Yes, let us note that Ilsa, far from being the smart, man leeching savvy person portrayed by Stranger, stays in Paris with a man who is hunted by the Nazi’s and wounded to the point of needing much nursing to health, wants to stay in Casablanca originally, even though Victor offers to purchase her way out of the city, and shows up at the airport believing that she’s flying the coup with a man who isn’t even allowed to go back to America (Rick). If she is a person who capitalizes on attaching to a man of fortune, it seems she should have been named Teela.
Ilsa rocks!
Years ago, the late Morley Safer appeared in the famous role of rick-in a bar that looked just like Rick’s Cafe Americain. I wonder of somewhere in the WB studio, all the props are still kept?
Finally, the guy played by Sidney Greenstreet (Senor Ferrari-owner of the Blue Parrot)-was he also a corrupt businessman? He certainly wanted tobuy the letters of transit.
EVERY character played by Sydney Greenstreet was a corrupt businessman!
I agree with you mainly, but his character in “Between Two Worlds” was scarcely that. Just a nit pick. 
I like Stranger’s analysis a lot. It’s just the kind of through-the-looking-glass take on an old favorite (my favorite movie of all time, as it happens) that sheds new light on it and makes me think. I like that. I can’t say I agree with him, but he makes some good and mostly-plausible points and got me wondering anew about this wonderful movie, and for that I thank him.
I seem to remember a novel which came out in the early '80s in which “the rest of the story” for virtually every major movie character of the 1930s and '40s was described. Don’t remember what happens to Rick and Renault, but Ilsa outlives Victor and eventually ends up as an advisor to fellow Swede Dag Hammarskjold, dying with him in the 1961 plane crash that killed the UN Secretary General.
Thanks. By no means do I claim my hypothesis to be definitive, but I think it makes far more sense than the conventional interpretation, and also gives more credit to Ilsa as a character rather than a plot device. The traditional view of Ilsa is scarcely more than a weak-minded fool: “Oh, I don’t know what’s right any longer. You’ll have to think for both of us, for all of us.” Laszlo, the supposed genius leader of the European Resistance scarcely comes off better; he accepts his wife’s equivilation without debate while she essentially leaves him at the mercy of Rick. I think my hypothesis at least gives some intellectual dignity back to the characters, and treats them as if they’re thinking and occasionally rational human beings rather than machinations of the plot.
Now, about “My Three Sons”…
Stranger
Sooo…
I watched the movie this week so I can post from fresh perspective and I just can’t see it your way Stranger.
As noted above Ilsa choose’s to stay in Nazi occupied Paris with a man actively being hunted by the Nazis at the height of their power rather than flee with a man who’s shown his ability to land on his feet.
When they first meet in the cafe Ilsa’s crying when she sees Rick. Now think about it, she expects Lazlo to return with the letter’s in about 5 minutes and they’ll be gone by dawn. She has no idea Ugarte’s been pinched, and certainly none that Rick has the letters, or any idea how he feels about her. Sure you could spin a tale of woe that takes her from the person who stayed in Paris to the person who starts playing Rick in the cafe on the remote possibility that she might need him, but come on.
She would had to’ve been quite psychic to have hitched her wagon to Lazlo’s star in '40-41 on the possibility of his post war career, Vegas odds would have been 2 to 1 he gets his head blown off.
One interesting point for me: when Lazlo tells her that Rick won’t give him the letters and suggested he ask his wife why, she aks “whatever I do will you believe…” and Laslo cuts her off and says you don’t even have to say it I’ll believe. She’s already planning on confronting Rick, but it’s like a replay of the Bulgarian couple only with a couple of survivors instead of innocents
Set? No; the film was shot on a soundstage and it was undoubtedly used for something else within weeks of the end of principal shooting. The props, on the other hand are warehoused and known. I remember on the movie’s 50th anniversary watching a program about it on CBS, with Harry Reasoner sitting at one of the tables used in Rick’s along with a couple of the glasses and the odd push-down cigarette lighter we see Rick using when we first see him.
I checked my copy of “Casablanca: Script & Legend” by Howard Koch (one of the screenwriters), for Ugarte’s dialog re: the letters of transit. It says “signed by General DeGaulle [Marshal Weygand] himself…”
No explanation. Possibly the script read one thing, and Peter Lorre said another?
Does it say anything about what Rick throws at the table while speaking with Laszlo?
Naw. It’s just dialog, no stage directions.
It does describe the mural in the opening sequence, but in French (“Je tiens mes promeses, meme celle les autres”) and doesn’t give a translation.
Very interesting. Weygand wasn’t a Marshal of France! Except for that detail, however, General Maxime Weygand would have been the ideal candidate to sign the letters, since he was the military commander in French North Africa–until he was dismissed for being insufficiently pro-German in November 1941.
Of course, any screen writer hip enough to know that Weygand was no longer a good candidate (in December 1941, when the movie takes place) should have been hip enough to avoid De Gaulle. Carrying anything signed by DeGaulle in Vichy France would have been the surest way to get arrested.
But again, within the fictional universe of the movie, I maintain that whoever “really” signed the letters, Ugarte butchered the name–after all, he was stressed out, in fear for his life, and speaking something other than his native language at the time. All those generals were just a bunch of “generic important Frenchmen” to him.
Sam’s ‘piano’ was sold at auction a few years back. It was a dummy, and proportionally scaled down so that Bogart (rather short for a movie star) wouldn’t look like Mister Chad peering over the top of it.
Why were TWO couriers required to transport these to Casablanca? And who were they for? Why was it so damn hard to leave Morocco in the first place? You would think that these letters of transit were for some important big shot-so he/she could leave the dump! Why not just drink yourself sill at ricks, and buy an exit visa from Ugarte or Ferrari, or whoever-I bet if you paid Capt. Renault enough, he would sell you one.
I just cant imagine that EXIT visas were so hard-one would think that entrance visas would be the hard thing to get.
Still the movie is an all-time great.
It wasn’t as easy to travel around during wartime as it is in peacetime. You could, but you’d better have a damn good reason to get the documentation you require; or you took your chances without the necessary documents, which was dangerous because if you didn’t have the proper papers, you’d probably be seen as a spy.
It’s always been my impression that the “letters of transit” functioned as a free pass (or, if you prefer, a diplomatic passport) to move the bearer in any direction across any Vichy French border. Thus, if you could get into Vichy France (which butted up against German-occupied territory) you could travel anywhere within Vichy French territory–so, as the narrator say at the beginning, if you could get to Marseilles, you could then travel to Oran in Algeria, and from there, on to Morocco. That’s easy enough because it was all Vichy French territory, but to get out of Morocco and on to neutral Portugal, you needed the letters of transit in order to pass Moroccan exit controls before you headed out onto the ramp and into the aircraft. We don’t see Ilsa and Victor showing their letters of transit to any Moroccan official before they get on the plane, but they must have–many countries, even today, have exit controls at their borders, airports, and seaports. The US and Canada do not, but many other nations do: the UK and Australia are two examples of modern Western nations that have exit controls. It is not unreasonable to believe Ilsa and Victor passed some sort of checkpoint in the airport before heading for the plane. Especially a plane that is flying out of Morocco.
I’m going to conjecture a little here, but it seems to me to be a reasonable conjecture. The reaon that the letters allow Ilsa and Victor to leave because their authority (the signature) completely bamboozles the low-level official who is staffing the exit controls. It’s not Strasser or his people there; it’s a poorly paid Moroccan or Vichy French official who doesn’t know Victor Laszlo from Adam. All he sees is that the bearers (Victor and Ilsa) have the necessary documents that allow them to leave. So he lets them pass. My impression has always been that the letters were much like a diplomatic passport–the bearer passes through the exit control without any questions or searching. But it was this “free pass/diplomatic immunity” aspect that made the letters so important.
As for “paying Captain Renault enough,” you could. Remember the young man wo was trying to win enough at roulette to buy two exit visas for him and his wife from Renault. But also recall that Renault was offering a discount for something other than cash. 