Welcome to Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm your host, Glen Holland.

Tonight's film released in 1942, is the classic wartime romance, "Casablanca".

It was directed by Michael Curtiz and stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains.

The impressive supporting cast includes Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S.Z.

Sakall, and Dooley Wilson.

The film is set in the early days of December, 1941.

American expatriate, Rick Blaine, runs a popular nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca in French Morocco.

The city is filled with refugees from the Nazis, who wait for the chance to flee to Lisbon, and from there to the United States.

Among them, are Victor Laszlo, a Czech resistance fighter who has escaped the Nazi concentration camp, and his young female companion, Ilsa Lund.

A Nazi officer, Major Strasser, has recently arrived in Casablanca to ensure that Victor Laszlo never leaves the city.

The corrupt Prefect of Police, Captain Louis Renault, assists him despite his distaste for Strasser and the Vichy regime established by the Nazis in France.

Ugarte, a petty criminal, entrusts Rick with two letters of transit stolen from murdered German couriers.

Since the letters of transit assure the bearer's safe passage from Casablanca to Lisbon, they're virtually priceless in a city filled with refugees.

Ugarte is captured by the police before he can retrieve the letters.

Rick is left with the letters of transit and the question of whether he will use them to allow Victor Laszlo to escape Casablanca with Ilsa Lund, the woman Rick met and loved in Paris before she disappeared without explanation, leaving Rick heartbroken.

The idea of Casablanca as a city of intrigue, filled with spies, criminals and corrupt officials, may have had some basis in fact.

But it was also the product of the movie industry's fascination with the outpost of European colonialism and the subject peoples who lived there.

Warner Brothers's 1938 film "Algiers" starring Charles Boyer as the jewel thief, Pepe le Moko, and Hedy Lamarr as the woman who steals his heart, is a classic example.

"Algiers" contributed several elements to "Casablanca", including the decision to name the film after the colonial city in which it takes place.

Although many refugees escaped Nazi Europe by the route described that the beginning of "Casablanca", including the film's technical advisor, Robert Eisner, the more usual route went from Germany through Vienna, Prague, Paris, and England.

Lisbon was a point of departure for the United States because Portugal was neutral during most of the Second World War.

Director Michael Curtiz was a Hungarian Jew who immigrated to the United States in 1926 to work for Warner Brothers.

But some of his relatives were refugees from Nazi Europe.

When he joined Warner Brothers, Curtiz had already directed 64 silent films in various European countries, including Hungary, Austria and Denmark.

He was one of the most prolific directors in film history with a career stretching from 1913 to 1962.

He had directed all sorts of movies before "Casablanca", from swashbucklers like "Captain Blood" in 1935 and "The Adventures of Robin Hood" in 1938, to historical dramas like "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" in 1939, to westerns like "Dodge City", also in 1939.

And those are just the films starring Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland.

Just before "Casablanca", Curtiz also directed the musical "Yankee Doodle Dandy", based on the life of Broadway legend, George M Cohan.

The film won its star, James Cagney, his only Academy Award for best actor.

Curtiz initially spoke little English and continued to have a heavy accent throughout his life, sometimes making it hard for his crew to understand him.

When asked how he could make American films despite being a latecomer to the United States, Curtiz said "Human beings are the same all over the world".

"Human emotions are international".

He would do extensive research to ensure his films were authentic to their time and place.

He said, "The only things that are different, in different parts of the world are customs, but those customs are easy to find out if you can read and investigate".

"Downtown there is a fine public library".

"There you can open a book and find out anything you want to know".

Although "Casablanca" was a major studio film with established stars and first-rate writers, no-one involved with its production expected it to stand out among the hundreds of other pictures produced by Hollywood in the early 40s.

"Casablanca" was rushed into theaters in late November of 1942 to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier.

The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success and managed to garner eight Academy Award nominations and to win for best picture, best director for Michael Curtiz, and best screenplay for twin brothers, Philip and Julius Epstein.

The Epstein Brothers adapted the screenplay from an unproduced drama titled "Everybody Comes to Rick's".

Julius later downplayed the importance of "Casablanca".

In 1984, he dismissed it as, "Just a routine assignment".

"Frankly, I can't understand its staying power".

"If it were made today, line-for-line, each performance is good, it'd be laughed off the screen".

And there are some major problems with the plot.

In reality, Victor Laszlo would've been arrested upon his arrival in Casablanca.

The letters of transit that enabled their bearers to leave Vichy French Territory, are little more than a MacGuffin, something necessary to the plot and motivation of the characters, but otherwise meaningless.

The letters of transit were in fact invented for the original play, and as Ugarte might say, "Never questioned".

Yet "Casablanca" has gone on to become one of Hollywood's best-loved films, always ranking high in lists of the greatest movies of all time.

Ingrid Bergman later said, "I feel about "Casablanca" that it has a life of its own".

"There is something mystical about it".

"It seems to have filled a need, a need that was there before the film, a need that the film filled".

Then there is the historical moment "Casablanca" represents.

It was made during the early years of American involvement in the Second World War, when France and much of Europe was under Nazi control.

During the scene in Rick's Cafe, when a group of Germans singing "Die Wacht am Rhein" are drowned out by Victor Laszlo leading "La Marseillaise", many of the extras had real tears in their eyes since a large number were actual refugees.

Only three members of the credited cast, Humphrey Bogart, Dooley Wilson, and Joy Page who played the young Bulgarian bride, Annina, were born in the United States.

In addition, among the 93 uncredited extras, over 70% were not American-born.

But an undeniable part of the film's appeal is the screenplay itself.

There is not a wasted scene, not a wasted moment.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, on the film's initial release, lauded its combination of sentiment, humor and pathos with top melodrama and bristling intrigue.

"Casablanca" also features some of the most memorable movie dialogue of all time.

"I stick my neck out for nobody".

"Kiss me".

"Kiss me, as it were the last time".

"Here's looking at you, kid".

"Play it, Sam".

"Play, 'As time goes by'".

You probably have your own favorites.

Because the script was still being written when the film went into production, the scenes in "Casablanca" were shot in sequence from beginning to end.

Howard Koch, who worked briefly on the screenplay, remembered, "Ingrid Bergman came to me and said, 'Which man should I love more?'"

"I said to her, 'I don't know, play them both evenly'".

"You see, we didn't have an ending, so we didn't know what was going to happen".

Would Ilsa end up with Victor Laszlo or with Rick?

If she chose Rick, the motion picture Production Code would demand that Laszlo die first, since films weren't allowed to depict adultery favorably.

This was already a problem with the script because of Ilsa's affair with Rick in Paris.

But that was excused because she thought her husband was dead.

The concern was less whether Ilsa would leave with Laszlo than how this would come about.

The problem was solved when the Epstein twins were driving on Sunset Boulevard and stopped for a red light.

They turned to each other and cried out at the same moment "Round up the usual suspects".

By the time they drove through the Warner Brothers Studio gates in Burbank, Julius later recalled, the idea for the farewell scene between a tearful Bergman and a suddenly noble Bogart, was in place.

Philip Epstein died of cancer in 1952 but his twin brother Julius, lived to the age of 91 dying on December 30th, 2000.

In later years, he often disparaged his work at Warner Brothers, including "Casablanca".

But his cynicism sometimes contained a grain of pride.

He once said the screenplay for "Casablanca" "contained more corn than in the States of Kansas and Iowa combined.

But when corn works, there's nothing better".

Please join us again next time for another Saturday Night at the Movies.

I'm Glen Holland.

Goodnight.