The action in Casablanca takes place on December 2, 3 and 4, 1941. . . . Part of the beauty of the script, though, is that it can be understood on many levels. It is the story of three little people. It is also an allegory about America's entry into WWII. Rick is America. Weary, cynical, with an idealistic past but unwilling to get involved. Rick says that he sticks his neck out for noone. Ferrari tells him that isolationism is no longer a viable foreign policy. Ilsa, Laszlo, Strasser and Renault are the various faces of Europe. Old enemies, old allies and new victims, all eager to know what American will do. Will America act selfishly or will it act idealistically? Of course, by 1943, when the film was released, that ending was already known. Casablanca was rushed out to coincide with the American landing in North Africa and the fighting for Casablanca, which is what led to its initial success. It is, of course, no accident that the movie is set during the first week of December, 1941. . . .
You can certainly draw parallels to current events, or you can just watch it because it's a good movie.
Posted by: Mike ||
12/03/2007 08:40 ||
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#1
What always amazed me about this movie is the slapdash way it was written, they didn't even have the ending when they started filming, yet it all came together perfectly. Still ranks in my opinion as the best movie ever made.
#3
I watched part of Citizen Kane the other night on TCM -- all pretense and camera angle.
Casablanca gets my vote as best movie ever made.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/03/2007 14:24 Comments ||
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#4
I gotta agree with Fred. IMHO, as entertainment, CK rates right up there with watching paint dry. (A film for the critics/effete elite if ever there was one.) But it did give us "rosebud"! (Quick quiz: name any other line from CK. I can't) On the other hand, there must be legions of folks who can recite the whole script of Casablanca from memory...
#7
While not as experienced as JFM, I heartily concur. While the French film industry was indisposed at the time, Madeleine LeBeau was a French woman even if in an American film. And perhaps her experience as related by IMDB explains the power of her performance and the authenticity of her tears:
Fleeing from the Germans in 1940, she and her husband eventually reached Lisbon, where they obtained visas to Chile, but on reaching Mexico they learned that these were forgeries. They eventually obtained temporary Canadian passports and ended up in the US.
#9
Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.
An exceprt from a chavistablogger in Caracas. My Favorite statement: We have always said that constitutions are bits of paper that reflect the balance of forces at any given moment. The real battle will be between living people outside the realms of assemblies and parliaments.
As the delay from in the announcement of the results by the National Electoral Council went on into the early hours of the morning we knew that something serious was going on. Chavez had promised to resign if the proposals were rejected. Was he preparing his resignation speech?
When he did appear and spoke of the willingness of people to engage in democratic voting systems, we knew that he had lost and that the proposals for constitutional change would be shelved, POR AHORA, for now. Yet he did not resign. He still has another 5 years as president and although the changes to the constitution would have taken the revolution forward ON PAPER, the fact is that at the moment the process of the revolution is deepening on the streets, in the barrios and in the workplaces.
This will be a setback for Chavezs supporters. And Chavez himself will now come under terrific pressure from some of is own so-called supporters in the state bureaucracy who will advocate a slowing down of the changes and an accommodation, a reconciliation with the opposition. But how in a relatively backward capitalist country like Venezuela, where the bourgeoisie is tied by a thousand threads to the interests of multinational conglomerates and imperialism and is therefore incapable of taking Venezuelan society forward, can you have a reconciliation between the forces of capital and the forces of labour? SUCH A RECONCILIATION WOULD BE AT THE EXPENSE OF ALL THE REFORMS THAT HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT AS THE BOURGEOISIE SEEKS TO RECOVER ITS DOMINANCE IN THIS COUNTRY.
Will Chavez be able to resist these pressures? If he relies only on the state bureaucracy, no. If he now mobilises the ranks of the Socialist Party and encourages the setting up of councils in the workplaces, on the land, in the universities and barrios, and brings these councils together at local, regional and national level as alternative organs of power, then he will have a solid social and political base to carry through reforms not on paper but with the living forces of the working class, the peasantry, the marginalised sectors and the students.
We have always said that constitutions are bits of paper that reflect the balance of forces at any given moment. The real battle will be between living people outside the realms of assemblies and parliaments. Yes, the result is a setback, but only that. It is not a defeat. Many battles have been won by the Bolivarian Revolution in this war, this battle was lost. The war however continues, and has to continue, because capitalism can offer nothing to the people of Venezuela and Latin America.
A starting point in the counter attack must be the war on economic sabotage, the withholding of products from supermarkets by capitalist firms. If people have the food that they need, the basis of support can be rebuilt. The next point of attack must be to take on the state bureaucracy to weed out those who are deliberately sabotaging the pace of existing reforms and to attack head on the corruption that exists. These two measures alone IN DEEDS will do far more to reactivate the basis of Chavezs support than ALL THE WORDS that have been spoken about the need to move towards socialism.
#1
Wow, this is like reading Chinese commie stuff. Organizing, mobilizing at the local, regional, and national levels, political base, and the ever-popular imaginary saboteurs. Hard to believe this is actually happening today.
#2
Gromky, I hate to bring it to you, but stupidity is not an exception, it is a fundamental law of the universe. Leftism is just one expression of stupidity.
#3
Once his opponents start disappearing, you will know the process is complete. Mao got to where he was by liquidating all opposition. Once Chavez begins a murder spree, it is all over.
Wonder if this red on red is an indication of a growing awareness among the old MSM that they're fighting or will be fighting over the same ever diminishing pool of 'customers' for their advertisers?
#2
Tim's unhappy becasue their self-serving agenda is not the same as his self-serving adgenda.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/03/2007 7:25 Comments ||
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#3
Ha ha ha...the LA Times criticizes CNN. The nerve.
And I love the second-to-last sentence, after an article bashing Republicans - "Beside considerations like these, CNN's incompetent failure to weed out Democratically connected questioners pales."
Few reports about the Islamist threat are more alarming than the situation right now in Pakistan--a nuclear-armed country that Washington hails as a "major non-NATO ally."
Having supported Musharraf's regime, Washington is now scrambling--pressing Musharraf to share power with opponent Benazir Bhutto, then insisting that he's "indispensable," but also considering whether Bhutto would be better, if Musharraf falls from power.
All this against the backdrop of the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan. Islamist fighters once "restricted to untamed mountain villages along the [Pakistani-Afghan] border," now "operate relatively freely in cities like Karachi," according to Newsweek. The Taliban "now pretty much come and go as they please inside Pakistan." They are easily slipping in and out of neighboring Afghanistan to arm and train their fighters, and foster attacks on the West.
Why is Washington so unprepared to deal with this danger to U.S. security? The answer lies in how we embraced Pakistan as an ally.
Pakistan was an improbable ally. In the 1990s, its Inter-Services Intelligence agency had helped bring the Taliban to power; Gen. Musharraf's regime, which began in 1999, formally endorsed the Taliban regime; and many in Pakistan support the cause of jihad (taking to the streets to celebrate 9/11). But after 9/11, the Bush administration asserted that we needed Pakistan as an ally and that the alternatives to Gen. Musharraf's military dictatorship were far worse.
If the administration was right about that, we could have had an alliance with Pakistan under only one condition: treating this supposedly lesser of two evils as, indeed, evil.
It would have required acknowledging the immorality of Pakistan's past and demanding that it vigorously combat the Islamic totalitarians as proof of repudiating them. Alert to the merest hint of Pakistan's disloyalty, we'd have had to keep the dictatorial regime at arm's length. This would have meant openly declaring that both the regime and the pro-jihadists among Pakistan's people are immoral, that our alliance is delimited to one goal, and that we would welcome and support new, pro-American leaders in Pakistan who actually embrace freedom.
But instead, Washington evaded Pakistan's pro-Islamist past and pretended that this corrupt regime was good. We offered leniency on Pakistan's billion-dollar debts, opened up a fire-hose of financial aid, lifted economic sanctions, and blessed the regime simply because it agreed to call itself our ally and pay lip-service to enacting "reforms." After Musharraf pledged his "full support" and "unstinting cooperation," we treated the dictator as if he were some freedom-loving statesman, and effectively whitewashed the regime.
Since we did not demand any fundamental change in Pakistan's behavior as the price of our alliance, we should not have expected any.
Pakistan's "unstinting cooperation" included help with the token arrests of a handful of terrorists--even as the country became a haven for Islamists. Since 2001, Islamists have established a stronghold in the Pakistani-Afghan tribal borderlands (where bin Laden may be hiding). But our "ally" neither eradicated them nor allowed U.S. forces to do so. Instead in 2006 Musharraf reached a truce with them: in return for the Islamists' "promise" not to attack Pakistani soldiers, not to establish their own Taliban-like rule, and not to support foreign jihadists--Pakistan backed off and released 165 captured jihadists.
Far from protesting, President Bush endorsed this appeasing deal, saying: "When [Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says" this deal will stop "the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaeda, I believe him."
We have gone on paying Pakistan for its "cooperation," to the tune of $10 billion in aid. The Islamists, who predictably reneged on the truce, now have a new staging area in Pakistan from which to plot attacks on us (perhaps, one day, with Pakistani nukes).
Why did our leaders evade Pakistan's true nature? Faced with the need to do something against the totalitarian threat, it was far easier to pretend that Musharraf was a great ally who would help rid us of our problems if we would only uncritically embrace him. To declare Musharraf's regime evil, albeit the lesser of two evils, would have required a deep moral confidence in the righteousness of our cause. The Bush administration didn't display this confidence in our own fight against the Taliban, allowing the enablers of bin Laden to flee rather than ruthlessly destroying them. Why would it display such confidence in dealing with Pakistan?
But no matter how much one pretends that facts are not facts, eventually they will rear their heads.
This is why we are caught so unawares by the crisis in Pakistan. Our blindness was self-induced.
Posted by: anonymous5089 ||
12/03/2007 09:17 ||
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#1
"When [Musharraf] looks me in the eye and says" this deal will stop "the Talibanization of the people, and that there won't be a Taliban and won't be al-Qaeda, I believe him."
#2
Considering we had about zero possibility of evicting the Taliban from Afghanistan without Pakistani permission (i.e., overflights), Bush did the right thing.
Furthermore, I don't see where leaving the Taliban in Afghanistan would have made the current situation in Pakistan any better. I believe the country would be even more precarious.
from today's editorial page
"Muslims who wonder why non-Muslims are often baffled, angered, even frightened by some governments interpretation of Islamic law need only look to the cases of two women in Saudi Arabia and Sudan threatened with barbaric lashings...." however, they think the problem can be solved by having China put pressure on Sudan and the Arab League talk nicely to the Soddies
#2
I suspect if it was the Chinese navy patrolling the high seas they would not take the softly, softly approach we do. I doubt the Chinese would have a moment's remorse or worried introspection if Mecca was a radioactive crater.
#3
Sort of off topic...Alow me to make a point. yeah, yeah, yeah...china can hurt us in the pocketbook and all. I understand. And someday they will (maybe) come for Taiwan...yeah, yeah, yeah...However, for the forseeable future...in order for the Chicoms to put the USA in the back pocket corner...well... they have to know that - indeed they do know - we just might be willing to trade New York, Chicago, LA, Atlanta et al for Tiawan. The Chicoms, (just as the Ruskies were able to do) - can say : you wanna go back to the middle ages? So long as the Chicoms understand that if they so much as TRY to take the USA back to the middle ages, they understand that the Ming Dynasty will begin to look like modernity to them in about 1500 years FROM the time they launch on the USA. The chicoms understand this. Muzzies will not. That's the difference between the chicoms and muzzies. Chicoms give a damn whether or not their civ survives. Muzzies do not. The muzzies want civ to end in order to usher in the Final Days.
Posted by: Mark Z ||
12/03/2007 15:11 Comments ||
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#4
What one Muslim leader, Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, said about the Sudan case can also be applied to the Saudis: How does this help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are we portraying about our religion and our culture?
I would venture to say a very accurate and revealing one.
Interesting read. Excerpts below, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
The implication that the West will crush Islam by force borders on the absurd. Western armies, to be sure, could make short work of the military forces of any Muslim country, but what would they do then? Would they order Muslims to abandon their spiritual life in favor of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, the heroes of Hirsi Ali? The West cannot stop Muslims from burning in effigy the editors of a Danish newspaper in their own countries.
Secular liberalism, the official ideology of almost all the nations of Western Europe, offers hedonism, sexual license, anomie, demoralization and gradual depopulation. Muslims do not want this. In Africa, Christian missionaries go to Muslims and offer them God's love and the hope of eternal life. But I am aware of no Christian missionaries active in the Muslim banlieue (outskirts) of the Paris suburbs or the Turkish quarters of Berlin.
By contrast, there is indeed a war with Islam, and it is being won in parts of the world where Christians wage it on spiritual grounds. No Christian army has had to march in its support. Europe, meanwhile, is losing ground to Islam because it declines to fight.
Allah is no more subject to laws of nature than the nature-spirits of the pagan world who infest every tree, rock and stream, and make magic according to their own whimsy. The "carried-forward idea of the unity of God" to which Rosenzweig refers, of course, is the monotheism carried forward in outward form from Judaism, but dashed to pieces against the competing notion of absolute transcendence.
As Rosenzweig observes, "An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place, a Hobbesian war of each aspect of nature against all. Contemplation of nature in Islam is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. It is not surprising that Islamic science died out a generation or two after al-Ghazali.
It is a commonplace observation that Islam is "fatalistic". Muslims typically conclude any statement about the future, eg, "I'll see you at work tomorrow morning," with the qualifier, "Insha'Allah", "God willing". Because God is everywhere and in every action, acting without intermediate causes, the Judeo-Christian concept of divine providence is inconceivable in Muslim terms. If Allah refuses to be entangled by intermediate causes, no divine plan could possibly exist that humankind cannot understand directly, but works itself out through God's intermediaries. Rather than providence, Islam believes in the old pagan fate, the summation of the innumerable capricious acts that Allah in his absolute transcendence performs at every instant.
Allah is everywhere, which is to say that Allah is nowhere in particular.
#2
"An atheist can say, 'There is no God but God'." If God is everywhere and in all things, he is nowhere and in nothing. If there are no natural laws, there need be no law-giver, and the world is an arbitrary and desolate place"
I always find it interesting that atheists want to keep their eyes and minds down here in this gutter we call earth. Mind you, there are many beautiful things in this world and I'm not complaining. That said, you'd have to be blind, deaf and dumb (or just intentionally look away) not to likewise see all of the cruelty, injustice and sorrow in this world.
Religion allows the soul to be freed from the shackels of this earth, to look upward and above, like he beautfiul voices of a choir lifting their voices upward towards the heavens. It provides hope for the future and beauty for the soul. And in the process, this combined effort of mankind makes this world a better place on family, one neighborhood, one community at a time.
#5
"Ideology counts---when it does the counting with a sword" Christopher Anvil
That's a true statement, but one only need look at western civilization to see that it doesn't count for everything.
jingoisms can't create a reality, they can only reflect it. The most peaceful, prosperous, and crime-free civilizations have been in countries where the Christianity was the dominant religion. The foundation of Jewish law and Christian charity are solid and enduring.
You don't need to believe to be able to see that simple fact.
#1
"Indeed Muhammad was a man of murder," the pig, voiced by Keller himself, states in the video. "He was a pedophile, having a wife at the age of six. And I came to find out that the Quran really is nothing more than a book of fairy tales."
Way to good to be true, this guy has some honest balls!!!
#3
I still think it would be a great idea to manufacture a fictitious person who would be the focus of Muslim hate. A cross between Salman Rushdie and Emmanuel Goldstein. An apostate who both wrote anti-Muslim screeds, and whose supposed writings had caused large numbers of Muslims to convert to other religions.
Then let it slip out on the terrorist net that he lived in some rural place in the US.
In a house that you have to take a very specific route to find, involving a lot of turns that led in the direction of that house and nowhere else.
The zinger is that the route, and the house itself, are a trap. All kinds of sensors and surveillance set up, and even a helpful gas station to catch any dumbass journalists or "friendlies" who want to visit the house and interview the guy.
Put in right across the border in a special zone on a federal reservation with strict penalties against weapons possession, which is also designated a top nuclear weapons espionage target.
You don't charge them with being assassins, you charge them with being spies. One way ticket to the Florence, Colorado maximum security prison for life. The living death.
The object of the exercise would be to take out both sleeper cells and lone wolves already in the US.
#5
* correction * Every church I have been to in the past 30 years where the message for a Sunday service was regarding Islam by the pastor, the pastor stated the same historically accurate facts about this thug Mohammed.
#6
I am less optimistic at what I would hear from my local Anglican ministers. My heart is with the C of E, but the church that built the Empire not the anemic farce it has become. I would not be surprised if the Archbishop of Canterbury declares he is a muslim.
Islam - "This is what Satan did." Dr. W.A. Criswell
This Pastor predicted, I believe in this sermon back in 1988, that Islamists would strike the US from the air in this remarkable sermon. He starts with the beginning of the the Arab, to Mohammed, and then to today.
#10
Penguin honesty over the vile threat of islam works. It may piss off people like you but that's what happens when the facts are laid out. Yes Muhamhead was a pedophile, yes he was a murderer and yes he made the whole moon goddess thing up to control a bunch of thugs in the desert.
Let me put it another way, if someone did this describing someone leaving the Nazi party during WWII would you and the liberals be as offended?
I saw some other videos the pastor posted and I can't find anything incorrect in what he is saying.
Bring it on you meteorite worshipers! We'll battle you anyway we can.
The holiday season is here, and that means it's time to engage in the time-honored Christmas tradition of objecting to every time-honored Christmas tradition. Australia is a gazillion time zones ahead of the United States it may even be Boxing Day there already so they got in first this year with a truly fantastic headline:
"Santas Warned 'Ho Ho Ho' Offensive To Women."
Really. As the story continued: "Sydney's Santa Clauses have instead been instructed to say 'ha ha ha' instead, the Daily Telegraph reported. One disgruntled Santa told the newspaper a recruitment firm warned him not to use 'ho ho ho' because it could frighten children and was too close to 'ho', a U.S. slang term for prostitute."
If I were a female resident of Sydney, I think I'd be more offended by the assumption that Australian women and U.S. prostitutes are that easily confused. As the old gangsta-rap vaudeville routine used to go: "Who was that ho I saw you with last night?" "That was no ho, that was my bitch."
But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared with the universal right to freedom from offense. It's surely only a matter of time before "sensitivity training" is matched by equally rigorous "inoffensiveness training" courses. A musician friend of mine once took a gig at an elevator-music session, and, after an hour or two of playing insipid orchestral arrangements of "Moon River" and "Windmills of Your Mind," some of the lads' attention would start to wander, and they'd toot their horns a little too boisterously. The conductor would stop and admonish them to bland things down a bit. In a world in which everyone is ready to take offense, it's hard to keep the mood Muzak evenly modulated.
For example, when I said the right not to be offended is now the most "sacred" right in the world, I certainly didn't mean to offend persons of a nontheistic persuasion. In Hanover, N.H., home to Dartmouth College, an atheist and an agnostic known only as "Jan and Pat Doe" (which is which is hard to say) are suing because their three schoolchildren are forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Well, OK, they're not forced to say it. The pledge is voluntary. You're allowed to sit down, or, more discreetly, stand silently, which is what the taciturn Yankee menfolk who think it's uncool to sing do during the hymns at my local church. But that's not enough for "the Does." Because the pledge mentions God, their children are forced, as it were, not to say it. And, as "Mr. and Mrs. Doe" put it in their complaint, having to opt out of participation in a voluntary act exposes their children to potential "peer pressure" from the other students. U.S. courts have not traditionally been sympathetic to this argument. The ACLU and other litigious types might more profitably explore the line that the Pledge of Allegiance is deeply offensive to millions of illegal aliens in the public school system forced to pledge allegiance to the flag of a country they're not citizens or even legally admitted tourists of.
Let us now cross from the New Hampshire school system to the Sudanese school system. Or as The Associated Press headline put it:
"Thousands In Sudan Call For British Teddy Bear Teacher's Execution."
Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crumbiest basket-case dumps on the planet whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world anyway, Mrs. Gibbons was sentenced last week to 15 days in jail because she was guilty of, er, allowing a teddy bear to be named "Mohammed." She wasn't so foolish as to name the teddy Mohammed herself. But, in an ill-advised Sudanese foray into democracy, she'd let her grade-school students vote on what name they wanted to give the classroom teddy, and being good Muslims they voted for their favorite name: Mohammed.
Big mistake. There's apparently a whole section in the Quran about how, if you name cuddly toys after the Prophet you have to be decapitated. Well, actually there isn't. But why let theological pedantry deprive you of the opportunity to stick it to the infidel? Mrs. Gibbons is regarded as lucky to get 15 days in jail, when the court could have imposed six months and 40 lashes. But even that wouldn't have been good enough for the mob in Khartoum. The protesters shouted "No tolerance. Execution" and "Kill her. Kill her by firing squad" and "Shame, shame to the U.K." which persists in sending out imperialist schoolmarms to impose idolatrous teddy bears on the youth of Sudan.
Whether or not the British are best placed to defend Mrs. Gibbons is itself questionable after a U.K. court decision last week: Following an altercation with another driver, Michael Forsythe was given a suspended sentence of 10 weeks in jail for "racially aggravated disorderly behavior" for calling Lorna Steele an "English bitch." "Racially aggravated"? Indeed. Ms. Steele is not English, but Welsh.
Still, at exactly the time Gillian Gibbons caught the eye of the Sudanese authorities, a 19-year-old Saudi woman was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail. Her crime? She'd been abducted and gang-raped by seven men. Originally, she'd been sentenced to 90 lashes, but her lawyer had appealed and so the court increased it to 200 and jail time. Anybody on the streets in Sudan or anywhere else in the Muslim world who wants to protest that?
East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying "Ho ho ho," teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the "war on Christmas" and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West's litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.
Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there's a woman who's genuinely offended by hearing Santa say "ho ho ho" just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they've established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The action in Casablanca takes place on December 2, 3 and 4, 1941. . . . Part of the beauty of the script, though, is that it can be understood on many levels. It is the story of three little people. It is also an allegory about America's entry into WWII. Rick is America. Weary, cynical, with an idealistic past but unwilling to get involved. Rick says that he sticks his neck out for noone. Ferrari tells him that isolationism is no longer a viable foreign policy. Ilsa, Laszlo, Strasser and Renault are the various faces of Europe. Old enemies, old allies and new victims, all eager to know what American will do. Will America act selfishly or will it act idealistically? Of course, by 1943, when the film was released, that ending was already known. Casablanca was rushed out to coincide with the American landing in North Africa and the fighting for Casablanca, which is what led to its initial success. It is, of course, no accident that the movie is set during the first week of December, 1941. . . .
By Elan Journo
