Casablanca (film) 14, 2012, at Sotheby's for more than $600,000 to an anonymous bidder. The piano Sam "plays" in Rick's Café Américain, put up for auction with other film memorabilia by Turner Classic Movies at Bonhams in New York in November 2014, sold for $3.4 million. Although an initial release date was anticipated for early 1943, the film premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca. It went into general release on January 23, 1943, to take advantage of the Casablanca Conference, a
Casablanca (film) All the characters react to what the plot dictates to them; the plot does not organically flow from their personae." Umberto Eco wrote that "by any strict critical standards ... "Casablanca" is a very mediocre film." He viewed the changes the characters undergo as inconsistent rather than complex: "It is a comic strip, a hotchpotch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects." However, he added that due to the presence of multiple archetypes which allow "the power of Narrative in its natural state without Art intervening to discipline it", it is a movie reaching "Homeric