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Library presents ‘Casablanca’

Bogie and Bergman light up the screen

The Waupaca Area Public Library will screen “Casablanca” at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, May 4.

Dr. Jack Rhodes will introduce the movie, which concludes the library’s spring series of First Thursday Films.

Admission is free and open to the public. Complimentary popcorn, sodas and theater snacks will be provided.

“Casablanca,” Rhodes said, won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1943 and is widely regarded by film critics as one of the top two or three finest examples of studio films of the Classic Era.

Rhodes noted that the renowned critic Leonard Maltin is on record as calling it “the best movie ever made by Hollywood.” The movie stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman as two people who fall in love as the Nazis invade Paris and then take their own separate routes to a coincidental reunion in Casablanca in French Morocco.

The strong supporting cast includes Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Claude Rains, Dooley Wilson and Peter Lorre. Director Michael Curtiz also won an Oscar for his efforts on this film.

Rhodes said the movie has a slick, fast-moving and witty script by Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard W. Koch, working from an unpublished play by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison called “Everybody Comes to Rick’s.” Most of the film’s action takes place either in flashback or in one major setting, Rick’s American Cafe, over a period of just a couple of days.

Several famous lines from the film have passed into the common vocabulary, Rhodes said, including: “Play it, Sam” and “Round up the usual suspects.”

The showing of this film, which was popular at the time of its release during World War II, is dedicated to veterans of all branches of the United States Armed Forces.

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