If Laszlo escaped from a concentration camp, there would have been a Reich-wide BOLO issued for him. Since he was lucky enough to make it to Unoccupied France, it’s possible the Vichy authorities would have turned a blind eye to his presence until November 1942, when the Germans executed Operation ANTON in response to the Allied invasion of Northwest Africa.
If they existed, Letters of Transit would have been something like Exit Visas, which I had to get each time I wanted to leave the Russian Federation when I was working and living there back in the '90s. To get one, you had to tell your employer where you were going, when you planned to leave, and when you planned to return. I couldn’t even spend a week in the Baltics or Finland unless I had one, and I had to present it both leaving and coming back.
Love of movies doesn’t follow any trackable path of reason. I think I’ve cried. . . EVERY TIME I’ve watch Shawshank. And I’ve probably seen it 8 times or so. No lie.
And I’ve only seen Return of the King. . . maybe twice but I didn’t make it all the way through the 2nd time. And I don’t care to see it again. My opinion of Peter Jackson’s adaptation have not improved over the years.
I agree completely. The Dottie character simply would not deliberately tank, not for any reason. The movie fully established her drive, determination, and integrity. To suggest that was all a mirage?—nope, nope, nope!
Captain Renault: My dear Ricky, you overestimate the influence of the Gestapo. I don’t interfere with them and they don’t interfere with me. In Casablanca I am master of my fate! I am— Police Officer: Major Strasser is here, sir! Rick: You were saying? Captain Renault: Excuse me.
Later on,
Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louie? Captain Renault: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.
Not that they exist in the first place.
Much as we all love this movie, though, there are parts that, frankly, don’t make a great deal of sense. For example, um, why exactly is the runway wet in the climactic airport scene, when they’re in the Moroccan desert?
Not that anybody cares. And besides, these few problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed-up world, do they? One central error, though, three little words, conjures an idea so convincing and seductive, that it forms the impetus and backbone for the entire story, and reinforces the ways in which words can support journeys of all kinds.
I’m Joe Janes of the University of Washington Information School. No, there are no such things as letters of transit, but why let that get in the way of a good story? The idea of documents to facilitate travel goes back at least as far as Bible times; in the Old Testament, Nehemiah asks King Artaxerxes for permission to travel and is given a letter “to the governors beyond the river” requesting his safe passage. 2500 years later, the language in your passport is effectively the same thing, stated as a request to other countries to allow the bearer to pass “without delay or hindrance,” though of course it is just that—a request, subject to the laws and occasional whims of the other side of the river. It’s a diplomatic nicety, part and parcel of a complex system of controlling the movement of people across, and occasionally within, borders.
For a long time this was an informal, catch-as-catch-can system, not unlike Nehemiah. Nations were mostly kingdoms and domains, travel over great distances was uncommon and dangerous and only the noteworthy needed to ask for permission. The King’s License was required to enter or leave 11th century England, though clause 50 of Magna Carta guaranteed the right to come and go in 1215. For several decades, individual American states issued passports, which must have caused occasional amusement around the world; it was only in 1856 that the State Department was given exclusive authority to issue American passports.
…
The closest genuine document to a “letter of transit” is probably a “laissez-passer,” a safe conduct issued for one-way travel to the issuing country, sometimes for humanitarian reasons, but also to allow diplomats of newly enemy nations to leave after war is declared. But the actual letter of transit exists only in fiction, invented, seemingly quite casually, for the play and then adopted by Howard Koch in his mad scramble to concoct a screenplay for Casablanca, writing pages nearly as fast as they could be filmed. As the Peter Lorre character says, these letters would get the bearers out of the country: “Cannot be rescinded, not even questioned.” All well and good, but—he also says, in his exotic middle-European accent, that they’re “signed by General deGaulle.” Why, we are left to wonder, would the occupying Germans or even the collaborationist Vichy government care in the slightest about papers signed by deGaulle, who by late 1941 was in exile outside London? The printed screenplay suggests maybe he was supposed to say “Marshal Weygand,” a Vichy official of the time, though that’s hard to mistake for deGaulle. But c’mon—like it matters.
Travel documents are interwoven into the fabric of the film. In the first line of spoken dialogue, the police dispatcher describes the murder of two German couriers carrying the letters of transit. The opening narration also highlights the importance of exit visas—which are uncommon but real, often used by governments such as Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan who fear emigration. In 1940s unoccupied France, exit visas were indeed difficult to acquire because nations such as Spain and especially Portugal were continually changing their requirements, opening and closing their borders, frustrating people who desperately wanted to flee to the promise of the New World. The first 10 minutes of the film are filled with talk of exit visas, letters of transit, and the immortal “Can I see your papers?” leading to a man shot in the street rather than betray the Free France literature in his pocket.
The rest of the film is an increasingly intense search for those letters, against a backdrop of desperation
Slight hijack, but: this just now prompted me to rewatch the Columbo episode where Ricardo Montalbán (a) is perfectly capable of engaging in up-to-the-minute pistol marksmanship, but (b) showily declares, after reminiscing about his glory days as a matador, that he’s going to step into the bullfighting ring once again with little more than a swirly cape…
A passing knowledge of the case would be enough to show it up as a steaming pile…as far as accuracy goes.
However, it is still an excellent movie for those who can just go along for the ride, it is really well put together. I do fully understand that for many that might be too much of an ask.
The framing device used in “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” suggests the Grail did for Indy what John Coffey would later do for Paul Edgecomb in The Green Mile. Not immortal but granted a longer than usual natural life.
I apologize, I misread the post; I’ve never seen Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. I am confused and it will happen to you when you get this old – mark my, um…
I wasn’t a huge fan of League of Their Own. Don’t read if you loved it.
Summary
I kind of liked the first 20 minutes. The movie was being carried by Jon Lovitz up to that point. Consider that for a moment, Jon Lovitz carrying a movie… But then he left, Hanks came in, and aside from some impressive simulated urination he didn’t add much to the movie. I liked the idea of his character being based on Jimmy Foxx, one of the greatest baseball players of the pre-war era. Certainly the best all around player of the game in his time. He could and did play every position in the game. I’d like to see a movie based on his life. But I digress.
My point here is that by the end of the movie I didn’t care if she dropped the ball on purpose or not, I was just glad it was over. Lori Petty as usual did alright. So I give her and Lovitz a thumbs up, thumbs down on Hanks, Davis, Madonna, and O’Donnell.
The Weygand/DeGaulle confusion is because nowadays, few have ever heard of Weygand. The two names are similar (but different) in sound with the medial “g.” People who hear the name associate it with a name they do know. It’s similar to thinking Jimi Hendrix said, “'Scuse me while I kiss this guy.”
Note that Lorre and director Michael Curtiz heard the line. Both were expatriates and certainly wouldn’t allow the name DeGaulle to pass. It’s be like if the line said, “signed by Winston Churchill.” Everyone would know it was a mistake and correct it.
Regardless of what’s said in the movie, Casablanca is not in the middle of the desert. It’s on the coast of Morocco, on the windward side of the Atlas Mountains. The climate is a lot like the one in Los Angeles.
When push came to shove, the Germans would of course try to assert their authority. (Strasser is Luftwaffe, BTW. Not Gestapo or SD.) But at that stage of the war, they had a vested interest in not rocking the boat.
