Ted Turner Rereleases "Casablanca" (April 10, 1992)

Casablanca has been subjected to many readings; semioticians account for the film's popularity by claiming that its inclusion of stereotypes paradoxically strengthens the film. Umberto Eco wrote:

Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works, in spite of aesthetic theories and theories of film making. For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it ... When all the archetypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred clichés move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.[140]
Eco also singled out sacrifice as a theme, "the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film".[141] It was this theme that resonated with a wartime audience who were reassured by the idea that painful sacrifice and going off to war could be romantic gestures done for the greater good.[142]

Koch also considered the film a political allegory. Rick is compared to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gambled "on the odds of going to war until circumstance and his own submerged nobility force him to close his casino (partisan politics) and commit himself—first by financing the Side of Right and then by fighting for it". The connection is reinforced by the film's title, which means "white house".[143]

Harvey Greenberg presents a Freudian reading in his The Movies on Your Mind, in which the transgressions that prevent Rick from returning to the United States constitute an Oedipus complex, which is resolved only when Rick begins to identify with the father figure of Laszlo and the cause that he represents.[144] Sidney Rosenzweig argues that such readings are reductive and that the most important aspect of the film is its ambiguity, above all in the central character of Rick; he cites the different names that each character gives Rick (Richard, Ricky, Mr. Rick, Herr Rick and boss) as evidence of the different meanings that he has for each person.[145]

Home media
Casablanca was initially released on Betamax and VHS by Magnetic Video and later by CBS/Fox Video (as United Artists owned the distribution rights at the time). In 1989, the Criterion Collection released a Laserdisc release sourced from a nitrate print that includes supplements such as an audio commentary by Ronald Haver, a treatment for an unreleased sequel and wartime footage of the city of Casablanca.[146] Criterion would issue a CLV version of this in 1991 with only the film and commentary. It was next released on laserdisc in 1991, and on VHS in 1992—both from MGM/UA Home Entertainment (distributing for Turner Entertainment Co.), which at the time was distributed by Warner Home Video. It was first released on DVD in 1998 by MGM, containing the trailer and a making-of featurette (Warner Home Video reissued the DVD in 2000). A subsequent two-disc special edition, containing an audio commentary by Roger Ebert, documentaries, Carrotblanca and a newly remastered visual and audio presentation, was released in 2003.[147]