Casablanca
THE STORY OF THE SHOT
How iconic images came to life
POUND FOR POUND, there may be no more quotable film finale than that of Casablanca. “Here’s looking at you, kid”; “If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life”; “Round up the usual suspects”; “We’ll always have Paris”; and “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”. Hit after hit after hit after hit.
Most of those lines of dialogue can be can be attributed to two of the film’s credited writers, twin brothers Julius and Philip Epstein (the third credited writer, Howard Koch, worked separately from the pair). Needing an ending for Michael Curtiz’s World War II movie (made, lest we forget, slap-bang in the middle of said war) that resolved the film’s central love triangle between Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa Lund and Paul Henreid’s resistance leader Victor Laszlo, but which also conformed to the Motion Picture Production Code — not a fan of extra-marital fornication — and painted Bogie in a heroic light, they went for a drive.