Casablanca U

The timeless Hollywood masterpiece Casablanca returns to the big screen in a new 4K restoration to celebrate its 80th anniversary.

Lovingly remembered for the Bogart-Bergman-Henried romantic triangle at its emotional heart, yet it is also arguably one of Hollywood’s most political films, which engaged head on with the impact of Nazism on Europe, and in no short measure, contributed to the mounting pressure in a reluctant America to get involved in WWII.

An extraordinary European film both in depicting the exhausting and desperate flight from fascism but also in the cast, a lot of whom had recent experience of that desperate escape. So much so that when filming the flashback scenes of Rick and Ilsa in Paris, some cast and crew broke into tears.

Overseen by Hungarian American director Michael Curtiz who personally convinced Warner Brothers to cast recent European refugees and exile actors, Casablanca is a deft mix of love story and politically engaged drama which got wisecracking Rick (America) off of his cynical isolationist fence. “Welcome back to the fight” as Victor Lazlo says to Rick at the end.