We'll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife Of Hollywood's Most Beloved Movie, Isenberg - B +

                                            "We'll Always Have Casablanca is an attempt to capture the story of not just how this remarkable movie was made - and the indispensable role that refuges from Hitler's Europe had in making it - but to explore how and why Casablanca continues to live in our collective consciousness, as affecting to our hears and minds now as it was from the start."
                                             'Everyone Comes To Rick's', a play penned by a young New Yorker who visited Nazi Vienna and Marseilles in 1938, introduces the characters, most of the plot and, Sam singing 'As Time Goes By', as well as Rick remembering his love affair in Paris. Hal Wallis at Warner Brothers paid a record $20,000 for the play in December, 1941.  Julius and Phillip Epstein, with some help from Howard Koch, adapted the screenplay. Wallis negotiated Ingrid Bergman away from MGM and convinced Paul Henreid to play second fiddle to Bogey, who Wallis had earmarked as Rick from the beginning. Claude Rains was the only one considered for Renault. Lorre and Veidt were stars in the German cinema and Greenstreet was a recent emigre from England. Almost all of the seventy-five actors were refugees. Only three of the fourteen credited performers were born in America.
                                             The film was released on Thanksgiving, 1942, a few weeks after the Allied invasion of North Africa. Indeed, the American capture of Casablanca was in the headlines and in January, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Casablanca. The film was an immediate success and won Oscars for best adapted screen play, director and picture. Over a decade later, Casablanca revivals began with the first showing at a Harvard art house theater. In the 60's and 70's, it garnered cult status among college students. The author travels far and wide over decades and oceans to try and explain how and why this film has resonated through the generations. One observer, who the author says reflected the thoughts of Ingrid Bergman and Phillip Epstein's son, Leslie, said, "There are better movies than Casablanca, but no other movie demonstrates America's mythological vision of itself - tough on the outside and moral within, capable of sacrifice and romance without sacrificing the individualism that conquered a continent, sticking its neck out for everybody when circumstances demand heroism. No other movie has so reflected both the moment when it was made and the psychological needs of audiences decades later." Roger Ebert once said that the best movie ever made was Citizen Kane, but his favorite movie was Casablanca. A common theme among many commentators is that it can be watched again and again and it never loses its freshness and ability to move the viewer.
                                          As the 75th anniversary of the release of the film approaches, the author traces the film's popularity up to, and including today.  I hope it continues to hold its place in the pantheon of great American films. In one of her reminiscences, Bergman stated that part of the appeal was that it was about "our war". As that war fades from consciousness, I fear the cultural reflections of it will also fade. I hope not. Marcella and I watched it today. It moves me, perhaps more as I get older and wiser than ever before. It will always be my favorite film.