What may seem to us like a throw-away line at the end of the movie, about Rick going to the Free French garrison at Brazzaville, would have meant much more to the audience when the film was released. In mid-1942 when the film was probably still in production, there was a major diplomatic dispute between the U.S. and Vichy France. The Vichy government under Pierre Laval strongly protested the appointment of a U.S. consul general in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa, without their consultation. The U.S. government made it very clear that they intended to deal with Free French forces wherever they were in effective control, as they were in Brazzaville. (Uncoincidentally, a proposed sequel was to be called Brazzaville. Ingrid Bergman was not available, so Geraldine Fitzgerald was considered for Ilsa before the project was killed. It was not until the late 1990s and Michael Walsh's novel "As Time Goes By" that a true sequel ever came to pass.)

Film

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