15. the phantom kiss

“…Outside, Laszlo is paying the cabdriver. Ilsa is walking toward the entrance.

Laszlo [to the cabdriver]: Here.

Inside, Rick opens the door. Isa rushes in. Her intensity reveals the strain she is under.

Ilsa: Richard, Victor thinks I’m leaving with him. Haven’t you told him?

Rick: No, not yet.

Ilsa: But it’s all right, isn’t it? You were able to arrange everything?

Rick: Everything is quite all right.

Ilsa: Oh, Rick!

She looks at him with a vaguely questioning look.

Rick: We’ll tell him at the airport. The less time to think, the easier for all of us. Please trust me.

Ilsa: Yes, I will.

Laszlo comes in.”

        on July 9, 1942, Producer Hal Wallis wrote a memo to Curtiz,

he had been seeing the dailies the night before,

        and there was “one thing” he wanted him to shoot,

        hadn’t we talked about it?, Ilsa

has come into the Café,

        they haven’t got much time left,

        will have to scramble a few lines up while Laszlo pays the cabdriver,

        brings

in

the luggage,

        all clear?,

        yeah,

        oh Rick, she says, and “at that point”,

        remember?,

        this is where I was getting at,

        Rick was “to look at Ilsa a moment and then

kiss

her

so the audience will realize later that this was his goodbye”

         

but mid-July was crazy on the set, and Humphrey

objected,

so “Rick’s kiss never made it into the movie”[1]

why wouldn’t Bogart kiss

Bergman

here?

for one thing, they

would have had to rush it, and check,

at the same time,

if Laszlo was coming,

it would have come up as ungainly,

clumsy, all

thumbs; for another,

he might chicken

out

(of his heroic feat); also

it was part of the tough-guy act he was trying to put on

so instead of that last kiss, we only had words

(words

words)

to gloss over

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[1] Harmetz (1992: 29 – 30).