MOVIETALK: What made Casablanca great ?

This classic Hollywood melodrama of the forties was lucky on several counts. It nearly starred Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan instead of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It happened to provide good parts for Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S. Z. Sakall, and especially Claude Rains; its mood anticipated the film noirs which came full flood at war's end; it hit the news acidentally by being released shortly before the Casablanca conference; and almost as an afterthought it had Dooley Wilson singing "As Time Goes By." Of course, it didn't hurt that it had a tense and witty script and skilled direction as this comparatively modest professional spy thriller just happened to wrap up a whole era in an entertaining package.