Casablanca Film Detailed Study

Casablanca: How Did the Ordinary Become Extraordinary?

Barbara Conley

In 2007 the American Film Institute, AFI, published a list of “top films” as assessed by an AFI panel. Citizen Kane was ranked as the best film and Casablanca was rated #2. Both of these films have been consistently praised from the moment of their release including Best Picture Academy Awards for both films. Both have also been widely studied as have all the other films ranked highly on the AFI list. If you Google “Casablanca Film Analysis” you are presented with 280,000 results. This essay is intended to present a consolidated view of some of the existing analysis as well as provide some fresh insight as to the film’s enduring popularity.

Casablanca is a romantic drama set in French Morocco in December 1941, just days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The film was based on an unproduced play that had been procured by the Warner Brothers studio department. The play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s, was written by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison and was inspired by a trip Murray and his wife made in 1938 to assist Jewish family members in Nazi-occupied Vienna. While Murray was not able to convince Broadway producers to make his play as they were leery of the nature of Rick and Ilsa’s relationship, he was able to sell it to Warner Brothers for a record setting $20,000.[1] The sale price which was undoubtedly driven by Warner’s belief in the story is the first of many signs along the way that Casablanca was destined for greatness.

The film was cast with A list actors including Humphrey Bogart and a relative newcomer, Ingrid Bergman. Production started on May 25 and filming was completed on August 3. The production cost $1,039,000 ($75,000 over budget), and was considered above average for the time. The film was shot in sequence, mainly because only the first half of the script was ready when filming began.[2]

This leads to the topic of the visual style of the film. The first...