Great Characters: Captain Renault (Claud Rains)
Casablanca is a cinematic treasure, replete with wonderful characters and memorable dialogue, but instead of spotlighting the Protagonist Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) or Attractor Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), I want to honor the movie’s chief Trickster: Captain Renault as played wonderfully by Claud Rains:
Renault is a classic Trickster, playing all sides to his own advantage. Sometimes he is an ally, other times an enemy as exemplified beautifully when the German commander Strasser orders Renault to shut down Rick’s cafe:
“I’m shocked, shocked to find there’s illegal gambling going on here,” then happily pockets his night’s earnings from — what else — gambling. Which is of course a payoff to this earlier exchange:
Captain Renault: Rick, there are many exit visas sold in this café, but we know that you’ve never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to remain open.
Rick: Oh? I thought it was because I let you win at roulette.
Captain Renault: That is another reason.
Of course Renault’s two-faced persona extends to the Germans as well:
Captain Renault: We are very honored tonight, Rick. Major Strasser is one of the reasons the Third Reich enjoys the reputation it has today.
Major Heinrich Strasser: You repeat Third Reich as though you expected there to be others!
Captain Renault: Well, personally, Major, I will take what comes.
Sometimes an ally, sometimes an enemy, you just don’t know where you stand with a Trickster — which is why this moment at the very end of the movie is so terrific:
By the way, I found an interesting short video documentary a high school teacher uploaded here exploring another dimension of Renault as Trickster: his presumed bisexuality. After all, they did end up going off into foggy night together, the beginning of “beautiful friendship.”
What are your thoughts about Captain Renault and the movie Casablanca?
UPDATE: An interesting observation in comments from Ivan:
Renault’s one of my favorite characters from cinema, and really the reason I watch Casablanca again and again. Elsa, Rick and Lazlo are, to me, “a hill of beans.” They are not going to do anything other than what their archetypes want them to (noble sacrifices, etc.), but Renault? He’s the wild card, the lynchpin — it’s his moral choice that let’s Elsa and Lazlo escape, and in a nanosecond I see across Rains’ face the play of emotions of a man who is just about to throw away EVERYTHING (position, power, comfort, easy sex, etc.) for a just cause.
Excellent point re Renault. The movie does an interesting job with a sort of domino effect in response to Doing What Is Right, first with Rick, then with Renault: Rick begins as the cynic, only out for himself (a personality trait with which Renault can relate). Broadly speaking the Attractor (Lund) awakens Rick’s ‘heart’ and the Mentor (Laszlo) awakens Rick’s ‘head,’ the cumulative effect of which is to reconnect Rick with his idealism and pull him from the sidelines back into the fight as exhibited by giving the letters of transit to Ilsa and Laszlo, then killing Strasser. Renault, who has been witness to all this, does have a clear choice at that pivotal moment after Strasser lies dead and the cops show up — which is why what Ivan describes, that “nanosecond” on Rains’ face is so great.
What a remarkable movie Casablanca is!
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