Casablanca is one of the most famous films of the 1940s. The movie contains some of the most familiar dialogue and images in any Hollywood (see entry under 1930s—Film and Theater in volume 2) film. Most of the action takes place in Rick's bar in Casablanca, Morocco, in North Africa, where refugees from a Europe ravaged by World War II (1939–45) gather to wait for their U.S. visas (documentation on a passport giving permission to travel). Casablanca has an unoriginal plot and characters made up from a set of stereotypes: a cynical, clever American; a ruthless German; a weak but brave Frenchman; and an untrustworthy Arab. It is all the more surprising then that the film should have caught not only the mood of the time but the imaginations of millions of filmgoers ever since.

Casablanca was a low-budget movie, one of fifty filmed that year by Warner...