Julius J. Epstein

Dooley Wilson, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca CASABLANCA Review Part IV – Ingrid Bergman The ending is good — Louie and Rick talk of leaving Casablanca after Louie covers for Rick's killing the Nazi Major Strasser — but there is nothing either actor does that lifts the scene above its own well-written basis. Then there is Strasser's portrayer, Conrad Veidt, an actor perhaps best known for his role in Robert Wiene's 1919 silent classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Simply put, is [...]

Paul Henreid, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Humphrey Bogart in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca CASABLANCA Review Part I Once again, this is not to say that the Casablanca screenplay — credited to Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch — lacks charm; the comic scenes in the film, such as those involving the pickpocket, are good, but compare them with the deeper and blacker humor of some of the scenes in Stanley Kubrick's far superior Paths of Glory; for instance, the sequence where one of [...]

CASABLANCA (1942) Direction: Michael Curtiz Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, S. Z. Sakall, Dooley Wilson, Joy Page Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch; from Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" Oscar Movies Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Casablanca By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: About three years ago, I finally gave in to watch Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) for the first time. I had hesitated because [...]

Upon learning of author J.D. Salinger's death at the age of 91, I immediately thought of Phil Alden Robinson's Academy Award-nominated 1989 drama Field of Dreams, in which Kevin Costner's character sets out to find a reclusive writer played by James Earl Jones. In W.P Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, the character is Salinger himself, but not surprisingly, the reclusive real-life Salinger refused to allow the use of his name in the film. Hence, Robinson and Universal were able to cast a black actor in the [...]