Casablanca

Casablanca, "in French Morocco"

It's an allegory that challenged the prevailing myth of "the American" who was self-reliant, unsentimental, and indifferent to the "problems of the world". The miracle of it is that the screenwriters were able to put across what in one respect is a ham-fisted piece of propaganda packaged in an immaculate, ever-compelling story. And quite apart from such high-brow theorizing about the work itself is the quintessential American drama of how it was made, with a cast and crew of European refugees and Hollywood's studio-system churning at the very top of its game. Finally, I would challenge you to find any work that has made more contributions to the lexicon of American speech. Go on, be a rank sentimentalist and produce a segment on Casablanca.

Steven