Daily Dialogue — March 11, 2015
ILSA: No, Rick. Not tonight.
RICK: Especially tonight.
ILSA: Please don’t.
RICK: Why did you have to come to Casablanca? There are other places.
ILSA: I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were here. Believe me, Rick, it’s true. I didn’t know.
RICK: It’s funny about your voice, how it hasn’t changed. I can still hear it. “Richard, dear, I’ll go with you anyplace. We’ll get on a train together and never stop.”
ILSA: Don’t, Rick. I can understand how you feel.
RICK: You understand how I feel. How long was it we had, honey?
ILSA: I didn’t count the days.
RICK: Well, I did. Every one of them. Mostly I remember the last one. The wow finish. A guy standing on a station platform in the rain with a comical look on his face because his insides have been kicked out.
ILSA: Can I tell you a story, Rick?
RICK: Does it got a wow finish?
ILSA: I don’t know the finish yet.
RICK: Go on, tell it. Maybe one’ll come to you as you go along.
ILSA: It’s about a girl who had just come to Paris from her home in Oslo. At the house of some friends. She met a man about whom she’d heard her whole life — A very great and courageous man. He opened up for her a whole beautiful world full of knowledge and thoughts and ideals. Everything she knew or ever became was because of him. And she looked up to him and worshiped him with a feeling she supposed was love–
RICK: Yes, that’s very pretty. I heard a story once. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano playing in the parlor downstairs. “Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid,” they’d always begin. I guess neither one of our stories is very funny. Tell me–who was it you left me for? Was it Laszlo–or were there others in between–or aren’t you the kind that tells?
— Casablanca (1942), screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
The Daily Dialogue theme for next week: Reunion. Today’s suggestion by Will Johnson.
Trivia: Humphrey Bogart’s wife Mayo Methot continually accused him of having an affair with Ingrid Bergman, often confronting him in his dressing room before a shot. Bogart would come onto the set in a rage. In fact, despite the undeniable on-screen chemistry between Bogart and Bergman, they hardly spoke, and the only time they bonded was when the two had lunch with Geraldine Fitzgerald. According to Fitzgerald, “the whole subject at lunch was how they could get out of that movie. They thought the dialogue was ridiculous and the situations were unbelievable… I knew Bogart very well, and I think he wanted to join forces with Bergman, to make sure they both said the same things.” For whatever reasons, Bogart and Bergman rarely spoke after that.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Will notes, “One of the most famous reunions in film, but not a pleasant one.” And think about this: It is a huge coincidence that Ilsa just happens to end up in the very same city as Rick, without knowing he’s there. But as they say in Hollywood, you are allowed one coincidence per movie. Might as well make it a big one!
If you have a good suggestion for this week’s theme, please post in comments.