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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.

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