A-List: Top Five Quotes From Casablanca
By J. Don Birnam
September 17, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The easiest way to go about this would be to simply type up the script for the entire movie. It is difficult to believe that it was penned by three individuals (the brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, and Howard Koch), who are basically unknown to history. These are no Aaron Sorkins writing, “You can’t handle the truth!”, or Paddy Chayesfkys penning, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Yet, Casablanca has more entries in the AFI Top 100 movies quotes of all times than any movie, by miles (with six - the next highest is three for Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz). And rightly so.
Perhaps helped by Bogart’s quick-witted, cynical delivery, and Ingrid Bergman’s steely, gorgeous melodrama, the script simply fires on all cylinders. In an age when movies delved and basked in their deliberateness, Casablanca moves along at quick, fiery paces, most sure of itself. One most also throw a shout-out to Claude Raines, who plays the self-serving Captain Renault. He delivers many of the cynical but comical lines with obvious satisfaction and efficacy.
It is rare that one can write that the Academy got one right, but in 1943 when they anointed Casablanca the Best Picture of the year and gave it the all-important Best Screenplay award, they were on to something. Casablanca has lived on to be one of the most-quoted movies of all time. What’s even more amazing is that, having re-watched the movie moments ago, the lines work even though you know they’re coming, even though you know they’ve been parodied, and even though listening to them in isolation simply does not do them any justice.
I’ll start with the honorable mentions. Lowest on the AFI list (but still 67th all time) is a quote that is recognizable the world over: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.” Like most quotes from movies or popular culture (think Sally Field’s “you like me” Oscar speech), this one is often misquoted (as “of all the gin joints in the world, she had to walk into mine”). The line is a classic, but I have it lower on my list because at the moment in which it is uttered by Bogie (who plays Rick), you still don’t know exactly what the relationship between Rick and Ilsa (Bergman’s character) is, and so the emotional force of the quote is not there until a second viewing.
“We’ll Always Have Paris” is also on the AFI list but will be relegated to an honorable mention today for no good reason other than that there are five better quotes. The quote is delivered during the romantic climax of the movie, when Bogie and Ingrid face a life-changing decision. The entire romantic arc of the movie is that it is basically set over two tragic days (granted, with flashbacks as backstory), a device that is older than the movie and that is still used today (think Titanic) - even if audiences do not respond as well to it today. The heightened romanticism of the time and of a whirlwind two-day tryst is no more apparent than in this line, a classic that has been parodied and reused ten times over today.
Before we get into the final five, I’ll have to discuss what some consider the most classic line from the movie, and the highest on the aforementioned AFI list. “Here’s looking at you, kid” is clearly a classic line. But I have my doubts about it as a piece of writing. When I had the pipedream of becoming a novelist/screenwriter, I read in a book that an effective trick was to write into your characters a memorable quote, something that made them unique and interesting (think: Hercule Poirot and his little gray cells). In that sense, then, the line seems like writing by numbers. Why is Rick calling Ilsa, his lover, a kid? Why is an otherwise cynical, hardened man uttering such a cutsey line? And why does he say it so many times?
To be sure, the line delivers the effective emotional payout in the context of the final scene, where everything happens quickly and the gut punch of their separation hits the viewer. But, when it appears first it is arguably a lone choppy moment in an otherwise superbly tight script. Perhaps the fact that this line is rumored not to be in any of the draft screenplays, but rather inserted by Bogie during practice shoots, has helped its mysticism. Still, one must evaluate it on its merits, I posit, and not only on the folk tales that may surround its existence.
5. Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By.’
Speaking of misquotes, this line, which Bergman utters in one of her first scenes (to the piano player, Sam) is often remembered as “Play it again, Sam.” Perhaps the misquote happened over time because, later in the film, Bogart comes in and demands that Sam play it once more, demanding “You played it for her, you can play it for me!” But the Bergman quote is really the one that deserves to be on the list, because it is a moment that showcases her classic beauty and her soft romanticism, and augurs what’s to come - a melancholic, nostalgic remembrance of a time long gone, both literally and figuratively, both in the world and in the particular life of these lovers. The line and the song are really the beginning of the movie, and they strike the perfect chord of emotion as it takes off.
4. Round up the usual suspects.
One of the amazing things about Casablanca is that it managed to be a romantic epic, a crime thriller, and a goofball comedy all at once, and seamlessly. The number of times in which this mesh of genres works effectively can really be counted on one hand. But leave it to the not-quite-sidekick Captain Renault to deliver one of the more memorable lines of the film. Every time something mischievous happens in Unoccupied France, the Captain showcases his feigned usefulness by “rounding up the usual suspects.” At some point, he even boasts to the Gestapo officer watching over him that he is making so many efforts to find the murderer of two German officers that he is “rounding up twice the number of usual suspects.” The line works.
Oh, and how many movie lines can claim the distinction of having spawned an entire movie themselves, after which the movie itself was named (I’m speaking, of course, of the now-classic crime thriller, The Usual Suspects).
3. I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!
Enter Captain Renault again, to deliver the number three entry. If for the first act of Casablanca you are not buying the star-crossed romance between the dashing Bergman and the aging Bogart, it is when the defector Victor Laszlo (Ilsa’s husband, with whom she’s fleeing from the Nazis) takes a courageous stand and sings the French National Anthem to drown out the Nazi recitation of their own chants at Rick’s Bar Americain that you realize there is something emotionally special about this movie.
One can only imagine the sentimental impact that this scene must have caused in 1942/1943, released when France was still occupied, and when the world was still under the yolk of tyranny. Several nationalities join Laszlo (himself a Czech citizen) to make this act of quiet/singing defiance. The moment is simply stunning and, indeed, could easily be on entry on this list as well.
Not a full minute later, however, Captain Renault is asked to shut down Rick’s in payback for the stunt, and, when asked for the reason for the citation, Renault responds with the line that is today number three on the A-List. What follows is comic genius - the croupier rushes out quickly to say, “Here are your winnings, sir,” to Renault, to which Renault stoically counters, “Why, thank you.” The quote is marvelous, then, because it is the perfect landing from the first true emotional high of the movie. The screenwriters, unforgivingly, yank you from delirious exultation to earth-grounded humor.
The juxtaposition of the fight for one’s ideals with the cynicism and practicality of the world is ever-present throughout Casablanca. Somehow, miraculously, the writers manage to deliver the clear message that neither the idealists nor the pragmatists should or will carry the day, but that there is hope and resignation in both approaches. This line, in some subtle, almost indescribable way, manages to encompass this point in a brilliant nutshell.
2. If that plane leaves the ground, and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.
All right, so this is more a speech than a quote, but I still cannot resist placing it number two on the list. As Rick urges Ilsa to get on the plane and follow her ideals about Laszlo over her love for Rick, the line that works best is really not about Paris, or about looking at kids, it’s about life itself. For a movie that is so nostalgic and sentimental about the long-lost past, the look-forward message is breathtaking and inspiring. Rick has his finger exactly on the pulse of Ilsa’s life. Despite his cynicisms and outward denials, internally he “really is a romantic” (to quote the brilliant Renault yet again). But not a romantic only in the sense of love (no question, of course, he is madly in love with her), but also in the sense of ideals.
Essentially, he’s taken Laszlo’s words to heart - if you don’t fight for your convictions, then what are you as a person? What good is life, what good is love, even, if you’ve betrayed yourself, you’ve betrayed your humanity? If love is but a synthesis of what is good about being human, then the ability to sacrifice even that for the greater good surely must rise above it, however tragic that may be, is the proposition.
The message is clear, timely, and arguably sadly lost to the ages - one must put the value of humanity even above our own desires. One wonders how many movies made today would end that way, and whether the audiences would buy such an ending.
1. Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Of course, Casablanca does not end when Rick puts Ilsa on the plane. Rick is still in trouble, but he wiggles mostly out of it with a combination of his own wit, one of the quotes on this list (see: #3), and the ultimate self-serving act from none other than Captain Renault himself. As the movie closes, Bogie utters these immortal words.
What does it all mean?! I know, it confuses me too. The movie spends so much reel thinking about (and trapped because of) acts from the past, and yet the closing line looks towards the future. The film waxes immortal about the vicissitudes of relying on others (in another classic line, Rick reminds us that he sticks his neck out for no one), and yet in the end, the hero is saved by an unlikely ally and friend. The film lyricizes the poetry of love, and ends on a note of skeptical friendship.
So, which is it? Well, one thing that the movie does stay consistent about is the ambiguity of the characters. I suppose that the intent of the line, to many, was to signal that Rick and the Captain were truly friends, truly allies, at this point. In my more cynical view, the Captain is still out for his own interests. At the very least, my reading of it is that Bogart’s intonation was purposefully such that one can have both meanings - a directed, ultimate, brilliant ambiguity. Is it actually a friendship, or is Rick being his usual sarcastic self?
And, is it truly the end for Rick and Ilsa? Honestly one does not know - after all, she did walk into the gin joint by coincidence once before. The fact is, it does not matter. Because, in those terrifying days and, in the ephemeral today, what matters most is that we do right by our own principles, as both Rick and Renault do in the closing moments. That saves both of them, gives them both what they want, and allows them to walk shoulder to shoulder into the mist together.
That is, indeed, the start of a beautiful friendship. That is, in fact, the brilliance of Casablanca. That is what merits, without question, a request to Play the Movie Again, Sam.