Still a lot to enjoy about Casablanca but the film is an extremely slick piece of Hollywood story making during the golden age of studio production when everything was shot on a sound stage where everything could be completely controlled.
Considering this was originally an unproduced stage play, what Warner Brother's studios did with it is pretty amazing. The is a product of a system that when it wanted to could bring first class artistic talent to a production.
The cinematographer was Arthur Edeson who had filmed The Maltese Falcon, The Invisible Man and Sergent York to name a few films. Edeson was a guy skilled in black and white photography. Ingrid Bergman was a beautiful woman but Edeson's photography makes her face glow with soft focus and shadow effects.
The director was Michael Curtiz, one of the most talented film makers in Hollywood. Curtiz was a skilled craftsman who understood how to get the most out of a film visually. By the time Curtiz filmed Casablanca he had a stong understanding of how to tell a story with a camera.
Casablanca is also know for it's impressive cast. Besides the three leads, the stock company of actors that Warner's assembled for the film was one of the best, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt and most importantly Claude Rains.
So what's the problem here? Well the World War II propaganda stuff of the love story really date this film. The viewer has to have a pretty decent understanding of some of the political aspects of that conflict. References to Vichy France and Marshall Petain will probably go over almost every viewer's head today. Also, the incessant propaganda that runs through out the film is as major a plot point as is the love story.
102 minutes.
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