Casablanca Was Heavily Censored
Classic Romance Is Now Available in Affordable Blu-ray Version
Casablanca, is Michael Curtiz’s celebrated (and heavily censored) WWII romantic drama about the cynical American bar owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), his married lover Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), and the French Police Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), who likes Rick, but would gladly throw him in jail. For nearly a year, this beloved black and white classic was only available to Blu-ray aficionados in the expensive (US$65) Ultimate Collectors Edition Box Set. Now, a reasonably priced Blu-Ray version is available at a US$29 list price and discounted by many retailers.
It’s about time. Casablanca is rated the #3 film on The American Film Institute (AFI) list of “Top 100 Films,” and voted the Most Romantic Movie ever made in an internet vote collected by Moviefone.com.
Important Plot Points
For those of you who don’t remember the story here’s a synopsis:
- In 1941, cynical expatriate Rick (Humphrey Bogart) runs a bar in the dangerous and mysterious North African city of Casablanca.
- Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), Rick’s lost love from Paris, arrives at the bar with her husband Victor (Paul Henreid) a renowned anti-Nazi resistance leader.
- Victor and Ilsa are being threatened with prison by the Nazi Captain Stasser (Conrad Veidt) and the police chief Captain Renault (Claude Rains).
- While Sam (Dooley Wilson) the piano player sings “As Time Goes By,” Rick and Ilsa rekindle their adulterous love affair.
- Rick holds two valuable letters of transit which will get one couple out of Casablanca to safety in Lisbon. But which couple will it be?
It says a lot about us that we label Casablanca a romantic love story instead of a tale of adultery and deceit.
The Censor Makes Rick and Ilsa Adulterers
Strangest of all, the reason that there is adultery in Casablanca is because of censorship in defense of morality. As Frank Miller documents in his book Casablanca: As Time Goes By, Joseph I. Breen was head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA) the industry’s self-installed censor. Breen reviewed the film’s script and found several areas which he labeled “unacceptably sex suggestive.”
Of special concern was the fact that Ilsa was traveling around Europe and North Africa and sharing hotel rooms with Victor “a man who is not her husband”. This is why the screenwriters had to come up with the complicated explanation about Ilsa thinking Victor was dead when she met Rick in Paris and finding out he was alive on the morning she and Rick (and Sam) were going to leave on the train. The irony is that when the censor made an “honest woman” out of Ilsa by marrying her off to Victor, the same script change made Ilsa an adulteress with Rick.
Censors Cut Sex Scene
A further example of the MPPDA’s censorship is the scene where Ilsa goes to Rick’s Casablanca apartment to try to get the letters of transit. In the draft screenplay on file in the Warner Brothers Collection at USC, there is a clear indication that Rick and Ilsa had sex. but the MPPDA insisted that there should be no hint of a sexual liaison. In a letter dated June 18, 1942 Breen wrote: “The present material seems to contain a suggestion of a sex affair which would be unacceptable if it came through in the finished picture. We believe this could possibly be corrected by replacing the fade out on page 135, with a dissolve and shooting the succeeding scene without any sign of a bed or couch, or anything whatever suggestive of a sex affair.” When you watch Casablanca the next time pay special attention to the scene in Rick’s apartment. You will see that Breen’s directions were followed completely.
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