European actors in the U.S. were typically cast as “foreigners” – whether the country the actor was from matched the nationality of the role character, that is, whether the spoken accent was right, was of secondary importance. Peter Lorre starred in the famous exile film Casablanca (1942) as an Italian black market dealer and notorious gambler. Signor Ugarte is not a very sympathetic individual. He is a highly dubious-looking man who exploits the desperation of the refugees. He makes a business out of the visas that the refugees require to continue their journey. In this scene he tells the nightclub owner Rick (Humphrey Bogart) that he has the two blank exit papers that have been stolen from the bodies of two murdered German officers.

In the evening he wants to sell them for a high sum to the resistance fighter Victor László (Paul Henreid) and his wife (Ingrid Bergman). After this he plans to save himself, since he is also stuck in Casablanca. Slouching, devious, on guard – this is how Lorre often acted his roles after playing a child killer in Fritz Lang's M (1931). His image as a mentally ill villain even pursued him to Hollywood.