Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz. It has a star-studded cast that includes Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. The film was based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's then-unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's. Warner Bros. bought the play for $20,000, which was the most anyone in Hollywood had ever paid for an unproduced play. It is set during World War II and focuses on a man torn between, in the words of one character, love andvirtue. He must choose between his love for a woman, and helping her and her husband escape from the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca so that her husband can continue his fight against the Nazis.
Although it was an A-list film, with established stars and first-rate writers, no one involved with its production expected Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary. It was just one of hundreds of pictures produced by Hollywood every year. The film was a solid success in its initial run and did well at the box office. The movie won three Academy Awards in 1944, including Best Picture. Its characters, dialogue, and music have become iconic, although one of the lines most closely associated with the film — "Play it again, Sam" — is a misquotation; Bergman's character actually says: "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'." The film consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.