First of all, let me note that I made an error in my review of The Maltese Falcon. The 41 variant of that film was released first, not Casablanca. I don't know why I reversed the order, but I did.
Casablanca was released for general circulation on January 23, 1943.
At that time, Morocco was just recently brought into the Allied orbit. Allied troops had landed there in November, 1942 with the landings being part of Operation Torch. The Moroccan landings, much less discussed than the Algerian ones, actually took place at Casablanca. French forces resisted the Allies briefly in Algeria and Morocco, before formally switching sides as part of a negotiated turn about in early November, 1942. Casablanca was the host that January to the Casablanca Conference between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, where the policy of unconditional surrender was announced and agreed upon.
So how's the film hold up?
Well, the movie doesn't take place in 1943, it takes place in December, 1941, just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The US isn't yet in the war. Morocco is in the hands of the Vichy French, although at the end of the movie we learn about a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, a city in French Equatorial Africa. Casablanca is, as the movie depicts it, as sweaty den of vice, filled with refugees seeking desperately to get out of Morocco and on to freedom somewhere else. In the center of it is Rick's Cafe American, where everyone goes. Working into this, we have Victor Laszlo, a Central European resistance leader and his beautiful wife Ilsa Lund, played by Ingrid Bergman. Lund, we learn, was the girlfriend of Rick of Rick's Cafe, who proposed to her just as Paris was set to fall, not knowing that she was already married to Laszlo. Laszlo and Lund need "letters of transit" to leave Morocco, and Vichy French control, and the cynical world-weary Rick is believed to have obtained them from the oily Signor Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre. Through it all a charmingly corrupt Inspector Renault, played by Claude Rains, weaves his way.
If you haven't seen it, see it. This is another film which, by some people's measure, is the "greatest" movie ever made, although it isn't as great as the film commonly taking that prize, in my view, that being Citizen Kane. It's a great movie, however. And it's all the more amazingly great when you realize how much the making of the film was beset by all sorts of difficulties.
But what of its place in history. Was Casablanca of 1941 like the way it was portrayed in this 1942/43 film?
Well, probably surprisingly close.
Places under European colonial administration were bizarrely reservoirs of traditional cultures, advancement of European ideas, and massive corruption. All three are shown to exist in the film and, if in exaggerated fashion, probably not too exaggerated really. Morocco was controlled by Vichy at the time. Brazzaville actually was beyond Vichy control and French Equatorial Africa was held by France Libre, a Free French movement. Portugal was a neutral and a destination for people trying to get to the United Kingdom and beyond, or for that matter into Spain and then Nazi Germany through France.
Letters of Transit? Nope, no such thing. It is, after all, fiction.
In terms of material details, well the film was a contemporary picture, and it has the pluses and the minuses noted in our review of the Maltese Falcon. Male costumes, more or less correct, with Bogar again wearing a Borsolino fedora, maybe the same one. Women's fashion? Well, women refugees probably almost never traveled with a radiant wardrobe.
Well worth seeing, however.
The movie had a limited release on Thanksgiving Day, 1942, in New York City.
It was not known to the general public that Franklin Roosevelt was in Casablanca, Morocco, at the time.
The 8th Army captured Tripoli. We erroneously had this date reported a couple of days ago.
US forces successfully concluded all major ground operations on Guadalcanal, effectively bringing the campaign to a conclusion, the second such conclusion in the Pacific in two days.
British commandos, with Norwegian support, raided Stord, a Norwegian island, in Operation Cartoon and put a pyrite mine out of commission for a year.
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