Singer, Barnett. "'CASABLANCA' IN ITS TIME -- AND OURS." Contemporary Review; Oct2005, Vol. 287 Issue 1677, p233-237, 5p

Casablanca speaks the message that no matter what the year is, what side we are on, how desolate or enslaved our lives may be, we always have choices. Even in Vichy Morocco, Rick made a choice at the end of the movie to become involved and fight for what is right. The film also speaks to a semblance of realism at the time. The actors had backgrounds that allowed them to draw on real life feelings and experiences to portray the characters. Bogart, Henreid and Bergman all had off screen personalities that helped to form a basis for there characters.

Although the film has many connections to reality, parts of the film are not perfectly accurate of Unoccupied French Morocco. The Vichy regime was not historically as bad as portrayed in the film. French intelligence did work to hinder the German KIA by wiretapping phones and providing false information. Information dealing was a large part of life in Casablanca. Everybody from waiters to chambermaids sold information. Serge-Henri Parisot and his team led extensive counterintelligence against the Germans. He found people who had escaped from the Germans and along with having them tell him what they know, he used them to break and “repair” German telephones with bugs installed. Casablanca got some of the atmosphere of the real city correctly: the information and black market exchanges, the attitudes of many in the city; However, in regards to the villianization of the Vichy government, the film does not do accurate justice to the independence and French loyalties of the government against the Nazis.