Director: Michael Curtiz
Writers: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch, Murray Burnett, Joan Alison, Casey Robinson
Photography: Arthur Edeson
Music: Max Steiner ("As Time Goes By": Herman Hupfeld)
Editor: Owen Marks
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Dooley Wilson, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S.Z. Sakall, Madeleine Lebeau
In one way or another Casablanca has been with me all my adult life, earning something of the status of a favorite uncle—with its kindliness and predictable pleasures, and not a few flaws (though my perception and indeed judgment of them seem to change all the time), and most of all a soothing familiarity, it's a known quantity that weathers many storms of cinema fashion and just goes on enduring. Something I have been able to return to again and again.
When people talk about glories of Hollywood, this is not necessarily the very first place I go, but it's always among them. It's so big and ripe and luscious, such a piece of work to fall in with, so sweeping and engaging, from its very first shot, a slow zoom on a revolving globe and the map animation that follows as a voiceover spells out the context, all the way through to its fogbound ending.
