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I was watching Casablanca again recently - one of my favourite films, but I guess I’m not really alone in that respect.

Anyway, above and beyond being a fantastically executed film, its also a fantastically crafted story - it has emotional depth but wears this depth lightly and with fabulous economy.

(And, yes, we can argue until we’re blue in the face about how much of this most perfect of all perfect films is intentionally brilliant and how much was just dumb luck, but let’s save that for the pub on saturday night, hey?)

This economy; this lightness of touch is (I reckon) nowhere better illustrated than in the above clip.

You know it anyway, I’m sure, but briefly, this scene takes place just after Rick tells Laszlo that, not only can he not have the stolen travel documents, but also that he’s been going at his missus (or at least, that’s how I interpret his “You’d better ask your wife.” line.) So far in the film, its the high water mark of both the “Will Laszlo escape” subplot and the “How much of a bastard is Rick” story.

As the preceding scene ends, we hear the commotion of the German troops singing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ downstairs, and the scene above unfolds. In less than 2 minutes of screen time we establish (nay, brand indelibly into the brains of the audience) the following:

* Laszlo is a good guy - maybe the good guy - and not the second banana love interest that he’s been so far. For me, this scene is the first demonstration that he isn’t the sinister, louche. European nancy boy that Henreid always struck me as, (Yes, even in Now Voyager) This is a man of action.

* This is the first time that Bogart lets the emotional monster out of the box - the monster he’s kept locked away since he’s been in Casablanca and which he keeps docile with hard liquor and wise-cracks. As the band look up at him imploringly and he nods his permission, see the regret in his eyes. This, he’s saying to himself, is going nowhere good. Basically - we see that Bogart’s character, already and shaded and subtle role, is considerably more nuanced than we might have thought.

* The key thing for me is the reaction of the bar room customers and what it means in terms of the tone of the film.The customers are (apparently) sitting there silently tolerating ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. They are cowed and intimidated by the song and its singers. Its only when the La Marseillaise is played - when they’re offered an alternative to seething silently - that they leap from their seats and rebel. (And they do leap. Look at the fuckers go!) This is what Laszlo represents: Leadership and inspiration

A couple more things leap out of the scene for me - firstly, the scoring of the two songs together so that they sit one on top of the other almost perfectly is such a clever and unnecessary touch - presumably by Max Steiner and, also presumably, one of the reasons he got an Oscar for the score.

Secondly, as I perused Wikipedia to find Max Steiner’s name, I found this telling quote:

Part of the emotional impact of the film has been attributed to the large proportion of European exiles and refugees among the extras and in the minor roles. A witness to the filming of the “duel of the anthems” sequence said he saw many of the actors crying, and “realized that they were all real refugees”.^[37] Harmetz argues that they “brought to a dozen small roles in Casablanca an understanding and a desperation that could never have come from Central Casting”.^[38]

And that leads me to pretty much my favourite bit of the scene - possibly the whole film - the shot of Yvonne (Madeleine Le Beau), the sympathetically played but (so far) unsympathetically treated local Slapper, tears rolling down her cheeks as she belts out her anthem. It becomes clear in the 3 seconds of screen time afforded to this shot that the tears aren’t just for an abstract, patriotic Mother France. For Yvonne,  in this song, in this place, these are tears for a dimly realised forlorn hope of redemption.

One more thing - and the thing that still confuses me about Casablanca, though maybe its because I’m Dreadfully Modern: Ilsa. What the fuck? She’s the only one who isn’t singing. All the time she’s just gazing adoringly at Laszlo - and not the symbolic “Saviour Of Europe” Laszlo I’m talking about above. Not at all. She’s looking at him as though she’s thinking “My husband. He’s such a dreamboat. And what a nice singer!”

I guess basically I’m saying that I’ve never really got Ilsa - never understood what was so special about a 17 year old girl that she literally *broke* a man like Rick. The film (obviously) doesn’t discuss whether she was mustard in the sack and it doesn’t appear that she was, like her two lovers, some kind of Resistance Heroine. If anyone can explain it to me, I’d love to hear it.