Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Madeleine LeBeau, Dooley Wilson, Szoke Sakall, Leonid Kinskey, Joy Page, John Qualen, Curt Bois
Richard “Rick” Blaine (Bogart) is an expatriate American who, late in 1941, owns and operates a thriving establishment in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. The establishment, Rick’s, is a combination nightclub, restaurant and gambling casino. Morocco is controlled by a French Vichy government that, although collaborating with Nazi Germany, has enough political independence to allow Casablanca to serve as a gateway for refugees from war-torn Europe wanting passage to non-aligned countries. Casablanca is milling with people desperate to find a way out, and with thieves, smugglers, spies, and traffickers in forged documents. Many of them come to Rick’s for food, drink, or gambling, and often to conduct clandestine deals. Rick has done well for himself in Casablanca; he has developed a functional understanding with cheerfully corrupt Police Captain Louis Renault (Rains). Remaining aloof from the denizens that patronize his club, Rick enjoys bantering with rival club owner Ferrari (Greenstreet) and is apparently at peace with himself. And then, one evening, a woman named Ilsa Lund (Bergman) walks into his club, accompanied by Victor Laszlo (Henreid), an expatriate Czechoslovakian. Ilsa is the woman Rick loved, until she unaccountably left him in Paris eighteen months earlier, when the city surrendered to Germany. Laszlo is a freedom-loving political leader sought by the Nazis. Rick learns that the two are married, and that they seek a way out of Morocco. Ilsa meets Rick alone, offers an explanation for abandoning him in Paris, and asks his help in obtaining documents of transit that would permit travel out of Morocco. Rick finds himself caught up in a series of intrigues that place him, the woman he loves, and the course of freedom in peril. Major Strasser (Veidt) of the German Police is about to make some arrests, and Rick has little time in which to make crucial decisions. Based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison.
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