Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam is a 1972 American romantic comedy directed by Herbert Ross, written by and starring Woody Allen, and based on his 1969 Broadway play of the same name. Allen plays Allan Felix, a film critic whose wife has left him and who receives romantic advice from a hallucinated Humphrey Bogart, played by Jerry Lacy; Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts co-star as the married couple Linda and Dick Christie.^{1 • 2} The film opens with the final scene of Casablanca (1942) and ends with a parody of that ending, complete with plane propellers, fog, and trenchcoats.^{1 • 3}

The title and the misquote

The title comes from a line widely attributed to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, but Humphrey Bogart never actually said "Play it again, Sam", neither in Casablanca nor in any other Bogart film the movie references.² The AFI Catalog notes the phrase became a cultural phenomenon even though it was never spoken in those exact words in the original film.¹ One audience reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes makes the same point: Bogart simply says "play it" near the end of his farewell speech.⁴

From stage to screen

Allen wrote the play for the Broadway stage and starred in the original production, which was a popular success; his inspiration was Casablanca, which won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture.⁷ When Paramount bought the play for the movies, Allen was signed to write the screen adaptation and to play the lead as he had on Broadway.⁷ Although he had already directed three features, What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966), Take the Money and Run (1969), and Bananas (1971), he did not direct this film. "I would never want to direct a play into a movie," he told Cinema in March 1972, adding that he adapted the play in about 10 days ("It was so easy to do") and hoped Ross would deliver "a nice, solid, funny commercial picture" that would entice a broader audience than his own films.²

Herbert Ross began as a dancer and choreographer with the American Ballet Theater in his twenties and moved into choreographing Hollywood films from the mid-1950s, including Carmen Jones (1954), Doctor Dolittle (1967), and Funny Girl (1968).² The film was produced by Arthur P. Jacobs and Charles H. Joffe through Apjac Productions and Rollins-Joffe Productions.^{1 • 2}

Keaton, Roberts, and the Allen ensemble

It was during auditions for the stage production that Diane Keaton first met Allen, and their professional collaboration developed into a romantic relationship.⁵ Keaton starred as Linda Christie in the original 1969 Broadway production, which earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play, and she reprised the role in the film.⁵ Allen worked with Keaton for the first time on Play It Again, Sam; over 1971 to 1993 the two would make eight movies together, among them Annie Hall, Sleeper, and Manhattan.⁵ Tony Roberts also appeared in the Broadway play and made the film, and went on to appear in Annie Hall (1977), Stardust Memories (1980), A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Radio Days (1987).⁸

Music and craft

Billy Goldenberg composed the original music, and the Oscar Peterson Trio performed "Blues for Alan Felix," written for the film.¹ The soundtrack also uses Max Steiner's incidental music from Casablanca and Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By," sung by Dooley Wilson, who is listed in the onscreen credits as the singer.¹ Owen Roizman was the cinematographer, Marion Rothman the editor, and Ed Wittstein the production designer.¹

Reception and significance

Saturday Review found Allen "never so droll or so touching under his own direction," and critical praise for Keaton boosted her career after her appearance in The Godfather (1972).² The film made Allen a star with mass-audience appeal for the first time and was financially successful: his 10 percent of the gross brought him more than $1 million in profits.² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 97% Tomatometer from 37 reviews and an 89% audience score.⁴ A Time Out review called the working out of the parallels with Casablanca "masterly," with plenty of good sight gags and one-liners.⁴

Scholarship has treated the film as a key case in intertextual allusion. Noel Carroll's account of allusion in postclassical American filmmaking distinguishes films that cite earlier texts to critique old Hollywood from those that cite them nostalgically, and Elizabeth Marquis of McMaster University's Center for Leadership in Learning has analyzed Play It Again, Sam to show that intertextual allusion can be at once deconstructive and nostalgic.⁹ Peter J. Bailey, author of The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen, presents the film as the introduction to Allen's cinema in its use of self-conscious dramatic and cinematic tropes to convey the contrast between Allan Felix's lack of self-esteem and his imagined Bogart's swaggering confidence, and notes that it introduces themes Allen's work would return to, including the centrality of films and filmmaking in his movies.¹⁰

References

1. Play It Again, Sam (1972), AFI Catalog
2. Play It Again, Sam, Turner Classic Movies, review by Rob Nixon (2005)
3. Play It Again, Sam, Paramount Pictures
4. Play It Again, Sam, Rotten Tomatoes
5. Eight special items from the Diane Keaton auction series, Wallpaper
6. Play It Again, Sam streaming, JustWatch
7. Woody Allen and His Tweed Jacket, by Steve Siporin, American Film (2013)
8. Stage and film actor Tony Roberts dies at 85, AP News
9. We'll Always Have Bogart: Allusion, Nostalgia, and Critique in Play It Again, Sam, Journal of Popular Film and Television 39(4), 2011
10. Strictly the Movies: Play It Again, Sam, in Peter J. Bailey, The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen, 2nd edn, 2016

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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