What is the Best Line in Casablanca?

In last year’s Oscar-nominated “Blue Moon,” holding court at Sardi’s, celebrated Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) cites the best line in the 1942 winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture and stone cold classic “Casablanca” as “Nobody ever loved me that much.” And I thought, “Is it? Is it the best line in ‘Casablanca?’” It’s the line Rick (Humphrey Bogart) says to Annina Brandel (Joy Page) the Bulgarian newlywed who has taken up with the dastardly Captain Renault (Claude Rains) in the hope of securing letters of transit for she and her husband to escape to America. It’s a line that echoes Rick’s “I stick my neck out for nobody” because, in fact, he winds up sticking his neck out repeatedly, including for Annina Brandel, just as, in fact, someone did love him that much. Of course, “I stick my neck out for nobody” is a standard-issue observation given extra oomph by the surrounding context while “Nobody ever loved me that much,” as the fictional Hart suggests, stands more on its own. And that poses an essential question: is the best line in “Casablanca” one that is the best line unto itself or one that is in some sense elevated by attendant circumstances like the situation or the actor? 

AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes from June 2005 included six lines from “Casablanca,” the most of any movie, doubling the two second place finishers, “Gone with the Wind” and “The Wizard of the Oz.” I’m willing to bet that if you give it a minute, you can figure out which six lines made the cut, and that you can figure out those six do not include “Nobody ever loved me that much.” It also does not include what Lorenz Hart cites as the movie’s worst line: “A precedent is being broken.” He’s wrong about that one. The worst line is Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) imploring her French Resistance folk hero husband (Paul Henreid): “Victor, please don’t go to the underground meeting tonight.” But then, even that line, as David Denby once noted for The New Yorker, is “adorably terrible.” “Casablanca” is nothing if not the utmost expression of Hollywood hokum and that line exists as a little reminder that even if the movie proved eternal, no one really thought it was made to last.

The highest-ranking “Casablanca” line on AFI’s list, checking in at #5, is Rick’s recurring, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Famously, that line was improvised by Bogart himself, culled from poker lessons he gave Bergman, while the next “Casablanca” line on the list, checking in at #20, the immortal wrap-up, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” was suggested by producer Hal Wallis. And that’s interesting because otherwise, “Casablanca,” which was based on an unproduced play and written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, is such a writer’s kind of movie, as witty in its dialogue as it is shrewd in its structure.

Indeed, part of the problem with the AFI’s list is that in some cases, the best lines require the accompanying lines to unlock their full verbal luminescence. Rick’s “I was misinformed” doesn’t sing without the preceding bit about having come to Casablanca for the waters just as his “I’m a drunkard” doesn’t come through without the German Major Strasser’s (Conrad Veidt) antecedent inquiry about Rick’s nationality. Heck, Renault’s, “That makes Rick a citizen of the world” right after Rick’s “I’m a drunkard” could qualify too. And though “Blue Moon’s” Lorenz Hart notes the economy of “Nobody ever loved me that much,” contrary to what screenwriting courses might teach you, sometimes a little extravagance pays. 

Yvonne: “Where were you last night?” 

Rick: “That’s so long ago I don’t remember.” 

Yvonne: “Will I see you tonight?” 

Rick: “I never plan that far ahead.”

On other hand, Ilsa’s famous (and famously oft-misquoted) line, “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By,’” which was #28 on AFI’s countdown, is made memorable not so much because of the inherent wittiness of the line so much as how the line encapsulates and conjures the feeling surrounding it. Ditto “We’ll always have Paris” (#43). Renault’s “Round up the usual suspects,” meanwhile, is planted early in the screenplay and then paid off with great dramatic flair at the end. It might have only been #32 on AFI’s list, but I am inclined to say contrary to the fictionalized Lorenz Hart, that it might, that it just might be the best line in “Casablanca.” 

One line conspicuously missing from the AFI list is Captain Renault’s “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!” I suspect that if AFI redid its 100 quotes today, this one would make the cut, having become so prominent between the aged and the yutes alike as a wearily comic catch-all for our golden age of political blinkering and shrugging corruption. It’s a great line on the page, but Rains brings it home by providing just the right amount of ersatz incredulousness.

I like a well-crafted line, but what I love most is written line alchemizing so impeccably with an actor that it sounds as it were improvised even though it was not. And Bogart, as was his way, has all manner of such lines in “Casablanca.” There is his riposte to Strasser when the German Major tries to goad him by suggesting the Third Reich could invade New York. “Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you try to invade,” Rick replies as Bogey gives it this glorious ring of twinkly insolence. Or how about when Rick and Ilsa recall their last meeting on the day the Germans marched into Paris. “I remember every detail,” he says. “The Germans wore grey; you wore blue.” That line is too good to be true, just like a memory, but that is how Bogart says it, calling up a memory from the recesses of his mind. And brings us to the line that curiously brought up the rear of all the Casablanca entries on AFI’s list.  

On paper, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” sounds a little flowery, a little forced, not necessarily something a person might be inclined to say in the real world. But then, this is the movies, and who wants to talk like the world? This line is not only one that Bogart takes possession of with a pained, intoxicated slur, giving it the ring of drunken poetry, while also effusing a crucial hint of hydrogen psychosis, it is the one that more any other illuminates movie dialogue not as something to replicate the way people talk in the real world but, like the movie itself, as something beautifully, romantically larger than life. It’s the best line in “Casablanca.” 

How Will Casablanca Factor Into Space Jam: A New Legacy?

The allegedly long-awaited sequel to “Space Jam”, starring LeBron James in place of Michael Jordan, is set to be released this summer and a recent EW article by Derek Lawrence went long in telling us what to expect. (I was little disappointed this piece did not take the form of a parody of LeBron’s I’m Coming Home Sports Illustrated letter in 2014, but nevertheless.) Honoring the full title “Space Jam: A New Legacy”, LeBron and his son Dom (Cedric Joe) are sucked into a WB server courtesy of a rogue AI (Don Cheadle) and must assemble a squad of Looney Tunes basketball players to escape by defeating the AI’s squad of champions on the digitized hardwood. The detail that most caught the attention of the Film Twitter Cognoscenti, however, was that James “drifts through some of the studio’s most famous films to track down his underdog squad.“ Most famous films? Director Malcolm D. Lee explained: “It was a tricky thing just in terms of what you may want, like, Oh my God, look, there’s Mad Max, and there’s Casablanca!” Hold the phone. “Casablanca”? LeBron James “drifts through” “Casablanca”? How would that work then? What does that entail? True, Lawrence wrote that no titles of movies within movies have been confirmed, but does it not seem suspicious that Lee cited “Casablanca” off the top of his head? Something’s up and Cinema Romantico is here to ask the obvious question: how will “Casablanca” factor into “Space Jam: A New Legacy?” A few guesses:  

Maybe when LeBron is looking for Bugs, or somebody, he suddenly finds himself in “Casablanca”, face-to-face with Captain Louis Renault, asking where he can find Bugs and so Captain Louis Renault says “Tonight he will be at Rick’s. Everybody comes to Rick’s.”

Maybe LeBron inadvertently walks through this shadow in Rick’s office. Then again, “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” already sorta did this.

Maybe you CGI LeBron and his son in place of Victor and Ilsa when they enter Rick’s and so it looks like Sam is flabbergasted to see, you know, an NBA star from the future walking through his place and, oh my God, why am I even doing this?

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world she walks into mine” sounds like the perfect time to introduce the Lola Bunny everybody’s been talking about and will someone stop me, please?

“Round up the usual suspects” could induce panic in the scheming Daffy Duck and I guess no one is going to talk me out of this.

If we’re being sacrilege, let’s just be it. Can we just make Sascha a full-fledged accomplice of LeBron? Can you do the Leia thing, the thing they did with Carrie Fisher and Leia at the end of “Rogue One” but with Leonid Kinsky and Sascha? 

When Captain Renault feigns shock at Rick running a gambling operation in order to shut the whole place down maybe LeBron and his son and the Tunes can be in the gambling hall and have to high-tail it out. Or would that besmirch the King’s image?

In the end, I think it has to be this. I think LeBron needs to end up in Rick’s right when Victor cues up La Marseillaise in response to Renault and Strasser and the Nazis singing Die Wacht am Rhein. And LeBron finds himself singing La Marseillaise. Because I think that would fuel enough takes to melt the Internet.  

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

Recently it was unveiled that photographer Rä di Martino had, by chance, wound up searching for and tracking down the long-ago sets used by George Lucas for the Tatooine scenes of his legendary original "Star Wars" film. Well, this got me to thinking.

It got me to thinking about how the righteous hosts of Filmspotting, Adam Kempenar and Josh Larson, the Rob Gordons of Top 5 Movie Lists, a couple months back unveiled the Top 5 Movie Locations They Wished They Could Visit.

Granted, I am no amateur when it comes to actually visiting movie locations. Everyone knows I took a pilgrimage to North Carolina to pay respect to the filming locations for "Last of the Mohicans" and on the way there I stopped to pay respect to Elizabethtown (because of "Elizabethtown") and when I visited my sister in Maine I made sure we took a detour to Bethel and Andover to pay respect to the filming locations for "The Myth of Fingerprints" and when my sister lived in Oregon I made sure we spent a day in Eugene to pay respect to the filming locations of "Without Limits."

Of course, all those are real locations that actually exist and the point of Filmspotting's list was to name make-believe places that solely exist within the movie itself that you wish you could go visit. Ah! Well, that's different!

Top 5 Movie Locations I Wish I Could Visit

5. Rick’s Café Americain, "Casablanca." Tonight they’ll be at Rick’s. Everybody goes to Rick’s. Except for me. I wanna go to Rick’s too! I do, I do, I do!!!

4. Speedboat, Gulf of Mexico, “Miami Vice.” Remember in Michael Mann's exorbitantly underrated update on the 80's TV show when Colin Farrell & Gong Li jet off to Cuba for mojitos and salsa (dancing) via speedboat? Sure, you do. I admit this location is a little difficult to pin down. I also admit this location is very much real but... Well, I could rent a speedboat. Sure. And I could pilot that speedboat from Miami to Havana, Cuba with a fetching lady to imbibe mojitos and dance salsa. But, of course, I couldn’t really do any of this. I would never make it to Havana for the mojitos because the Cubans would lock me up. If by some miracle I did make it to Havana I could never possibly dance the salsa (could we instead contort very enthusiastically but very, very badly to Kylie Minogue?). Of course, I would never get anywhere near Havana because if I tried to pilot a speedboat it would totally capsize in about 27 seconds, never mind the fact that I could never pull off Colin Farrell’s suit or convince a fetching lady to join me in the first place. And all that is why if I could be magically transported to movie location with the movie gods covering my every move I would be transported to a speedboat with a Malin Akerman-esque lady jetting off to Havana for mojitos and a salsa.

3. The Hit Pit, “Million Dollar Baby.” Never mind that Frankie Dunn would probably take one look at me, grimace and banish me to the corner where Danger is shadow boxing to pitiful effect, I would like so much just to spend a day – just an afternoon even – at his hole-in-the-wall gym. I would sit back, breathe in that disgusting aroma of sweat, gym socks, fresh blood and cheap bleach, listen to the sounds of speed bags and skipping rope. Besides, visiting Maggie Fitzgerald’s home gym would be for me like a baseball aficionado getting to set foot in the home locker room of old Yankee Stadium.

2. New York City, “The Royal Tenenbaums.” As much as Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” romanticizes that city all out of proportion, it is still showing us the real Manhattan – as in, places that actually exist. Wes Anderson’s “Royal Tenenbaums”, on the other hand, while technically being set in Manhattan envisions it is as a mythical Manhattan, a place that only exists in our imaginations. It is set on streets and at places that while being located in New York do not actually exist – such as The Public Archives and the Lindbergh Palace Hotel. This is what sets it apart. I think my favorite place to visit in NYC every time I go is The Algonquin Hotel partially because just being inside it feels like New York in the 30’s and 40’s. And really, that’s the New York I want to visit – the New York of the 30’s and 40’s. And the New York of “The Royal Tenenbaums” feels like the New York of the 30’s and 40’s but still with the amenities required by the modern unmanly man.

1. Nelson, Washington, “Roxanne.” So in the wake of the esteemed Roger Ebert’s passing I was, of course, perusing various Ebert-related bits out there on the world wide interwebs and stumbled across a Youtube video of he and the late Gene Siskel discussing “Roxanne”, one of my all-time favorites, on an episode of At the Movies. (Both of them loved the movie so much Ebert actually concluded their review by saying “We can’t even have an argument.” Awesome.) And a line of Siskel’s struck me like a bolt of Midwest lightning in May. He termed Steve Martin’s lead performance as being akin to “effervescent ginger ale.” Well, it is! It is effervescent ginger ale! But the whole movie is effervescent ginger ale and its setting – the city of Nelson, Washington – is effervescent ginger ale! Not just the scenery, mind you, which is striking or the delightfully slanted streets of a ski-town but the……the………aura. The way Martin declares “Irony? Oh, we don’t get that here” just seems to permeate every sidewalk and home and main street shop. But at the same time it’s not staid, plain-jane Eisenhower America, it’s something sweeter and truer, a place where no one seems to put on airs or masquerade as something they’re not. It comes across so tranquil, so refreshing, so much like……effervescent ginger ale.

Dammit, I want to go there.