied", a Nazi anthem but this was still under international copyright in non-Allied countries. Instead "Die Wacht am Rhein" was used. The "Deutschlandlied", the national anthem of Germany, is used several times in minor mode as a leitmotif for the German threat, e.g. in the scene in Paris as it is announced that the German army will reach Paris the next day. It is featured in the final scene, giving way to "La Marseillaise" after Strasser is shot.

Other songs include:

• "It Had to Be You", music by Isham Jones, lyrics by Gus Kahn
• "Shine", music by Ford Dabney, lyrics by Cecil Mack and Lew Brown
• "Avalon", music and lyrics by Al Jolson, Buddy DeSylva and Vincent Rose
• "Perfidia", by Alberto Dominguez
• "The Very Thought of You", by Ray Noble
• "Knock on Wood", music by M. K. Jerome, lyrics by Jack Scholl, the only original song.

Very few films in the early 1940s had portions of the soundtrack released on 78 rpm records, and Casablanca was no exception. In 1997, almost 55 years after the film's premiere, Turner Entertainment in collaboration with Rhino Records issued the film's first original soundtrack album for release on compact disc, including original songs and music, spoken dialogue, and alternate takes.

The piano featured in the Paris flashback sequences was sold in New York City on December 14, 2012, at Sotheby's for more than $600,000 to an anonymous bidder. The piano Sam "plays" in Rick's Café Américain, put up for auction with other film memorabilia by Turner Classic Movies at Bonhams in New York on November 24, 2014, sold for $3.4 million.

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