Casablanca Tid-Bits
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plot:
Casablanca is a 1942 film set during World War II in the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine and Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund. It focuses on Ricks conflict between, in the words of one character, love and virtue: he must choose between his love for Ilsa and his need to do the right thing by helping her husband, Resistance hero Victor Laszlo, escape from Casablanca and continue his fight against the Nazis.
Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, the owner of an upscale cafe/bar/gambling den in the Moroccan city of Casablanca which attracts a mixed clientele of Vichy French and Nazi officials, refugees and thieves. Rick is a bitter and cynical man, but still displays a clear dislike for the fascist part of his clientele.
A petty crook, Guillermo Ugarte (Peter Lorre), arrives in Ricks club with “letters of transit” he has obtained by killing two German couriers. The papers are signed by a French general (the pronunciation is muffled, it may be Charles de Gaulle or Maxime Weygand), and allow the bearer to travel at will around Nazi-controlled Europe, including to neutral Lisbon, Portugal, and from there to the United States. These papers are almost priceless to any of the continual stream of refugees who end up stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to make his fortune by selling them to the highest bidder, who is due to arrive at the club later that night. However, before the exchange can take place, he is killed trying to evade the local police, under the command of Ricks close friend Captain Renault (Claude Rains). As a corrupt Vichy official, Renault accommodates the Nazis, but remains ambivalent about their influence in Casablanca. Unbeknownst to either Renault or the Nazis, Ugarte had left the letters with Rick for safekeeping, because “somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust.”
At this point, the reason for Ricks bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover, Ilsa Lund (Bergman) arrives with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Henreid), to purchase the letters. Laszlo is a famous Resistance leader from Czechoslovakia with a huge price on his head, and they must have the letters to escape. At the time Ilsa first met and fell in love with Rick in Paris, she believed her husband had been killed by the Nazis. When she discovered that Laszlo was in fact alive, she left Rick abruptly without explanation and returned to Laszlo, leaving Rick to feel betrayed.
The trios awkward conversation is interrupted when a group of German officers, led by Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt), begin to sing the Wacht am Rhein, a German patriotic song from the nineteenth century (the producers wanted to use the Nazi Horst Wessel Lied, but it was copyrighted by a German publisher). Laszlo tells the house band to play La Marseillaise. The French customers join in and drown out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser orders Renault to close the club.
Despite initially refusing to give the documents to Ilsa, even at gunpoint, Rick eventually decides to help Laszlo. He and Ilsa reaffirm their love for each other and she believes that she will stay with Rick when Laszlo leaves. Captain Renault is forced at gunpoint to assist in the escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa get on the plane with Laszlo, telling her that she would regret it if she stayed. “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.” Rick shoots Major Strasser when he tries to intervene. When the police arrive, Renault saves his life by telling them to “round up the usual suspects”. He then suggests that they both go join the Free French. They disappear into the fog with one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
reception:
Murray Burnett has called it “true yesterday, true today, true tomorrow”.
criticism
Roger Ebert has claimed that the film is “probably on more lists of the greatest films of all time than any other single title, including Citizen Kane”, because of its wider appeal; while Citizen Kane is “greater”, Casablanca is more loved.[1]
Renault begins the film as a collaborator with the Nazis, who extorts sexual favours from refugees and has Ugarte killed. Rick, according to Behlmer, is “not a hero, … not a bad guy”: he does what is necessary to get along with the authorities and “sticks his neck out for nobody”. Even Ilsa, the least active of the main characters, is “caught in the emotional struggle” over which man she really loves. By the end of the film, however, “everybody is sacrificing”.
A dissenting note comes from Umberto Eco, who wrote that “by any strict critical standards… Casablanca is a very mediocre film”. He sees the changes the characters undergo as inconsistency rather than complexity: “It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects”. However, he argues that it is this inconsistency which accounts for the films popularity by allowing it to include a whole series of archetypes: unhappy love, flight, passage, waiting, desire, the triumph of purity, the faithful servant, the love triangle, beauty and the beast, the enigmatic woman, the ambiguous adventurer and the redeemed drunkard. Central is the idea of sacrifice: “the myth of sacrifice runs through the whole film”.[6]
________
RICK BLAINE:
Rick: I stick my neck out for nobody.
Rick: Im not fighting for anything any more except myself.
Im the only cause Im interested in.
Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: Thats so long ago I dont remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.
Louis: And what in heavens name brought