8. "Walk up a flight. I'll be expecting you."

       

“Walk up a flight. I’ll be expecting you.”[1]

on the stage

        in the play,

        sitting at that odd table

        (Strasser frowns, Rinaldo

leers,

        Victor Laszlo grimaces)

        the vinegary guy who has given his name to this joint in Casablanca

and Mrs. Laszlo

recall their last time

        together,

        in Paris,

        at La Belle Aurore,

        and Rick manages, with a donjuanish trick,

to slip his apartment key to his old flame

the curtains draw with the café almost empty,

there’s only Rick, and Sam “the Rabbit”,

at the piano,

playing “it” reluctantly for his boss

it’s Act 2, Scene 1, “the next morning”,

and Rick “comes down from his apartment,

soon followed by Lois,

who is dressed in the same clothes she wore the night before”,

signalling,

of course,

her having slept over,

and they say some bitter things to each other,

in what the dame calls “a nasty ending”

to their “fairy tale”[2]

        the studio shopped the play around, to see if it

        would

do,

        Aeneas MacKenzie and Wally Kline were among the first writers on the lot to take it apart[3],

        and warned,

        in their memos,

        of some “highly censorable situations,

relationships,

and implications”

which must be “removed”[4],

        and one was,

        of course,

        that between-the-acts, off-

stage scene

        upstairs

        the Code

        the Production Code was put together while fingering rosary beads,

        among hailmaries,

        had the Legion of Decency minding it,

        and was captained by Presbyterian elder Will Hays[5]

        the Hays Office became a holy fort,

        their sanctimonious tight-assed cavalrymen protecting “the institution of marriage

and the home”,

abhorred fornication[6]

        and dirt,

        motel rooms,

        meandmrsjones stories (that sort of love must never,

        never

“be presented

as […] beautiful”)[7]

the May 21 draft

RICK:          (…) [Victor is] in love with People, but I’m in love with you.

ILSA:           [Looks at him with tear-dimmed eyes. In a whisper.] I wish you weren’t. I wish I weren’t in love with you. [He takes her in his arms and kisses her. It is a long kiss. When they finally disengage, Ilsa looks up at him. Tenderly.] We’re still terrible people. [They kiss again.] FADE OUT[8]

        oh yes, they were, Ilsa

        and Rick,

        indeed

        “terrible people”,

        and that fade out was an invitation, a window

        of cozy opportunities

        which they wouldn’t (how could they?)

        miss

         

        Joe Breen’s instructions

        Joseph Ignatius Breen, call-me-“Joe”,

        the Production Code Administration chief,

        thought the Hollywood world

        rotten,

        populated with drunkards,

jews,

pagans,

pervs

        Breen’s staff examined the May 21st script and found it

disturbing,

suggested “replacing

the fade on page 135

with a dissolve,

and shooting the succeeding scene without any sign of a bed

or couch,

or anything whatever suggestive of a sex affair”, “otherwise

it could not be approved”[9]

okeyed

        the scene was shot on July 27th following the P. C. A. instructions, not a hint

        of “a bed

or couch” in the apartment,

        and a dissolve

instead of the fade

        thus “corrected”, Casablanca

was able to earn Production Code Certificate of Approval 8457,

and the Hays Office files summed up the movie’s

moral downs

and ups

with “‘Much Drinking’,

a little gambling,

two killings

and no illicit sex”[10]

inside the dissolve

so

ok,

he sees now, there had been

some misunderstanding,

and they make up, and kiss, and there’s

the dissolve,

and Rick is standing by the half-open French windows,

a cigarette in his hand,

watching “the revolving beacon light at the airport

from his window”, gives Ilsa

the cue,

and then?,

and she, sitting on the two-seater sofa (not

a proper couch),

will resume her story[11]

yes,

the dissolve seems to have worked, it is

prophylactic,

leaves little room for them to do much,

some clumsy, nervous coitus seems very unlikely,

just look at them,

her hairdo untouched, her blouse

unruffled,

his hair oiled back,

not a wrinkle in his white jacket,

his bow-tie perfectly balanced on his buttoned-up shirt

we know, though, that Ilsa’s story-telling has gone on

unhurriedly,

there’s “a bottle of champagne on the table

and two half-filled glasses”,

and when Rick calls good old Carl up (he

is downstairs with Victor Laszlo,

they are hiding from the German police),

and he finds Ilsa,

and is told,

“in a low voice”,

to “take Miss Lund

home”,

we somehow see through the fat man’s spectacles, don’t we?

---

[1] Rick’s words to Ilsa in the movie.

[2] Willer (1993: 213 – 214).

[3] Wally Kline. In Lebo (1992: 42).

[4] Wally Kline. In Lebo (1992: 42).

[5] Harmetz (1992: 162).

[6] Harmetz (1992; 39).

[7] Harmetz (1992: 163).

[8] From the May 21 draft of the script. In Miller (1993: 121).

[9] Letter to Warner Brothers dated June 18th, 1942. In Lebo (1992: 105).

[10] Harmetz (1992: 164):

[11] From the final script.