The B-Side of Casablanca
“Round up the usual suspects!” (Capt. Renauld, “Casablanca”, 1942).
Sixty years later the movie appears as best love movie of all times on the ranking of the American Film Institute. Though the decision to produce it as an A-movie was made right after the attack on Pearl Harbor. With this increased importance Ronald Reagan, B-actor at Warner Brothers, lost his chance to become a leading character. Even so at one moment in time Bogart and Reagan were aspirants for the same job. When Casablanca was shown in Europe in 1958 it went through interventions of censorship: The most radical in Germany where 25 % of the pictures were removed and parts of the story changed by synchronization. So Casablanca, best love movie of all times, is also one the most precarious cases of censorship and a perfect interlacing between military- and filmindustry.
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