Casablanca (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, is set in World War II Morocco where American expatriate Rick Blaine is forced to choose between love and doing the right thing when his former lover arrives with her Resistance leader husband seeking exit visas.
Why It Matters
- Won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay
- Bogart's Rick — cynical, wounded, ultimately heroic — became the template for the American male movie hero
- Contains more famous lines per minute than almost any film in history
Famously shot without a finished script — the ending was not decided until filming was nearly complete — Casablanca transcends its origins as studio product to become a timeless study of sacrifice, principle, and romantic loss.
Reference:
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