In 1943 Casablanca was an A-list picture for the Warner Studio, but nobody involved had particularly high hopes. In order to ‘borrow’ Ingrid Bergman from another studio, Julius Epstein, one of the film’s many producers, had modestly pitched the film to David O. Selznick as “a lot of shit like Algiers.”

The script, adapted from an unproduced play Everybody Comes To Rick’s, was cobbled together on the shoot and is the work of at least six scribes. (Bogart only added to the crisis by ad-libbing throughout.) The raggle-taggle cast was largely comprised of war refugees. Even Conrad Veidt, who played Gestapo villain Major Strasser, was himself on the run from SS death squads.
Casablanca seemed certain to fail in a manner befitting a movie-within-a-movie by Mel Brooks. Bogart required cushions and boxes to stand next to Ingrid Bergman, his considerably taller onscreen love interest. This prohibitive height difference did not prevent Mayo Methot, the Mrs. Bogart of the hour, from accusing her husband of conducting an affair with his co-star. The Hungarian-American director, Michael Curtiz caused further chaos with mispronunciations. A request for a “poodle” of water had predictably broad consequences.
Attempts to salvage the production continued right up until the film’s release in January of 1943. Producer Hal B. Wallis feared that the ending, completed before the Allies invaded Casablanca, was now hopelessly outdated and had to be persuaded not to shoot an epilogue.
Somehow, someway it all worked out for the best. Taking $3.7 million on its initial U.S. release (it was the seventh best-selling film of 1943) it was not initially a spectacular box-office success, but its afterlife has been extraordinary. By 1977 it was the most frequently broadcast film on American television. Predating The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pink Flamingos by decades, it became an audience participation standard in cinemas. When the American Film Institute compiled a list of the greatest American films from the first century of cinema, Casablanca was second only to Citizen Kane.
But how? This is the question that has plagued film writers for decades. “If It’s So Schmaltzy, Why Am I Weeping?” asks Harvey Greenberg in his paper of the same name. Andrew Sarris, a leading proponent of auteur theory, explains the film as “the most decisive exception” in his otherwise flawless schemata. That said, the film does not necessarily provide a case for the genius of the studio system. No, this is a story about dumb luck.
The cold hard truth is that Casablanca The writing is equally shoddy. “Is that canon fire or is it my heart pounding?” simpers Bergman. Oh please. The letters of transit, the MacGuffin on which everything else depends, are wholly illogical. If, as the film suggests, they were signed by Charles De Gaulle, then surely they were useless in a Vichy controlled territory?
Tellingly, no attempt to remake or recycle Curtiz’ film (with the possible exception of Carrotblanca with Bugs Bunny) has succeeded. Two spin off TV shows in 1955 and 1983 were short-lived affairs. Even Sydney Pollack’s loose adaptation Havana featuring Robert Redford and Lena Olin seemed more like garbage than a classic.
And that’s just it. Oddly, Casablanca succeeds precisely because it is trashy. The epitome of more-is-more cinema, as the film plummets to what Umberto Eco describes as ‘Homeric depths’ of cliche, it sweeps the viewer off his or her feet. “It is not just a movie,” says Eco, “it is every movie”. It reminds one of an extended, all demographic conquering movie trailer – you want action, adventure, noir, romance, war, propaganda, well Casablanca has it all. You could even argue that Louis and Rick heading off into masculine coded space in the final moments provides a Western gloss.
The appeal of this largely improvised wartime recipe is remarkable. Queer cinema theorists read an amorous subtext in the ‘beautiful friendship’. Feminists see shades of both Madonna and whore in Bergman’s damsel in distress. Politically minded folk view Rick as isolationist America accepting the need to go to war. Eternal optimists, meanwhile, can take heart from a film where everybody is good, even if they don’t know it yet.
Besides, if you don’t smile when Bogart says “The Germans wore grey: you wore blue,” then that weird smell coming from the kitchen is probably the bunnies you boiled earlier.
Casablanca is released March 2.