I was thinking about Casblanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942) recently after a friend showed it in a college film class. A bit of dialogue that’s long puzzled me suddenly made a speculative sort of sense. It’s in the Parisian flashback, an exchange between Sam (Dooley Wilson) and Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in La Belle Aurore:
“The Germans’ll be here pretty soon now, and they’ll come looking for you. And don’t forget, there’s a price on your head.”But Rick is planning to leave Paris with Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and Sam. What might “They'll know where to find me” mean? It occurs to me after all these years that the line might be meant to suggest that Rick’s note read “Go to hell.”
“I left a note in my apartment. They’ll know where to find me.”
comments: 7
Oh, that’s good! I’d never caught the oddity of what Rick said—Yours is a clever and surely quite likely solution.
There’s so much that’s odd. One tiny example: when Victor asks for a table close to Sam and as far away from Major Strasser as possible, Rick says that the geography might be difficult to arrange, and then immediately announces a table number. Huh?!
I watch that movie many times – – it was a favorite when I was a teenager – – but I think I’ve never looked at it with a critical eye! It’s what I’ve never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with it – – lol. I think it would be fun to watch it again and I’m sure I will discover many glitches…
No, there’s nothing wrong with it! As Umberto Eco said, Casablanca is “the movies.” But the plot is rickety, and no one knew until late in the game how the movie was going to end. I’m newly puzzled about whether Rick ever meant to leave with Ilsa. The Nazi dossier says that he cannot return to the States for some unknown reason.
Yes, I’m more convinced than ever that Rick planned, after Ilsa comes to his room, to give them the transit letters. If I remember right, Louis praises Rick at the airport for being a man who has “thought of everything,” which links back to the idea that Rick will “think” for both himself and Ilsa.
I like that Eco essay a lot and almost mentioned it in an email.
That seems to be the moment, when Ilsa encourages Rick to say (now that he has Ilsa) that he’ll help Victor and Rick agrees to do the thinking for everyone. Which would mean that he’s deceiving Ilsa all the way to the airport. I may have watch this movie again.
Have to watch...
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