ACT TWO
During intermission CURTIZ and RESNAIS EXIT auditorium and curtains close—to reopen when audience returns and houselights dim as for resumption of orthodox play. Stage has been set as follows: occupying most of right hand area is interior of hangar set from film (or, depending on size of stage, sufficient scenery to create that impression); left there are at least 7 director’s chairs—2 of which are occupied by CURTIZ and RESNAIS who are discovered reading and editing ‘Casablanca’ scripts at curtain. Act Two begins when telephone installed next to Curtiz’s chair rings.
CURTIZ: Hello? Yes—have you checked with the guard at the main gate?—well, continue the search and keep me informed. [Hangs up phone.]
RESNAIS: Bad news?
CURTIZ: Yes and no. Bogart, Bergman and Henried are on their way over, but Rains and Veidt are still missing in action. It seems when the word went out that we were finished filming they took it seriously and disappeared before Arnold could tell them it was all a hoax.
RESNAIS: That development might not be as ominous as it sounds.
CURTIZ: I don’t see how we can proceed without them. Renault and Strasser are indispensable to the final scene.
RESNAIS: As it is written—but remember, we are starting from scratch.
CURTIZ: Not exactly from scratch, Marcel. There are continuity factors that cannot be denied their foundational role in establishing the perimeters within which we can ask our cast to improvise.
RESNAIS: The only reason Major Strasser appears in the final scene is that phone call Renault makes to him from Rick’s office, right?
CURTIZ: Right.
RESNAIS: A call Renault makes sound as if he is talking to the aerodrome, right?
CURTIZ: Right.
RESNAIS: So if we cut the footage showing Strasser at the other end of Renault’s call the effect will be not only to eliminate Strasser but convincingly pave the way for Rick, Ilsa and Laszlo to play their final scene at the aerodrome without being molested by the Vichy authorities.
CURTIZ: And where does that leave Renault?
RESNAIS: Tied up in Rick’s office?
CURTIZ: I don’t know. Doesn’t eliminating Renault and Strasser deprive the scene of its dramatic energy? Without the totalitarian menace their coalition represents, what is left to motivate Ilsa, Rick and Laszlo into making their decisions with the kind of climactic desperation a film like Casablanca demands?
RESNAIS: But does it?
CURTIZ: Does what do what?
RESNAIS: Does Casablanca demand that kind of ersatz desperation when it contains all the ingredients needed for the spontaneous combustion of its authentically explosive chemistry?
CURTIZ: I’ll be damned if I know! I’m beginning to feel as if we are embarking up the wrong tree.
RESNAIS: That’s a good sign.
CURTIZ: Of what!
RESNAIS: Of maybe being on the threshold of something that is larger than we are!
CURTIZ: I have a constitutional aversion to thresholds of such magnitude!
RESNAIS: What man doesn’t pause at the outer edge of his creative horizon to contemplate the dangers of diving into the unknown? But, when all things are considered, isn’t danger what making great movies is all about? And isn’t that also why, for all your prosperity, you suffer from a chronic case of directorial depression? In Hollywood one’s only reason for being is to systematically eliminate every conceivable risk factor from films like Casablanca. What is so fascinating about Casablanca is the obstinate way it resists all of our efforts at homogenizing it to death! Even now at the 11th hour—in the agony of its extremis—Casablanca cries out from its stillbeating heart to be rescued from that cruelest of all filmic fates: a mediocre climax to what began as an orgiastic extravaganza of sex, sin and selfsacrifice.
ENTER BOGART, BERGMAN and HENRIED right in costumes they wear for ‘Casablanca’s’ final scene. They remain in hangar set while HENRIED finishes story he has been telling.
HENRIED: And that’s when MGM’s latest literary wunderkind turned to DeMille and said: "Since you’re so keen on doing this Hedda Gabler story in spite of its censorable subject matter, C.B., why don’t we just hire the guy who wrote it to script us a Breenproof screenplay?"
BERGMAN: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, Paul! What do you think about the nature of an ignorance so profound, Humphrey; is it comic or tragic?
HENRIED: [To BOGART.] The point being that this story editor who enjoys a position of considerable power in the making of American culture didn’t know that Henrik Ibsen has been dead for more than 100 years—
BOGART: [Who has remained typically deadpanned throughout.] Oh? I thought Ibsen died in 1906?
HENRIED: Of course he did. I wasn’t speaking in realtime terms, but in terms of the distance between Ibsen’s theater and the stage on which we find ourselves acting today.
BOGART: Being a child of the 20th century I wouldn’t know, or even care, about that—[Noticing set and live audience.] But I’m damned curious about this particular stage on which we are now standing—[Crossing to CURTIZ with HENRIED and BERGMAN following.] What the hell is going on here, Mike?
CURTIZ: Maybe you should do the explaining, Marcel.
RESNAIS: Certainly.
CURTIZ: Make yourselves comfortable everybody. I think you should be sitting down when you hear what we are about to tell you.
BOGART, BERGMAN and HENRIED seat themselves.
BOGART: It’s the goddamm ending, isn’t it—
RESNAIS: Yes—
BOGART: You’re changing it again?
RESNAIS: That depends.
BOGART: On what?
RESNAIS: Whether you are all satisfied with Casablanca as it now stands.
BOGART: Since when did our "satisfaction" become a factor?
HENRIED: It’s certainly no secret that from Day One I have had the gravest reservations about this script.
BERGMAN: You know the problems I’ve been having with my part in this picture, Marcel—but isn’t it rather late to be conducting a seminar on Casablanca—or did you have a post mortem in mind?
RESNAIS: In the past you have all expressed your reservations about the characters you play in Casablanca eloquently and repeatedly—reservations that, to some extent, Michael and I share. Which is why we have gathered here now: to analyze the causes of our collective discontent.
BOGART: I’m warning you, Mike—my part in this project ends at midnight. I have a memo from Hal specifying in black and white—[Reaches into pocket for memo.]
BERGMAN: And by this time tomorrow I will be on location in the Sierras to start work on For Whom The Bell Tolls—
CURTIZ: I promise you all that whatever happens we will be done with Casablanca by 6 p.m. today. As a matter of fact, what we have in the can is nothing to be ashamed of. You were called here simply to see if maybe a little icing could be added to a cake that is already baked.
RESNAIS: Michael and I thought—as actors, you might enjoy spending the last hour of your Casablanca involvement reworking the final scene on an experimental basis.
BOGART: "Experimental basis"—what the hell is that supposed to mean?
RESNAIS: Only that we are offering you the rare opportunity to solve the problems your characters have in finalizing their threeway love affair.
BOGART: Listen, pal—this is a movie studio, not a drama school. You are paid to write and we are paid to act. If you have some new dialogue for me to read I will give it my best professional shot. Beyond that I see no reason to screw around with a film that, by Warner Brothers standards, is already a bankable proposition. I assume neither Hal nor Jack has authorized this little extracurricular activity of yours, Mike?
CURTIZ: No. This is strictly a cloak and dagger operation. Maybe I’ve gotten a little carried away with Casablanca’s antiFascist intrigue! But am I completely wrong in thinking that from the beginning you haven’t all secretly believed Casablanca deserves more than just the conventional studio treatment we are giving it? This "icing" we are talking about is more than just confectionery sugar—with this extra effort we are asking you to make Casablanca might be turned into a classic film and your performances enshrined as some of the finest ever given in the history of cinematic art.
BERGMAN: It’s true. There is something very special about Casablanca. Despite its unbelievable plot there are some basic truths involved with the fate of its three characters that cannot be denied and which, as an actress and a woman, I feel the strongest desire to explore more deeply.
HENRIED: As you all know, I’ve tried to be objective in my criticism of the way Victor’s role has been written. The castration of his character has a disastrous effect on what should be the lethally high sexual voltage of Casablanca’s metaphysical tension. As the script stands now Rick’s "triumph" over Victor is itself emasculated by the melodramatic way in which his existential stripes are so suddenly changed. Personally I find it surprising a man like Rick Blaine is willing to sacrifice his lifelong convictions—and the woman he claims to love—on the altar of public opinion. If I were Mr Bogart I would be only too eager at having the chance to defeat Victor Laszlo in a fair fight.
BOGART: Any time you want to settle that issue let me know. It might not be a bad idea for us to step into the real world outside the studio and find out which one of us hasn’t got balls.
CURTIZ: Gentlemen, please!
RESNAIS: I take it then that Victor and Ilsa are willing to participate in the experiment?
BERGMAN: Yes. I for one would prefer starting my next picture with a clean psychological slate. As it is now I will always be haunted by the question of whether Ilsa is really in love with Rick or with Victor.
HENRIED: For me your offer is a challenge I can’t refuse. It will allow me not only to rehabilitate Victor’s masculinity, but to vindicate the crucial role an actor plays in rewriting a problem picture like Casablanca.
BOGART: Which casts me as the villain of this piece, I guess. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I played the odd man out in someone else’s plot to make a silk purse from a pig’s ear. Not that I share your low opinion of Casablanca’s literary merits. It’s certainly no worse, and probably a lot better, than most of the pictures Warner Brothers has produced. But you’re all pipe dreaming if you think we can turn it into a "cinematic masterpiece." As for who really loves who and for what reason, or who is truer to one’s principles—or which of us steals this show—it’s of no consequence to me. Even if I wanted to, Mike, I haven’t any contributions to make on the topic of altering Rick’s behavior pursuant to these Mickeymouse aesthetic theories you are trying to sell me. I will only point out that Rick’s acquiescence in whatever fate—or some scriptwriter—is willing to give him, seems to me entirely consistent with his existential principles—as would his refusal to participate in this futile attempt at rewriting history.
CURTIZ: Is this the same Humphrey Bogart who has been hectoring me relentlessly about the "anachronisms" of Rick Blaine’s character?
BOGART: Like I just said Mike, that is all ancient history now. Any problems I had figuring Rick out were solved in that scene we shot this morning.
BERGMAN: But aren’t you bothered intellectually by the way Rick so easily relinquishes the one thing he wants in all the world—the woman he loves, and the woman who has just confessed her undying love for him?
RESNAIS: Don’t you find it inconceivable that a man with Rick’s hardnosed attitude toward life would suddenly turn into an altruistic pussycat?
BOGART: No I don’t; and neither would Rick Blaine in all probability. He ought to be smart enough to know that tough guys don’t always make the best husbands. Having an affair with another man’s wife is one thing, but building a permanent relationship with any dame is a different kettle of fish. Besides, like Rick says in answer to Louis’ remark about his sentimental patriotism—1942 seems like an appropriate time to abandon pursuing one’s selfinterests exclusively. After all, isn’t Rick only doing what millions of Americans have done since Pearl Harbor forced them to rethink their peacetime priorities?
RESNAIS: So in your opinion, Rick’s patriotic instincts are the decisive factor.
BOGART: That’s a strange question coming from you, isn’t it? I would think the man who wrote the book on Rick’s analytical options should know what finally motivates his climactic metamorphosis.
RESNAIS: You’re surprisingly naive Mr Bogart, if you really think screenwriters are so omniscient—or that they care about remaining faithful to the characters whose fates they must ruthlessly manipulate in accordance with such extraneous considerations as the budget of a film, the contractual complexities affecting the availability and nature of its cast, a multitude of censorship factors, and the expectations of an audience whose collective literary I.Q. hovers just a notch or two above zero. All of which means I cannot share your simplistic explanation of Rick’s sudden conversion from sinner to saint. I’m sure if Rick himself—a real life flesh and blood Rick that is—read my script for Casablanca’s final scene, like any other streetwise cynic raised in Manhattan’s lower East Side, he would instantly detect its fatal flaw—
BOGART: Don’t let all those gangster roles I’ve played fool you, professor. I was born on Park Avenue and educated at Andover. As far as I’m concerned the script you wrote is foolproof. In fact Mike can tell you how pleased with it I was after my first reading.
CURTIZ: After your initial reading, yes; but over night you developed some serious second thoughts about it—thoughts which you brought to my attention only this morning!
BOGART: Did I? I can’t recall any.
CURTIZ: [Taking note from pocket.] Maybe this note will refresh your memory—[Offers note to BOGART.]
BOGART reads note without comment and refolds it.
RESNAIS: May I read that?
BOGART: [Puts note in pocket.] It’s nothing. I was being supersensitive on a very minor point. There was just one line in the script that bothered me—
RESNAIS: Oh? What line was that?
BOGART: [Shaking finger at CURTIZ in burst of Queeg-like panic.] That note was strictly between us Mike! [Regaining composure.] Besides, what difference can one lousy little line make in a script the size of a telephone book?
RESNAIS: It’s all right, Michael; I have a pretty good idea which line was causing Mr Bogart’s concern. [To BOGART.] And, contrary to what you said about the unimportance of any single line in a screenplay’s totality, I can assure you that in every film script there is at least one non sequitur that invalidates the entire scenario; one "weak brick" that threatens the structural integrity of the whole story. The trick is to hide that defective brick where no one will find it until the movie is over and the theater is empty—and then who cares when that magnificentlooking edifice we call a "major motion picture" collapses into a pile of cinematic balderdash? Such is the case with Casablanca. In your first reading of my script for the final scene you overlooked the essential line on which the rationale for Rick’s idealistic conversion is falsely predicated. But in reading your lines last night the phony one—my "weak brick"—began to loom larger and larger, causing you to write that note to Michael.
BERGMAN: Which line are we talking about? I seem to recall hearing a false note in that speech you make to me when Victor has left the scene for his business about our luggage—
HENRIED: Out of the scene maybe, but I also recall Rick saying something that made me wince. I actually reached over and touched your arm at that very moment, Michael, but your facial expression told me you didn’t want to be disturbed. And yet, in your eyes, I saw signs of the same profound concern I was feeling over whatever it was Rick said to Ilsa.
RESNAIS: What you were both feeling was the first of those architectural tremors that will finally bring Casablanca’s house of artistic cards crashing down.
HENRIED: It all happened so quickly!
CURTIZ: The mind is always a step or two behind the ear—
RESNAIS: A fact of life permitting the screenwriter to solve problems a novelist would find absolutely insoluble.
HENRIED: It shouldn’t be hard to locate the line we are looking for.
BERGMAN: How does Rick reply when Ilsa tells him: "You’re saying this only to make me go?"
BOGART: "I’m saying it because it’s true."
BERGMAN: And—after that?
BOGART: "If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow—but soon; and maybe for the rest of your life."
BERGMAN: Haven’t you left something out?
BOGART: That’s how I remember doing it—
HENRIED: [Having searched script.] Here it is—at least this is the way that speech was written: [Reading.] "I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us we both know you belong with Victor; you’re part of his work—the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow—but soon; and maybe for the rest of your life."
BOGART: I’m sure I didn’t use that language you emphasized just now.
RESNAIS: If that’s so it only makes your omission that much more curious! Why would you delete such a persuasive element from your argument to Ilsa?
BOGART: Who knows. Maybe Rick doesn’t think he needs to rely on anything other than Ilsa’s moral obligations to Victor.
RESNAIS: Maybe. But when Ilsa reminds Rick of the promise she made the night before never to leave him, why does Rick say: "And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do. Where I am going you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do you can’t be any part of.?" Doesn’t that go beyond the narrow issue of Ilsa’s marital fidelity to Victor?
HENRIED: Of course it does! In his devious way Rick is opening up the entire question of comparing his "swashbuckling" role in the fight against Fascism to Victor’s "safer" strategy of waging his crusade from the transAtlantic safety of an American lecture tour!
BOGART: Just a minute, pal—I’d like a clarification of the way you are using that term, "devious."
HENRIED: I’m using it in the context of a discussion about the characters we play.
BOGART: That sounds like a pretty "devious" statement itself.
HENRIED: Well, maybe we shouldn’t continue pretending there aren’t some personal factors at the bottom of our conflict as "characters" in Casablanca.
CURTIZ: Hold it right there! We are not going to take the lid off that can of worms. Besides, I’ve been sitting here running this morning’s rushes through my mind and I am dead certain Bogey did deliver that line about Ilsa being a vital component of Victor’s antiFascist crusade.
HENRIED: That doesn’t change anything.
CURTIZ: It certainly relieves Bogey of any personal responsibility for stabbing Victor in the back.
HENRIED: But the fact remains that Victor is stabbed in the back! And that is putting it delicately. Whoever uses the knife, does so in a much more surgical procedure.
RESNAIS: Paul is right. Rick’s statement to Ilsa concerning her husband’s dependence on her loyalty is intended to castrate Victor.
HENRIED: An operation that could only be performed in my absence!
RESNAIS: Yes.
HENRIED: Which explains that absurd business at the start of the scene when I am sent off with Renault’s gendarme to "look for my luggage!"
RESNAIS: I plead guilty to having built another of my "weak bricks" into the foundation of that scene.
HENRIED: So you admit it’s your script, and not any quintessential flaw in Victor’s character, that prevents him from defending his masculinity against the castrational innuendoes contained in Rick’s kissoff speech to Ilsa?
RESNAIS: Yes. But I’m not convinced any defense of his manhood that Victor might make would be successful. Let’s not forget that Laszlo has a few ideological skeletons in his closet Rick would no doubt exploit to his advantage—skeletons which remain mercifully hidden by that "absurd business" of sending Victor off to look for his luggage.
HENRIED: As I understand the story there is nothing in Laszlo’s past but his heroic resistance to the forces of evil—
RESNAIS: Nothing except the fact of Czechoslovakia’s notoriously mixed political bag; a bag in which one finds no shortage of Marxist/Leninists among that nation’s intelligentsia.
HENRIED: I fail to see the relevance of that, now that America and the Soviet Union are allies.
RESNAIS: In the first place, all of the events in Casablanca occur before 7 December 1941; so the historically hostile relationship between the USA and the USSR would still be a problem for anyone with the slightest tinge of pink in his past; a point no redblooded American like Rick Blaine would fail to use against the husband of the woman he loves. Secondly, even America’s post Pearl Harbor alliance with the Russians can only be construed as a temporary truce between enemies who have such opposing views about the very nature of being human, they are both on a collision course with the postwar geopolitical realities of a European power vacuum left by the premature collapse of Germany’s "thousand year" Reich.
HENRIED: All right. Conceding your worst case scenario—that Laszlo was, or still is, a KGB agent—what bearing does that have on his amatory chances with Ilsa? After all, the level of a woman’s political sophistication isn’t normally factored into her choice of a lover. I’m afraid Ilsa is too young, and too naive, for the kind of analysis wherein Victor’s Marxist convictions are applicable to solving the adultery problem caused by her illfated Parisian affair with Rick.
BOGART: Are you really so sure his wife’s "purity" isn’t an albatross hanging around Laszlo’s neck? It wouldn’t take much arguing to convince Ilsa that, by marrying her, Victor had taken advantage of the same lack of sophistication he now hopes will minimize the negative impact of his proSoviet sentiments in her antitotalitarian eyes. Talk about "censorable subject matter"—here we have a situation where some middleaged college professor seduces one of his most beautiful students! That kind of academic corruption not only raises the stink of a sex scandal, it would justify Rick’s wifestealing as an act of chivalry! And, given the cradlesnatching circumstances surrounding her marriage, who can deny that Ilsa has the moral, and the melodramatic, right to be rescued by Rick from Laszlo’s villainous clutches?
BERGMAN: There is a grain of truth in that, isn’t there Paul? In my own analysis of Ilsa’s character she was the victim of a circumstantial injustice. Is it fair to punish her as an adult for a mistake she might have made as a child? Rick would be right by arguing that Ilsa was a very young girl when she fell under Victor’s academic spell—a phenomenon not uncommon to most coeds who see in some Laszlolike figure the intellectual father they never had. At least I would like to hear Victor’s explanation for what looks like the advantage he took of Ilsa’s undergraduate infatuation. But beyond that there is the even more relevant factor of Ilsa’s status at the time she meets Rick in Paris. By then she is no longer an impressionistic juvenile, but a fully grown woman who should have the undeniable right of choosing the one man she will mate with for the rest of her life. Anyway, those are some of the questions I’ve been asking myself in trying to get a handle on Ilsa’s psychological state during the final scene. Unfortunately, finding answers to them has not been helped by the restrictive realities of filmmaking; and, to some extent, by the factual complexities of my personal life—complexities which, in several ways, just happen to parallel those of Ilsa’s fictitious affairs. You are all aware of my own marriage at a very tender age to a man who in some respects resembles Victor Laszlo. It is similarly common knowledge that Ingrid Bergman, also known as Mrs Petter Lindstrom, has a habit of falling in love with her leading man—a habit which, in Casablanca’s case, is made more problematical by her tandem of male leads; both of whose sexual magnetism any woman would find difficult, if not impossible, to resist.
HENRIED: Well, at last a compliment from my leading lady! I was beginning to think there might be a factual basis for my persecution complex!
BERGMAN: It’s only natural for all of us to be blinded by the pride and prejudice of our characters, Paul; but I do sympathize with the difficulties you must have in playing Victor’s part.
HENRIED: Thank you.
BOGART: That’s very white of you Ingrid. And, while to some extent I can share your feelings for Paul’s plight, no amount of sentimentality can change the hard fact that anyone closely scrutinizing Laszlo’s modus operandi is bound to conclude he isn’t the angel this script makes him out to be.
HENRIED: What script are you talking about, Humphrey—Casablanca or The Maltese Falcon? You’re starting to sound more like Sam Spade than Rick Blaine! But I’m curious to know what you think. So tell me; in addition to being a communist and a dirty old man, what other character flaws must I contend with in playing Victor Laszlo?
BOGART: Well, there is this whole business about the big hurry you are in to get out of Casablanca.
HENRIED: My God, the man’s name is at the very top of the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List! Isn’t that reason enough for him to seek asylum in America?
BOGART: That’s just the point, isn’t it?
HENRIED: I don’t follow you—
BOGART: If the Gestapo believes Laszlo is the most dangerous antiNazi in Europe, why is he so anxious to do them the favor of removing himself from their midst?
HENRIED: Because, despite what the Gestapo "believes," Germany’s fate will not be decided by the "heroic exploits" of a few underground desperadoes. Hitler’s plans for global domination hinge on the outcome of the war being waged to win the hearts and minds of the American people—a war Victor Laszlo cannot help fight from Casablanca, or a European concentration camp.
BOGART: And one that’s conveniently waged from the top of a soap box. How lucky for Laszlo that, unlike some other intellectuals I could name who can also perform as men of action, his talents are exclusively suited to fighting a war of words.
HENRIED: I don’t need to be lectured by an armchair tough guy on the options available to men like Camus, Saint Exupery and Rapoport. I was in Vienna when the Wehrmacht crossed the Austrian border!
BOGART: But by the time they waltzed down the Ringstrasse Herr Paul Henried had left the dance, hadn’t he?
HENRIED: Are you criticizing me for not making myself available to Hitler’s special Austrian antiJewish task force!
CURTIZ: I must say, Bogey, that is hitting below the belt.
BOGART: You’re the one who wants us to play this scene without pulling any punches, aren’t you?
CURTIZ: Pulling actorial punches is one thing, but attacks of a personal nature are uncalled for and counterproductive. We can all make art and still remain civilized—
BOGART: I’m getting fed up with you goddamm Europeans and "your" civilization!
BERGMAN: Please, Humphrey—
BOGART: This set is crawling with foreigners! Hollywood itself has been taken over by refugees! There is a hell of a lot to be said for Rick’s indifference to the mess you people keep getting yourselves into. You talk about "winning the hearts and minds of the American people," but what you’re really saying is, "let’s play good old Uncle Sam for a sucker again—the way we did in 1917!"
BERGMAN: You can’t mean that Humphrey—
BOGART: The hell I can’t. And let me tell you something, sweetheart. I don’t need any advice from a Swede on the art of acting or neutrality!
BERGMAN: I have never given you any on either subject!
BOGART: Fine. Let’s keep it that way.
BERGMAN: But I don’t see what my being Swedish has to do with any of this.
BOGART: Oh no? Well, maybe you should ask some of those poor bastards in Poland and Greece who’ve had their bellies ripped apart by it, what they think of Swedish steel.
CURTIZ: All right. That’s it. [Rising.] This experiment is getting completely out of hand.
BERGMAN: Just a moment, Michael. I have the right to defend my country—
CURTIZ: I’m sorry, Ingrid, but this isn’t the time or the place for patriotic flagwaving. We’ve had quite enough of that. We’re supposed to be working on a film, not tearing ourselves to pieces like savages.
RESNAIS: I disagree, Michael. Isn’t this exactly what we hoped would happen if Casablanca’s characters were given the freedom to explore their own options?
CURTIZ: But that is not what they are doing! Everyone has gotten totally out of the characters they play in Casablanca!
RESNAIS: Is that such a bad thing?
CURTIZ: What kind of question is that? We can’t suddenly cut from the next to last scene in Rick’s office to one in which three actors are discussing their personal opinions about the parts they are playing in an unfinished film, can we?
RESNAIS: Why not?
CURTIZ: It just isn’t done. Not in Hollywood, anyway.
RESNAIS: I thought the whole purpose of this project was to make the kind of film that is not made in Hollywood.
CURTIZ: Yes, yes, yes—but there are limits beyond which one’s unorthodoxy becomes futile. And I am not just thinking about Hal’s and Harry’s reaction. No American audience would sit still for a jump cut from potboiler to cinema verite.
RESNAIS: No, they wouldn’t! They would do a lot of squirming; and maybe that is not such a bad thing for an American audience to do now and then!
CURTIZ: A little squirming doesn’t bother me. But when people pay to be entertained they might start demanding their money back if they are asked to work at appreciating some object d’art of ours.
RESNAIS: What could be more entertaining than to have one’s mind engaged by the unconventional ideas we are talking about right now? Don’t you see what’s happening? Our three actors are starting to scrape away Casablanca’s surface slag and expose the molten emotions of its red hot volcanic core!
CURTIZ: That’s just what I’m worried about. Playing around with a little creative fire is dangerous enough; but when volcanoes erupt the consequences are usually catastrophic. I’m not just worried about getting our own fingers burned, Marcel. It seems to me there are some wider social and, yes, even commercial, considerations that transcend one’s artistic desires. There is an undeniable element of truth in what Hal and Harry keep saying about Warner Brothers having an institutional role to play in the unfolding of The Great American Dream Drama. A major movie studio has more than just its payroll and dividend obligations to meet. Its instinct for survival is rooted in the deeper soil of a proud nation seeking to establish its cultural identity.
RESNAIS: That sounds more like one of Dr Goebbels’ Sportpalast sermons on the divine right of being a Propaganda Minister than a standard Warner Brothers pep talk.
CURTIZ: What’s happening here? Suddenly we are all accusing each other of the most extravagant crimes! You call me a Fascist mouthpiece. Paul accuses Bogey of being a cultural redneck. Bogey implies that Paul is a cowardly kike, and blames poor Ingrid for the rape of Poland and Greece!
RESNAIS: It’s rather spectacular, isn’t it—seeing all these dialectical sparks flying? Tell me, Michael; when, if ever, have you seen an American film that featured such a dazzling display of verbal pyrotechnics?
CURTIZ: Emotional volcanoes, verbal fireworks! Those are the slogans of a literary pyromaniac, not a filmmaker!
RESNAIS: Maybe one must be more than a little nihilistic in constructing a New Cinematic Order.
CURTIZ: New Cinematic Order! I was under the impression we were only trying to improve upon the making of one film!
RESNAIS: Yes! One film that could revolutionize the making of all other films! But before Casablanca can do that Hollywood must be burned to the ground—
CURTIZ: Now who is starting to sound like Dr Goebbels!
RESNAIS: I was speaking metaphorically.
CURTIZ: [Having moved downstage where he gazes at audience.] Metaphors! Symbols! Hyperbole! You and I might converse in such fancy phrases, Marcel—but gazing into these blank faces I get the feeling we are leaving our audience up a linguistic creek.
RESNAIS: Those empty expressions don’t necessarily indicate a lack of comprehension—
CURTIZ: Jesus—aren’t you the guy who accused the average American of having a nonexistent literary I.Q.?
RESNAIS: This isn’t an audience of average Americans.
CURTIZ: Maybe not, but even after 400 years of postrenaissance civilization, isn’t "art" still a word that starts fistfights between Europe’s most enlightened proletarians? Let us not forget where we are! Just because all the cowboys and Indians in Hollywood are phony doesn’t alter the very real fact that California is the westernmost state of a west that, in cultural terms, couldn’t be wilder. At this very moment Bert Brecht is starving in Santa Monica; unable to earn a nickel in a town where millionaire screenwriters are 12 for a dime. [Addressing audience.] While you have never heard of him, Bertolt Brecht is generally considered by those who should know to be this century’s greatest dramatist. Persecuted by the Nazis for his radical ideas about the social significance of theater, Hollywood is ignoring him to death for the same reason! [Pause to control emotions, then speaking more to himself.] So much for dreaming about Brechtian pies in the sundrenched sky of Southern California. Yes, it’s time for the down-to-earth business of finalizing this fuckedup film of ours! Although—its present flaws notwithstanding—I wouldn't be all that surprised if Casablanca acquires a cult status; or, with the passage of enough time, is someday mythologized as: "Tinseltown’s quintessential contribution to the shaping of an American moviegoing mentality destined to dominate the entire planet!"
RESNAIS: [Rising, crossing to CURTIZ.] But isn’t that prospect what makes this debate we’re having so monumentally important, Michael? If Casablanca is indeed fated to play a pivotal role in the globalization of Hollywood’s cultural ethos, aren’t we morally obliged to insert at least a few provocative ideas between the lines of its otherwise utterly mindless message?
CURTIZ: [Holding temples.] Christ!
RESNAIS: I appreciate your agony Michael, but the whole world is standing at a crossroad and only you can decide which way its future lies. Will it be the high road or the low road—or will Casablanca blaze a new trail into that Promised Land where commercial and cultural values coexist in a mutual prosperity whose bottom line reflects more than just dollars and cents, but the capital gains accruing from the increase of humanity’s cinematic consciousness!
CURTIZ: [Covering ears.] Sonofabitch!
RESNAIS: I know this will hurt like hell, Mike—but I must tell you something far more important than your directorial integrity is riding on the outcome of Casablanca.
CURTIZ: [Uncovering ears.] My God! What could be more important than a man’s directorial integrity?
RESNAIS: His directorial reputation.
CURTIZ: What the hell are you talking about—with a little luck I might actually win an Oscar for Casablanca in its present imperfect state!
RESNAIS: Is an Oscar for one movie good enough for Michael Curtiz—when he could be immortalized as the man who made the motion picture that forever altered the making of all other motion pictures?
CURTIZ: Shit.
RESNAIS: Deep down you know I’m right. Casablanca represents more than just one man’s lifetime chance of directing a cult classic—it may be nothing less than the most decisive moment in what could become the history of an art form.
BERGMAN: And above all, Michael, there is the time factor to consider.
CURTIZ: With a 6 p.m. deadline, at this rate we will exhaust our supply of film long before we run out of time.
BERGMAN: But my flight for the Sierras leaves Burbank at 3—
RESNAIS: Don’t you remember, Michael—Hal agreed to an afternoon call for Ingrid on the understanding she would be finished by no later than 2:30; and that I would personally drive her to the airport.
CURTIZ: That still leaves us with some 25 minutes—
BOGART: Assuming Messers Rains and Veidt show up.
CURTIZ: We’ve decided to do this scene minus Captain Renault and Major Strasser.
BOGART: That strikes me as being completely cockeyed, Mike. Without Strasser and Renault who, or what, supplies the tension giving the aerodrome scene its climactic reason for being?
CURTIZ: Marcel and I have assiduously analyzed that very point, and we’ve agreed that Rick’s "shootout" with Strasser and Renault’s "menacing presence" only detract from the higher voltage of your emotional entanglement with Mr and Mrs Laszlo.
BERGMAN: Isn’t that the stroke of genius we have all been waiting for?
BOGART: Since when has Harry Warner gotten into the genius business?
BERGMAN: But don’t you see, Humphrey—by eliminating those two extraneous characters, Marcel and Michael have freed the three of us to apply only the most fundamental factors in our own analysis of how Casablanca’s final scene should be played!
HENRIED: Oh, I think he knows what Marcel and Michael have in mind for us, Ingrid. You have put your finger on the real reason for Mr Bogart’s mysterious lack of enthusiasm.
BOGART: Oh? And what might that be?
HENRIED: Your fear that Rick will lose Ilsa in a fair fight between you and I as actors.
BOGART: That sounds like a betting proposition to me. Are you willing to back up that cheap talk with some hard cash?
HENRIED: Certainly. Why don’t we borrow a page from the script and match those 20,000 francs you wagered with Captain Renault that Laszlo would make a fool of Major Strasser?
BOGART: That was stage money. For what you’re asking me to risk I think 20,000 dollars is more appropriate.
HENRIED: Whatever you say, Monsieur Blaine.
BOGART: I say yes. Does that make it a bet then?
HENRIED: Yes, it’s a bet.
CURTIZ: I think you’re both nuts; but if putting your salaries on the line is what it takes to get this show on the road I say: Shake hands, come out fighting—and may the best actor win! [Returns to seat and speaks into microphone.] Bill?
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Yes, Mr C?
CURTIZ: Let’s make the lighting in the hangar set more dramatic.
This is done as BOGART, BERGMAN and HENRIED enter hangar scene stage right, leaving area in which CURTIZ and RESNAIS are sitting in almost total darkness.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: How’s that, Mr C?
CURTIZ: That’s fine Bill. [To actors, sans microphone.] All right now, let’s remember where we are in the story. Ilsa has confessed her love for Rick and agreed to remain in Casablanca with him while Victor uses one of the Transit Letters to reach Lisbon. Victor believes Ilsa has somehow persuaded Rick to relinquish both Letters of Transit so he and his wife can travel to safety in America as a team of freedomfighters. Renault has phoned the aerodrome with official clearance for the Laszlos’ departure and is now tied up in Rick’s office. Strasser is also a nonfactor because we can cut the shot that shows him receiving Renault’s call. Naturally, this altered set of circumstances creates a variety of new options for each of you to consider; not the least of which is the fact that Rick is secretly armed with a pistol which could be used to hijack the plane bound for Lisbon. Consequently the Letters of Transit needn’t necessarily be construed as preventing the escape of more than two of the parties comprising your threeway relationship. Are there any questions?
BOGART: Just one. Removing Renault and Strasser doesn’t eliminate the Breen Office factor, does it? Or are you authorizing us to dismiss censorship considerations from the solution of our problems?
CURTIZ: Just a minute on that Bogey—[Has brief whispered conference with RESNAIS, which at times becomes somewhat agitated. To BOGART:] That’s right. For our purposes Casablanca is no longer any of Joe Breen’s goddamm business!
BERGMAN: I could kiss you, Michael! That is the most wonderful news I’ve heard since being told of my successful screen test for Maria in For Whom The Bell Tolls!
HENRIED: It should make things a little easier for all of us.
BOGART: Yes, it certainly should!
CURTIZ: All right. From here on in it’s all up to you.
A brief pause as BOGART, BERGMAN and HENRIED get ‘into’ their respective characters, after which the improvised version of ‘Casablanca’s’ final scene unfolds as follows:
BERGMAN: Isn’t there something you wanted to say to Victor, Richard?
BOGART: Yes—
HENRIED: Well? What’s on your mind, Mr Blaine?
BOGART: Do I have to spell it out?
HENRIED: I think you do. I’m not a mind reader.
BOGART: It doesn’t take one to see what’s been happening between Ilsa and me.
HENRIED: Oh?
BOGART: Let’s not be coy, Laszlo. We don’t have time for beating around the bush. That plane takes off in just a few minutes and you’re going to be on it—alone. Ilsa and I have decided to renew the relationship we had in Paris, when she had every reason to believe you were dead.
BERGMAN: It’s true, Victor. Richard and I fell deeply in love after the news of your "death" in that concentration camp.
HENRIED: That was Paris and this is Casablanca. That was then and this is now. Unfortunately for you both Victor Laszlo is very much alive.
BERGMAN: Oh, Victor—can’t you see how painful this is for me?
BOGART: Nothing you say can change the fundamental fact that Ilsa loves me in a way she could never love you.
HENRIED: How do you know that Mr Blaine? I don’t remember seeing you in our honeymoon suite. Maybe we should have invited him to join the party, eh Ilsa? At least then he would have some basis for comparing the depth of your love. Or did you reveal some of your bridal secrets to him on that second honeymoon in Paris? Tell me, Mr Blaine—is my wife a good lay?
BERGMAN: Victor!
BOGART: I’m warning you, Laszlo—
HENRIED: Because if she is, it was I who taught her all she knows about being every man’s idea of the perfect piece of ass—isn’t that true, Ilsa?
BERGMAN: I can’t believe you are asking me such a question!
HENRIED: Of course you can’t my darling! It wouldn’t be consistent with your "virginal" image—with that aura of absolute purity and innocence I found so irresistible in Prague and Mr Blaine succumbed to in Paris. [To BOGART.] But then you don’t need me to tell you about the fatal effect my wife has on a man with even your reputation as a ladykiller.
BOGART: That’s right. I don’t need any advice from you on my love life, Laszlo. But I’ve got some for you—
HENRIED: About what—my candor in discussing the sexual secrets of the woman we both love?
BERGMAN: What has gotten into you, Victor? This behavior of yours is so uncharacteristic—so crude, so brutal, so—
HENRIED: So much like those qualities you find attractive in Mr Blaine’s character?
BERGMAN: On the contrary Victor; Richard has always been a perfect gentleman with me.
HENRIED: Even in bed?
BOGART: There’s no need for you to answer that, Ilsa.
HENRIED: But if you don’t I might construe what you just said as meaning your love affair with him hasn’t yet reached the physical stage.
BOGART: What you think about Ilsa and me doesn’t add up to a hill of beans, Laszlo.
HENRIED: Is it possible Mr Blaine, that your peculiar American sense of chivalry stopped you from taking advantage of my wife’s voluptuous body before you were legally married to her?
BERGMAN: You’re forgetting, Victor—the news of your death in that concentration camp removed my marital status as a factor to be considered by Richard on that issue.
HENRIED: So there was nothing to prevent you from getting in bed with him.
BOGART: What’s the point of establishing when, why, and where who slept with who? The fact of the matter is that Ilsa and I love each other here and now; and your future lies across the Atlantic. So, the sooner you get on that plane, the better it will be for all of us.
HENRIED: The point is this, Mr Blaine: in a civilized society it is customary for the husband to be told in what respect his wife finds him inferior to her lover. As a gentleman I’m sure you will permit me that small consolation.
BOGART: That’s not for me to say—
BERGMAN: No. Your consolation is my problem, Victor. But it’s not easy to compare lovers—
HENRIED: Nevertheless, my darling—apparently you did just that last night during your visit to Mr Blaine’s office.
BERGMAN: Yes, I did—
HENRIED: Unless now you are having some second thoughts?
BERGMAN: Naturally the choice was easier to make without you being there—
HENRIED: Naturally.
BOGART: But that doesn’t necessarily mean the result would have been any different.
HENRIED: I agree. That is why it would be a shame not to use this precious opportunity for resolving whatever lingering doubts you and I might have in that regard.
BOGART: You’re speaking strictly for yourself on that score, Laszlo. You may be unsure about Ilsa’s affections for you, but I couldn’t be more confident of her love for me.
HENRIED: But her "affections" for me and her "love" for you need not be a mutually exclusive state of affairs—isn’t that so, Ilsa?
BERGMAN: Such cases are very rare.
HENRIED: What could be rarer than this fix we already find ourselves in? It seems to me that against Casablanca’s wartime background of danger, espionage and sexual intrigue, the geometry of our threeway romance is fated to be expressed in the form of a classic love triangle.
BOGART: And where would our menage a trois leave that crusade against Nazism you’ve been in such a hurry to lead from anywhere except a dangerous locale like Casablanca?
BERGMAN: It’s true, Victor: nothing must interfere with your work. If I thought for a moment my infidelity with Richard might effect the outcome of this war I wouldn’t hesitate to remain at your side—and I’m sure Richard would make the same sacrifice for the same reason. But let’s be honest: your ideological commitments have always been stronger than your need for me.
HENRIED: Whereas my rival’s lack of convictions makes him an emotional charity case—is that what you are telling me?
BOGART: No. That’s not what she’s telling you. Anyone who knows anything about Richard Blaine knows he is the last man in the world who needs emotional or any other kind of charity; especially from a dame.
HENRIED: Then I must have misanalyzed what seemed like the total collapse of your personal universe when Ilsa first walked into The Cafe Americain.
BOGART: Seeing her was a shock. I admit it. But the effect on my equilibrium was only temporary.
HENRIED: Ilsa Lund wasn’t the first "dame" who made a sucker out of Rick Blaine, is that it?
BOGART: Maybe yes, and maybe no. But either way that last day in Paris is ancient history.
HENRIED: History has a way of repeating itself.
BOGART: Not this time, pal. Whatever plans you might have for browbeating Ilsa into brushing me off again won’t work. She has a mind of her own now, and she’s used it to factor all these arguments you are making into her decision that I am the one she wants. Besides, the choice any woman makes in a matter of this kind involves more than just her intellect. The effect of certain primal forces must be applied in calculating your chances with a female of Ilsa’s complex sexuality—
HENRIED: Such as?
BOGART: Such as her psychic pulse rate, her spiritual heartbeat and her basic mating instincts —to name a few.
HENRIED: Maybe I have underestimated the depth of your perceptive powers, Mr Blaine; but I’m still not convinced that you are the one man who can satisfy all of my wife’s diverse desires.
BOGART: Persuading you on that point is not an item very high on my agenda, Laszlo. [Checking watch.] The only thing important right now is our agreement that unless we can end this dialogue in the next thirty seconds you can kiss your chances of exiting Casablanca alive goodbye.
BERGMAN: Leaving our personal problems aside, Victor, the truth of what Richard is saying cannot be denied. Your valiant but losing fight to win my undivided love is finished; but there is still time for you to win the fight for that even greater glory of saving the world from Fascism.
HENRIED: If I really thought the outcome of World War II hinged on the transAmerican tour of Victor Laszlo’s One Man Propaganda Band no power on earth could prevent me from leaving Casablanca on that plane—with or without the woman I love. But do any of us seriously believe in such a farfetched scenario? We all know there isn’t any shortage of European exiles in America beating the drum for Hitler’s defeat. What is in desperately short supply are men of action who can keep the flickering torch of liberty alight in places like Casablanca and Prague until it blazes again in the hands of those ordinary G.I.s who will lead yet another Allied victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate.
BERGMAN: I don’t understand, Victor. If that was always your intent, why did we bother coming to Casablanca?
HENRIED: Why indeed! Casablanca is the last place on earth a man with his name at the top of a Gestapo hit list would surface on an underground escape route to safety—isn’t that true, Mr Blaine?
BOGART: For a man in your shoes, coming to Casablanca doesn’t seem like the brightest of ideas—but then, I’m not standing in your shoes.
HENRIED: Ignoring for a moment the question concerning what sort of shoes you are wearing, Mr Blaine; didn’t it strike you as odd that not only does Victor Laszlo take his "vanishing act" to a Nazi-dominated French colony, he proclaims his notorious presence by brazenly strolling into Casablanca’s most notorious den of intrigue wearing a white suit and hat, with a Scandinavian sex goddess draped on his arm so no one will have the slightest difficulty in recognizing him as The Most Wanted Man In The Third Reich?
BOGART: The orthodox modus operandi for someone with your Gestapo problems is to maintain the lowest possible profile, that’s true. But sometimes there are special factors motivating desperate people to deviate from the conventional procedures.
HENRIED: Has it occurred to you that Strasser’s presence in Casablanca—and the cat-and-mouse game he has been playing with me since his arrival here—might also fit into the "unconventional" category?
BOGART: Who knows—maybe Strasser is incompetent, or just another sadistic Nazi. I just don’t see desperation as a motivating factor in his admittedly peculiar behavior.
HENRIED: There are many nervous people in Berlin nowadays, Mr Blaine. The news from Stalingrad and El Alamein is causing more than a few National Socialists to perceive the Third Reich as a sinking ship.
BOGART: Is that supposed to mean you know something about Strasser I don’t know?
HENRIED: Before I go into that we must discuss those "shoes" you are wearing—
BERGMAN: Richard, the plane! They are starting the motors!
BOGART: [Offering envelope containing letters of transit to HENRIED.] Well, what’s it to be Laszlo? Men have fought and died for these scraps of paper. Less than an hour ago you offered me a king’s ransom for them. Now you can have one for the asking.
HENRIED: No. I am not going to do that.
BOGART: I can understand how accepting a gift from the man who’s stealing your wife might be embarrassing; so let’s put my proposition on a basis you can’t refuse—[Takes pistol from coat pocket.]
HENRIED: I hate to spoil your big scene, Mr Blaine, but Ilsa will confirm the fact that threats of death have never caused Victor Laszlo to alter his convictions. And what is the point of shooting me or forcing me to board that plane, when the same result can be achieved by simply using those Letters of Transit to make your escape from Casablanca—and from the husband who spoils your own honeymoon plans with his wife?
BERGMAN: Victor is right, isn’t he Richard? What difference does it make who stays in Casablanca and who leaves; when the only thing that really matters for us is the consummation of our Parisian love affair?
HENRIED: That sounds like a very pregnant question to me, Mr Blaine!
BERGMAN: [Taking BOGART’s arm.] We must hurry, Richard! They are closing the door!
HENRIED: What’s wrong Mr Blaine?
BERGMAN: Richard! The plane is moving! This doesn’t make any sense! Say something, Richard!
HENRIED: Yes, Mr Blaine. I think my wife is entitled to an explanation—
BOGART and BERGMAN follow overhead flight of plane.
HENRIED: —or would you prefer me to speculate on the reasons for your paralysis?
BOGART: [Putting pistol and envelope into pocket.] If you’ve got something to say, say it.
HENRIED: Let’s get back to those shoes you are wearing—
BOGART: What about them?
HENRIED: Isn’t it strange the way they keep taking you to places like Addis Ababa, Barcelona, Danzig, Helsinki and Paris—places where your arrival always seems to coincide with historical events of the most earthshaking variety? And now, here you are in Casablanca! One might conclude from the mere fact of your presence that something monumental is about to happen here. Is that why those shoes refused to move you onto that runway a moment ago when Ilsa was pulling on your sleeve? Can it be they are the shoes of an American secret agent?
BERGMAN: Oh Richard! Please tell me what Victor says is true! It would explain so much and solve so many of our problems!
HENRIED: I think Mr Blaine’s silence answers my question more eloquently than anything he might say—
BOGART: You can interpret my silence any way you want to, Laszlo—but whatever kind of shoes I happen to be wearing doesn’t alter the fundamental differences we have concerning Ilsa.
HENRIED: But are those "differences" really so fundamental? Can they even accurately be called "differences" when we both want the same thing?
BOGART: Doesn’t their fundamentality arise from the singular nature of that "thing" we both want but only one of us can have? A dame can no more divide her deepest affections between two men than Solomon could give half of an infant to each of the women claiming to be its biological mother.
HENRIED: I’m not sure Solomon himself ever decided how many men one woman can desire simultaneously. The idea that only our sex is equipped to handle multiple love affairs sounds suspiciously like another of those male chauvinist myths we find so convenient to accept as gospel.
BOGART: Maybe everything you say is true; but Ilsa is a very special woman. In her case generalities don’t apply. And even if they did, the fact still remains that last night she chose me over you.
HENRIED: That was before these revelations about my intent to fight the good fight right here in Casablanca, and your credentials as an American secret agent.
BERGMAN: You must admit, Richard—those are significant factors about which I was completely in the dark last night.
BOGART: What’s that supposed to mean—that you’re changing your mind?
BERGMAN: I don’t know what it means! I don’t know what to think any more!
HENRIED: Perhaps thinking is not the best way of solving such a dilemma, my darling. Decisions like the one you are being asked to make are usually based on what a woman feels—in the deepest depths of her heart, her soul—and her body.
BERGMAN: That’s just it, Victor! The signals I am receiving from those innermost regions of my being are still very mixed!
HENRIED: Well, I for one could exist quite happily in just such a permanent state of flux—what about you Mr Blaine?
BERGMAN: Yes, Richard; how does the idea of solving our immediate problem by simply maintaining the status quo strike you?
BOGART: It strikes me as one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard!
BERGMAN: Oh?
BOGART: Here we are perched on top of a ticking timebomb and you make it sound as if Casablanca was some kind of retreat where we can analyze the intricacies of our triangulated relationship ad infinitum!
HENRIED: I don’t want to minimize the future perils involved with the continuation of our triple romance, Mr Blaine—but for the present hasn’t that "time bomb" been at least temporarily defused by the elimination of Renault and Strasser as factors intractably hostile to our antiFascist purposes?
BERGMAN: I know it takes some getting used to Richard, but if indeed Victor’s analysis of our situation is correct there should no longer be any compelling reason why we must finalize our three fates here and now.
BOGART: That’s a very large if. How do I know your husband isn’t setting me up as a fallguy with his cock and bull story about Strasser and Renault suddenly metamorphosing into freedom loving democrats? [To HENRIED.] How do you explain Louie’s eagerness to arrest you last night and then play along with my plan of pinning the unsolved murder of those couriers on Victor Laszlo by planting their stolen Letters of Transit on him?
HENRIED: My arrest last night was part of an elaborate scheme designed by Strasser and executed by Renault that would allow them to secretly discuss with me the possibility and terms of forming a mutually beneficial rapprochement; the purpose of which would be to guarantee my cooperation in defending them against any postwar criminal charges, and their cooperation in my underground activities. During our "chat" I was shown the Gestapo’s dossier on a certain Colonel Richard Blaine, U. S. Army, assigned since March, 1935 to temporary duty with The Office of Strategic Services pursuant to a personal order signed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt—
BOGART: If the Nazis knew about me all along why didn’t they liquidate me when I first showed up in Casablanca?
HENRIED: For the same reason they didn’t liquidate me on my arrival here: we are both worth more to them alive than dead. In your case Strasser is convinced America will be entering the war any day now—and your stateside connections could prove useful to him. It seems the Major has heard there is a shortage of Nazi character actors in Hollywood—
BOGART: If he thinks I have any influence with Hollywood producers his head is in desperate need of examination!
HENRIED: I’m sure it is Mr Blaine; but it would be prudent for us not to enlighten him just now. The man has his heart set on becoming a matinee idol, and that kind of delusion can be a very powerful tool in our hands.
BOGART: You still haven’t explained why Louie went along with my scheme to frame you for the murder of those couriers.
HENRIED: That’s simple. From my point of view your frameup scheme provided me with a way of forcing Ilsa to leave Casablanca without her husband. While for Strasser and Renault it was the perfect pretext by which Victor Laszlo could be legally executed—and then resurrected as—[Removes wallet from inside coat, hands it to BOGART.]
BOGART: [Reading letter taken from wallet.] "SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Hans Juttner, special assistant to Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The individual described hereafter is authorized to act on my behalf in all matters for which my personal approval is required. Signed: A. Hitler"
During this BERGMAN has been reading over BOGART’s shoulder as HENRIED obtains suitcase from wing, opens it and produces SS officer’s uniform.
HENRIED: [Modeling uniform.] Well—are you convinced now Mr Blaine?
BOGART: We still have one problem—
BERGMAN: Oh Richard, no—
HENRIED: [Returning uniform to suitcase.] What problem is that, Mr Blaine?
BOGART: Finding somewhere in Casablanca to hang our hats. I sold The Cafe Americain to that fat thief Ferrari this morning.
BERGMAN: Did you say "our" hats, Richard?
BOGART: I suppose I did—
HENRIED: [Having finished with suitcase.] I’m happy to tell you we have nothing to worry about on that score. Ferrari only purchased your "den of intrigue" because it seemed to Strasser and Renault like the ideal base from which to stagemanage my espionage activities.
BOGART: The Fat Man is another player on our side?
HENRIED: Yes. Ferrari is Churchill’s Man in Casablanca. Apparently he’s working on a super secret project code named "Torch." Does that ring any OSS bells with you?
BOGART: It might—and it might not.
HENRIED: Strasser and Renault seem to think it has something to do with the strategic role Casablanca would play in any plans the Allies might make for invading French North Africa once America joins the antiFascist team.
BOGART: It’s an interesting theory.
BERGMAN: Isn’t this marvelous Richard! It will be just like old times again with me and you and Sam—[Extends left hand which BOGART takes in his.]
BOGART: And Victor. Don’t forget Victor.
BERGMAN: [Offering right hand to HENRIED, which he accepts.] I’m not forgetting you, darling. I never have. Your memory was always with me. Even in Paris when Richard was my only physical contact with society in general, and the opposite sex in particular. Oh, I’m so happy I could explode with joy over the way this affair of ours is turning out! [Brings their two hands to her lips and kisses them.] I only wish—
HENRIED: Yes?
BERGMAN: It sounds insane I know—but I wish we could end this chapter of our story by going back to Richard’s place where I would make love to you both.
HENRIED: I think that could be arranged, don’t you Mr Blaine—or may I call you Rick?
BOGART: [Pause.] Yes.
HENRIED: Yes, what? That was a two part question.
BOGART: You can call me Rick.
HENRIED: And the answer to part one?
BERGMAN: Is that really necessary Victor? By answering the last part of your question in the affirmative isn’t Richard tacitly consenting to my orgiastic proposition without actually saying so—for reasons we needn’t bother about right now, but which probably have something to do with his inborn sense of decency; and the irrefutable fact that in America all love triangles such as ours must end on a discreetly ambiguous note. Isn’t that so, Richard?
BOGART: We can discuss that on our way to my office. I think Louie would appreciate any haste we might make.
HENRIED: A splendid idea Rick—[Picks up suitcase.]
BERGMAN: "Our way!" You will never know the thrill I feel hearing you say those words, Richard! Come, my fellow musketeers! From now on it is one for all and all for one as we rejoin this global fight for love and glory like no other ever fought in the age old story of doing or dying!
BERGMAN, BOGART and HENRIED turn with wheeling maneuver and walk hand-in-hand into dark area of stage. After brief pause CURTIZ rises ecstatically from his chair.
CURTIZ: That was without a doubt the most brilliant goddammed exercise in ensemble improvisation I have ever seen!
BERGMAN, BOGART and HENRIED emerge from shadows.
BERGMAN: [Checking wristwatch.] Does that mean we’re finished?
CURTIZ: Yes—and no.
RESNAIS: [Rising from chair.] Ingrid and I must leave in the next minute or two, Michael—
CURTIZ: What I meant by that enigmatic remark was simply this: Casablanca is history; but in solving the problem of its finale you three geniuses have set the stage for what is bound to be the sequel ending all other sequels!
RESNAIS: It’s official then—that was the final take?
CURTIZ: Yes, yes, yes—cut! cut! cut!
BERGMAN: [EXITING with RESNAIS.] Goodbye everyone! I wish I could stay for the celebration, but unhappily time does have a way of going by, doesn’t it—[Blows kisses as RESNAIS escorts her off.]
CURTIZ: [Having returned to chair, into microphone.] Are you still there Bill?
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Any time you’re ready Mr C!
CURTIZ: What do you mean, "any time I’m ready?" That was a cut I just called for!
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: It was my understanding we were in a rehearsal mode Mr C—
CURTIZ: Jesus Christ, Bill—don’t do this to me! [Sits with hands clasped in prayerlike attitude.] Please tell me you’re pulling my leg—[Hands go to heart, pause.] Bill?
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: I don’t know what to say, Mr C—except that maybe the boys in the wings captured it all on film.
CURTIZ: Of course! There is still hope!
CAMERAMAN RIGHT [Off.]: Sorry Mr Curtiz—but I never heard your order to roll—
CAMERAMAN LEFT [Off.]: Same here, Mr Curtiz—
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: If it’s any help, Mr C—this wouldn’t be the first time a scene was lost because of a mixup over starting the cameras to roll. There was that infamous snafu while making The Ten Commandments when DeMille shouted—
CURTIZ: Goddammit, I’m absolutely positive I said "Lights! Camera! Action!"—or words to that effect—right after the break we took.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Well, you’ve got a whole auditorium full of witnesses to ask about that, Mr C.
Suddenly aware of audience’s presence, CURTIZ rises from chair and goes to footlights.
CURTIZ: Of course! [To audience.] You were all sitting here when I clearly established the ground rules for shooting Casablanca’s final scene—
BOGART: [Joining CURTIZ , taking his arm in order to lead him from footlights.] What difference does it make who’s responsible Mike; the barn door is shut on this film and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
CURTIZ: [Trying to wrench himself free from BOGART’s grasp.] Are you nuts? I want the record to show it wasn’t me who screwed up the most precious footage ever shot in this town!
HENRIED: [Joins with BOGART in restraining CURTIZ.] Bogey’s right, Mike—
CURTIZ: What the hell’s wrong with you guys! Can’t you see what a catastrophe this is!
BOGART: It’s not worth getting a heart attack over—
HENRIED: Or a broken one—which is what you would have gotten even if that scene had been captured on film.
BOGART: [As he and HENRIED help a faltering CURTIZ back to his chair.] Don’t you understand, Mike —whether what we did just now was or wasn’t a work of art, it would never have gotten past the censors. Not in a million years.
HENRIED: Chalk it up to a cruel fate, or divine providence, or the astronomical odds against producing cinematic masterpieces in a studio system designed by the mercenary likes of Harry Warner—but Casablanca was never meant to be an immortal motion picture.
BOGART: Let’s face facts, Mike; we were all hallucinating if we really believed Casablanca could ever amount to anything more than a hill of cinematic beans. Like every feature we turn out, after its brief moment of glory it remains just so much celluloid, fastly fading into that permanent state of oblivion where even the most popular films end up.
HENRIED: I don’t know about you, Mr Bogart, but even if that lost scene could somehow be salvaged—for me the "blessing" of our being eternally typecast as Victor Laszlo and Rick Blaine would be a very mixed one indeed.
BOGART: I think I could drink to that—
BOGART and HENRIED start walking toward what will be their exit at far side of stage.
HENRIED: Why don’t we do just that Mr Bogart—or may I call you Humphrey? Although we never did establish which one of us deserved to get the girl in either of Casablanca’s two endings, during our contest for Ilsa’s fictitious affection I think we may have developed the actual foundation for what could become—if not a "beautiful" friendship—one that is based on the mutual respect we have just acquired for each other’s acting ability.
BOGART: Are you conceding the bet we made?
HENRIED: Only to the extent of admitting my surprise at the scope of your hidden talents.
BOGART: Coming from you that might be worth more than money.
HENRIED: You continue to astonish me sir! Since when has Humphrey Bogart stopped believing in money as the only means by which the brightness of one’s stardom is measured? Is it conceivable some of Casablanca’s corny idealism has rubbed off on you?
BOGART: Maybe it has, and maybe it hasn’t—but one thing is certain, pal: you are buying those drinks we talked about.
HENRIED: I was just about to suggest my bachelor apartment as a venue less likely to re-arouse the rivalry factor than pickling ourselves in the presence of your attractive wife.
BOGART: That sounds sensible to me.
HENRIED: Although I must warn you: I’ve been dating a potential mankiller by the name of Betty Perske who might add a certain Casablancalike complexity to our future relationship—
EXIT BOGART and HENRIED, leaving CURTIZ sitting alone on stage. A brief pause ensues before:
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Excuse me, Mr C—but did you want to do something about the audience?
CURTIZ: [Emerging from his thoughts.] What? Oh yes—the audience. [Tries to rise from chair but lacks strength to do so, looks at watch.] Well, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not sure what to tell you, except that I don’t think this affair has been a total waste of your, or our, time. It’s true that we failed—although I’m sure if I asked, you would say you remember hearing me call for "Lights! Camera! Action!" But Bogey and Paul were right: assigning blame for this fiasco isn’t the point. What really matters is that we tried to make a contribution not just to the war effort, or to Warner Brothers’ bottom line—but to an American Civilization that will one day be held accountable for the cultural legacy it leaves behind when Hollywood is just another of history’s legendary ghost towns. Oh yes, my fellow employees, the time is coming when these colossal studios we labor in will decay and crumble like those once proud towers of Carthage, Babylon and Rome! And when future film scholars open the archives you and I have been working so diligently to fill with reel after reel of crowd pleasing screenplays, will they find anything worth more than its value as an archaeological curiosity? I think we must ask ourselves honestly, ladies and gentlemen, if in the 30- or 40-year history of Hollywood moviemaking we have produced a single motion picture that can stand the test of time as an eternal work of art? And before we answer that question my friends, let us consider this sobering fact: while Hollywood has been marshaling all its industrial might to manufacture amusing extravaganzas, men like Pablo Picasso, Franz Kafka, Gustav Mahler and Bert Brecht have been creating immortal masterpieces with those most fundamental and inexpensive of all artistic raw materials—paper, pen and ink! That is what gives this farce its tragic overtones! Casablanca could have been the one motion picture justifying Hollywood’s existence! Instead, what have we done but add yet another sentimental melodrama to the long list of our collective cinematic crimes! [Calming himself, checking watch.] But I see it is quitting time, ladies and gentlemen. So let me send you all home with a sincere apology for my own melodramatic excesses just now. It was unfair of me to include you as guilty parties in this unfortunate business. And perhaps I have also overstated the case against Casablanca—poor Casablanca! Let us all hope it enjoys a better fate than the one I am predicting for it. [Gestures to audience it should rise and leave.] That’s it, ladies and gentlemen—this isn’t a show, it’s reality. There is no need to wait for the final curtain or to applaud. Just turn your backs to the stage and leave me here alone crying into my beer. I’m sure you all have problems of your own to worry about.
As audience exits following dialogue is heard over public address system:
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: That was a nice speech, Mr C.
CURTIZ: [After pause.] Thank you, Bill.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: I don’t think you have anything to be personally ashamed of.
CURTIZ: It’s not a question of personal shame, Bill.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: As a matter of fact I think Casablanca has a pretty fair chance of enjoying that "better fate" you mentioned.
CURTIZ: I hope you’re right.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
CURTIZ: That’s certainly true, Bill; but I’m not sure I understand the relevance of such an axiom to Casablanca.
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Isn’t it fundamentally applicable in the sense that too much aesthetic analysis can interfere with the spontaneity essential for the directing of a great film?
CURTIZ: That’s very profound, Bill!
PROJECTIONIST [Off.]: Yes, I suppose it is—but that doesn’t necessarily detract from the value of what I’m telling you.
End of Play