Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #884 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Black & White, Dubbed, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
A truly perfect movie, the 1942 Casablanca still wows viewers today, and for good reason. Its unique story of a love triangle set against terribly high stakes in the war against a monster is sophisticated instead of outlandish, intriguing instead of garish. Humphrey Bogart plays the allegedly apolitical club owner in unoccupied French territory that is nevertheless crawling with Nazis; Ingrid Bergman is the lover who mysteriously deserted him in Paris; and Paul Heinreid is her heroic, slightly bewildered husband. Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt are among what may be the best supporting cast in the history of Hollywood films. This is certainly among the most spirited and ennobling movies ever made.--Tom Keogh

Synopsis
Perennially at the top of every all-time-greats list, and indisputably one of the landmarks of cinema. Bogart is Rick Blaine, an American expatriate and war profiteer in WW II Morocco. He's content to merely run the Cafe Americain until love in the form of a Ilsa, the luminous Bergman, returns to his life after breaking his heart years before. Ilsa's husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) is the Czech Resistance leader whose only hope of safe transport, and Ilsa's, from Morocco is Rick Blaine. Ilsa offers herself as a bargaining tool to encourage Rick to transport her husband, but he must choose between his own happiness and the lives of others. An accidental Hollywood masterpiece, this spine-tingling tear-jerker just gets better and better - as time goes by.

From the Back Cover
Casablanca: easy to enter, but much harder to leave, especially if your name is on the Nazis' most-wanted list. A top that list is Czech Resistance leader VIctor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), whose only hope is Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical American who sticks his neck out for no one....especially Victor's wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), the ex-lover who broke his heart. So when Ilsa offers herself in exchange for Laszlo's safe transport out of the country, the bitter Rick must decide what's more important - his own happiness or the countless lives that hang in the balance.

Customer Reviews

The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship....
Because I've been reading Michael Walsh's novel As Time Goes By, I recently decided to watch Casablanca again on DVD. I was amazed to see how this 1943 Oscar-winning film remains powerful and moving 60 years after its release.

Almost everybody knows its plot of of wartime intrigue and its doomed romantic triangle of bitter American saloonkeeper Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), the beautiful Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), and her idealistic husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). This trio is supported by a wonderful and varied cast of characters, including Police Prefect Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Rick's faithful friend and piano player Sam Waters (Arthur "Dooley" Wilson), the conniving Ugarte (Peter Lorre), the Russian bartender Sacha (Leonid Kinsky), and the loveable maitre d' Carl (S. Z. Sakall).

The heart of the movie revolves around the conflict created in Rick's heart by World War II. When his former flame Ilsa arrives in Casablanca, does he help her and her husband Victor escape to Lisbon, or does he allow German Major Strasser (Conrad Veldt) to capture the fugitive Czech resistance leader so Rick can take Ilsa to America himself? Or do his natural good instincts surface and get Rick to do the honorable thing?

This movie has a little bit of everything: suspense, drama, comedy, an exotic setting, and lots of music, including renditions of "It Had To Be You," "The Very Thought Of You," and a thrilling duel between Germans singing the "Watch On The Rhine" and the Allies belting out "The Marsellaise." Other songs heard in the film include "Knock On Wood," and the unforgettable "As Time Goes By."

Another crucial element is the snappy and memorable dialog written by the Epstein twins and Hal B. Wallis for this movie:

Rick: I came here for the waters.
Louis: Waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: Obviously, I was misinformed.

Ilsa: (to Sam) Play it. Play "As Time Goes By."

Rick: (to Sam) Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Louis: (pretending to be surprised) I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling in here!
Casino Dealer: (handing Louis some money) Your winnings, sir.
Louis: (takes the money) Thank you.

Rick: (to Ilsa) Now, now...here's looking at you, kid.

With all these ingredients, director Michael Curtiz and producer Jack Warner came up with a recipe for a movie that became a beloved classic, a status recognized when the Library of Congress named Casablanca as one of the most important American films.

Betty June Moore

Vichy et Noir
The geo-political background of this marvellous film, a film which transcends its WW2 propaganda efforts, is still not known to many: after the fall of France in 1940, most of France (except Paris and North and the coastal regions) was, in fact, at least until 1942-43, run by a virtually independent pro-German French administration based in the spa town of Vichy. The overseas colonies of France, from Devil's Island to Indo-China, were ideologically split: some supported Vichy, some de Gaulle's London-based "government", others a mid-way position based around local high-ranking French commanders (French Morocco and Algeria, to name but two).

Casablanca, a port in Morocco, played a quasi-independent game, allied to Vichy but full of all sorts of people, including people in the administration and police, until the Americans and British invaded "by invitation" in 1943 (Operation Torch). This film is set somewhat beforehand, although actually made a little later.

Many propaganda points in the film will not be picked up on by most viewers, as in the scene where the obnoxious Deutsche Bank exec fails to gain entrance to Rick's casino room and storms off saying he will "report it to Der Angriff". how many know that to have been Goebbels' newspaper?

Whatever one's views about WW2, this film can be enjoyed for itself. It is, of course, a classic, a classic noir at that. Everyone should own this film.

You must remember this ...
Aaaahhh ... Bogey. AFI's No. 1 film star of the 20th century. Hollywood's original noir anti-hero, epitome of the handsome, cynical and oh-so lonesome wolf (with "Casablanca"'s Rick Blaine alone, one of the Top 5 guys on the AFI's list of greatest 20th century film heroes); looking unbeatably cool in white dinner jacket or trenchcoat and fedora alike, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Endowed with a legendary aura several times larger than his real life stature, and still admired by scores of women wishing they had been born 50+ years earlier, preferably somewhere in California and to parents connected with the movie business, so as to have at least a marginal chance of meeting him.

Triple-Oscar-winning "Casablanca," directed by Michael Curtiz, was and still is without question Bogart's greatest career-defining moment, the movie on which his legendary status is grounded more than on any other of his multiple successes. The film's story is based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's play "Everybody Comes to Rick's," renamed by Warner Brothers in order to tag onto the success of the studio's 1938 hit "Algiers" (starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr). Building on the success of 1941's "The Maltese Falcon" and further expanding Bogart's increasingly complex on-screen personality, it added a romantic quality which had heretofore been missing; eventually making this the AFI's Top 20th century love story (even before the No. 2 "Gone With the Wind"), while second only to "Citizen Kane" on the AFI's overall list of Top 100 20th century movies; with a unique, inimitable blend of drama, passion, humor, exotic North African atmosphere, patriotism, unforgettable score (courtesy of Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By," Max Steiner and Louis Kaufman's violin) and an all-star cast, consisting besides Bogart of Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa), Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Renault), Dooley Wilson (who, a drummer by trade, had to fake his piano playing as Rick's friend Sam), Conrad Veidt (Major Strasser), Sydney Greenstreet (Ferrari) and Peter Lorre (Ugarte). And the movie's countless famous one-liners have long attained legendary status in their own right ...

Looking at this movie's and its stars' almost mythical fame, it is difficult to imagine that, produced at the height of the studio system era, it was originally just one of the roughly 50 movies released over the course of one year. But mass production didn't equal low quality; on the contrary, the great care given to all production values, from script-writing to camera work, editing, score and the stars' presentation in the movies themselves and in their trailers, was at least partly responsible for its lasting success. In fact, the screenplay for "Casablanca" was constantly rewritten even throughout the filming process, to the point that particularly Ingrid Bergman was extremely worried because she was unsure whether at the end she (Ilsa) would leave Casablanca with Henreid's Victor Laszlo or stay there with Humphrey Bogart (Rick).

Little needs to be said about the movie's story. After the onset of WWII, Casablanca has become a point of refuge for Jews and other desperate souls from all corners of Europe, fleeing the old world with the hope of building a new life in America. Unofficial center of Casablanca's society is Rick's "Cafe Americain," where gamblers, refugees, French police, Nazi troops, thieves, swindlers and soldiers of fortune come together on a nightly basis, to make connections, conduct their shady business, or simply forget the uncertainty of their fate for a few precious hours. And presiding over this mixed and colorful society is Rick Blaine, expatriate American without any hope of returning to the United States himself (for reasons never fully explained), officially not interested in politics but only the flourishing of his business, but soft-hearted underneath the hard shell of his cynicism. From Rick's perspective, everything is going just swell and the way it is meant to be: he is reasonably well-respected, has a good working relationship with Captain Renault, the local representative of the Vichy government (based on mutual respect as much as on the fact that Renault is a guaranteed winner at Rick's gambling tables and, by way of reciprocation, turns a blind eye to whatever less-than-squeaky-clean transactions Rick may be tolerating in his cafe, always ready to have his police round up "the usual suspects" instead of the truly guilty party of a crime if that person's continued freedom promises to be more profitable); and although aware of Rick's not quite so apolitical past, the Germans are leaving him alone as well, as long as he stays out of politics now. Until ... well, until famous underground resistance leader and recent concentration camp-escapee Victor Laszlo and his wife Ilsa walk into Rick's cafe, into his place "of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world" - and with one blow, administered to the melancholy tunes of "As Time Goes By," the carefully maintained equilibrium of his little world comes crashing down around him.

Not only to Bogart and Bergman fans all over the world, "Casablanca" is film history's all-time crowning achievement, a "must" in every movie lover's collection, and one of the few films that truly deserve the title "classic." If you don't already own it, the 2003 release of a two-disc special edition chock-full with extras is a great occasion to remedy that omission - or if you don't have a DVD player, at least go out and get the video!