Goofs for
Casablanca (1942) More at IMDbPro »

• Continuity: A knight on the chessboard disappears momentarily in the opening chess game.
  
  
• Continuity: The man who is shot escaping from police dies next to an arch where a woman suddenly appears.
  
  
• Continuity: Rick's tie is suddenly knotted differently when he sees Ilsa in the bazaar.
  
  

• Continuity: When Rick gets on the train after standing in the rain, his coat is completely dry.
  
  
• Continuity: The Venetian blinds in Victor's and Ilsa's hotel room.
  
  
• Continuity: While chatting to Captain Renault outside the Café Américain, Rick lights a cigarette, then in the next shot, lights another.
  
  
• Continuity: While Captain Renault is chatting with Rick outside the Cafe Americaine, the medal to the left on Relault's tunic clearly extends below the pocket flap. In the next scene the medal is significantly smaller and does not extend below the pocket flap.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: The fact that Louis' fake phone call to the airport fools Rick shows that the letters of transit are meant to be used as exit documents. Yet in the end, the Laszlos board without anybody ever checking the documents. If once Louis was a hostage he could get the Laszlos around any exit check, why did Rick insist on the letters of transit being filled out? He did it to make it "even more official"; the Laszlos would be protected in case there was an unexpected document check later, either on arrival at Lisbon, or at Casablanca if someone else arrived on scene and events did not continue as planned.
  
  
• Continuity: At the airport, the epaulets on Major Strasser's coat disappear and reappear between shots.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the trumpet and trombone players raise their instruments to play "La Marseillaise", the music begins a split second before they start playing.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Yvonne is kicked out of Rick's in the first scene there, the comments she shouts as she walks outside don't match her lip movement at all.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Just after the scene where Ugarte gives Rick the "letters of transit", Sam is playing "Knock on Wood". The drummer isn't actually playing the drums.
  
  
• Continuity: An extra (elderly man with white goatee and hat) is shown being herded into the police station along with other "usual suspects" and in the very next shot is seen along the street peering upward at the plane landing from Lisbon.
  
  
• Continuity: In the hangar scene at the airport, the bottles of "Vichy water" on the shelf below the table change positions between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rick receives the transit documents from Ugarte, he pockets them in his inside right pocket. When he gets them out and puts them on Sam's piano, he gets them out of his left inside pocket.
  
  
• Continuity: When Victor goes to get the papers from Rick, he takes off his hat and stands with his arm by his side. A second later he is suddenly holding his lapel, and subsequently lowers his arm again.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the bartender spins Rick around on his chair and kisses him on both cheeks, saying, "Boss, you've done a beautiful thing," Rick smacks him on the back and replies, "Get away from me, you crazy Russian." We hear the sound of the smack quite a while after Rick hits the bartender.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Rick tells Louis to make out the transit papers in the name "Mr. and Mrs. Victor Lazlo", Ilsa moves toward Rick with her mouth moving. She is obviously saying, "Why my name?" which is the line she delivers in the next shot.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Renault says, "We mustn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918." The Allies had only occupied small sections of German territory by the time of the Armistice and never approached Berlin. Some people think it strange that Berlin-born Conrad Veidt, who played Strasser, didn't point it out on the set. It is likely, however, that Renault was merely being sarcastic to Strasser and that it isn't a factual error at all.
  
  
• Factual errors: There is a French tricolor with crescent and star in the middle waving over the Police offices at the beginning of the film. Such flag was never used in Morocco. During the time of the French Protectorate the flag of Morocco was the same as today, red with a green pentagram in the middle. The civil ensign used between 1923 and 1956 added a small French tricolor in the canton but never a crescent and star.
  
  
• Continuity: Early on in the movie, from the perspective of the band, you see that Sam has his piano facing towards the band. When we see it again a few moments later, the piano is facing away from the band.
  
  
• Errors in geography: In the map at the beginning of the film, the map shows what is supposedly Casablanca. However, Casablanca is not that far north. The city actually shown is more like Tangier, as Casablanca, while a coastal city, is actually farther south.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Major Strasser is supposed to be a Gestapo officer, yet he wears the uniform of a Luftwaffe major. However, since the Gestapo is the German secret police it is entirely likely that Strasser would wear any uniform or none at all, as a deception.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rick is listening to Annina explain the situation in Bulgaria with his back to the camera, we see him take a drink of brandy. The shot switches before he put his glass down. But in the new shot with the camera facing him, Rick only has a cigarette in his hand and the brandy glass isn't visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When he enters in the Rick's, Ugarte passes through the people who are in the doorway and turns to his right. The subsequent shot shows him walking to the left, behind Rick.
  
  
• Continuity: When Major Strasser talks with Rick about Laszlo, he leans his elbows on the table and crosses his fingers. In the next shot he is raising his right hand to join his left. And after, between cuts, he appears with both arms leaning on the table.
  
  
• Continuity: Laszlo enters Rick's and sits down with Ilsa on his left-hand side. Soon after, when a woman begins to play guitar and to sing, Laszlo appears sitting with Ilsa on his right side.
  
  
• Continuity: Ilsa sends the waiter to call Sam. Sam pushes the piano to Ilsa's table. When Rick comes to reprimand Sam for singing "As Time Goes By," he is standing next the piano, which Sam has pushed away from the table. In the next long shot, Rick is a little ways from Ilsa's table, which has changed places.
  
  
• Continuity: When Laszlo enters Rick's for the first time, he puts his hat on a chair next to the one he sits in. Later, before Capt. Renault sits on the same chair, Laszlo picks up the hat and puts it on the floor. When Laszlo leaves, he does not pick up his hat. But when he leaves Rick's, he is holding his hat.
  
  
• Continuity: When Carl sits with a couple of friends, he finishes pouring the brandy and rubs his hands together. In the following shot, his right hand is resting on his left arm.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rick has a discussion outside and they are regularly bathed with the lighthouse light every few seconds the time for a full turn varies due to cuts in the scene.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: While accompanying Sam on "If I Could Be With You", the guitarist pats her instrument in rhythm, yet the sound we hear can only be made when the guitar is actually strummed.
  
  
• Continuity: During the discussion between Rick and the police captain in the captain's office, the cigarettes keep changing - sometimes missing, burned at different lengths, etc.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rick places the letters of transit under Sam's pile of sheet music on the piano, the sheet music is on the right side (from the back) and Sam's ashtray and drink are on the left. Later the drink and ashtray are on the right and the sheet music is on the left.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: At the very beginning we see a turning globe as a voice describes the plight of those fleeing the war. As the globe turns, we can see across the Soviet Union. The description, Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, is not wrong. Although it was not used as frequently as Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it is an accepted translation of the Russian name.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: There are multiple instances throughout the film where the action of Sam's hands on the piano bears no resemblance to the piano part heard. Especially notable is the first time Sam sings "As Time Goes By" for Ilsa; a rapid treble run is executed that would have necessitated the movement of his right forearm. None is seen.
  
  
• Continuity: When Rick has a drink of bourbon with Signor Ferrari in the Blue Parrot, Ferrari puts the cork back in the bottle. In the next shot the bottle is uncorked.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the flashback scene in Paris, loudspeaker trucks are shown with the Gestapo telling the Parisians not to act when the Germans arrive tomorrow. In fact, Paris issued no warnings about the German advance at all. The German blitzkrieg overwhelmed the French so completely that all communications were either stymied or went astray.
  
  
• Continuity: When Victor and Ilsa first go to the Blue Parrot in search of exit visas, the parrot sitting outside is clearly a different bird than the one sitting outside later in the film when Rick comes to see Ferrari.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: After police break up underground group's meeting and Laszlo escapes to Rick's café, Laszlo is trying to bandage his arm with a dish towel. The towel falls off several times yet there is no blood on it.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Throughout the film, liquor bottles are seen with revenue stickers across the tops of the bottles. Liquor in Casablanca is not subject to US revenue taxes. As the film wasn't actually shot in Casablanca, this was overlooked.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Rick and Ilsa are listening to the sound of German guns out the window in Paris, Rick comments that they are from the "New German 77s". Actually, the German Army used a 77 mm. field gun in World War I, not World War II. The script writers, (or perhaps Rick himself) may have been thinking of this older weapon.
  
  
• Plot holes: During the flashback scene in Paris, Bergman translates to Bogart the Gestapo message about the Germans reaching Paris the next day: it seems very unlikely that she should to wait for the German message to understand and translate it, since it was broadcast in French only seconds before, and both characters should understand French.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It is widely believed that Ugarte clearly says that the Letters of Transit are "signed by General De Gaulle." This would have rendered them useless in Casablanca, as Charles De Gaulle was the leader of the Free French Forces, which was actively fighting against the Nazi-controlled Vichy regime that controlled, among other territories, French Morocco (thus controlling Casablanca). De Gaulle's name is shown on both the English and Spanish subtitles of the DVD, including the Blu-ray version. However, if you listen carefully, Ugarte names General Weygand (who was then Vichy Minister of Defense, whatever that means in an occupied country). The French subtitles have it correct.
  
  
• Factual errors: Major Strasser is wearing the uniform of a Luftwaffe Major, however, he's also wearing stripes down both sides of his trousers. Only German Generals wore stripes on their trousers.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the flashback scene in Paris, Rick is driving a car with right hand drive (British style). Cars in France use left hand drive.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When making the bet about Laslo getting away from Casablanca, Captain Renault states that he's seen the woman traveling with Laslo; but when he greets her, he says he was told that she was beautiful.
  
  

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