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"Casablanca": Self-Denial

In Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphry Bogart) is an exiled American running a popular café in Casablanca, a town in French controlled Morocco where many European refugees gather to try to obtain exit visas to escape the Nazis. Rick comes into the possession of two priceless official letters of transit that allow their owners to travel without a visa or passport. He helps a Czech resistance fighter, Victor Laszlo, and his wife, Ilsa, who he had been previously involved with years ago when she thought her husband had been killed. Though Rick is still in love with Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), he decides to give them the letters of transit so Ilsa can remain with her legal husband.

The scene begins on a misty, foggy runway with a small plane in the background. Despite previous plans that Victor would go and Ilsa would stay with Rick in Casablanca, Rick announces that Ilsa will get on the plane with her husband.

In a tone of dismay and panic at Rick's change of plans, Ilsa says, "No, Richard, no! What's happened to you? Last night…."

"Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I've done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing: You're getting on that plane with Victor where you belong."

"Richard, no…."

Rick is adamant. "You've got to listen to me. Have you any idea what you have to look forward to if you stay here? Nine chances out of ten we'd both wind up in a concentration camp."

"You're saying this only to make me go."

"I'm saying it because it's true," Rick replies. "Inside, 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, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."

Content: Rated PG

Elapsed Time: 01:35:35 to 01:36:50, DVD scene 31, "We'll always have Paris"

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