Casablanca

Selected by Lee Friedlander

Everybody comes to Rick’s bar, including expat Rick’s (Humphrey Bogart) former lover Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), in one of Hollywood’s most-loved romantic melodramas. Set in Vichy-controlled Morocco during WWII, Casablanca revolves around a nightclub run by cynical American expat Rick Blaine, where resistance fighters, immigrants and Nazis converge to police or partake in an illicit economy. In this setting, created entirely on the Warner Bros studio lot, an affair is rekindled between Rick and Ilsa, the latter now the wife of a resistance leader.

Directed by Hungarian refugee Michael Curtiz, Casablanca exemplifies the consummately crafted Hollywood drama, in which all the elements seem to have fallen alchemically into place. The screenplay sparkles with memorable lines, the supporting cast overflows with indelible performances, and the whole is given an urgent, topical edge by being made on the cusp of America’s involvement in the war.

Part of the Fraenkel Film Festival