Salvation in Casablanca

Who - Rick (Humphrey Bogart)
What - Love
How - Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman)

Well, there's my short answer. I know Rick represents America waking up out of it's isolationism, but salvation never comes symbolically nor to an institution: salvation comes one-on-one by integrating that person into communion.

At the beginning of the movie, Rick tries to remain aloof from the human traffic that runs through Casablanca, but, really, he is really just as much a part of the traffic. He profits from their desperate losses in his casino and his bar. He treats women like overcoats that may be tossed aside when not needed. He avoids any social contact with his customers, and he finds little - if any - redeeming qualities in his coworkers or his competition.

Further, he has politically stood above the fray - when asked his nationality, he replies "a drunkard". He plays chess with himself.

Yet, at the same time, there is, somewhere, deep inside, some elevated thinking. He jokingly comments that there are some places in NYC that the Germans would not want to invade. But underneath the gruff comment there is a wee bit of national pride daring the Germans to try. He may toss aside women, but when it comes down to it, he will defend them in a brawl (as between the German and the Frenchman) and he manages, at the arrival of Ilsa Lund to see all of that cave away revealing the wounded man inside.

His love for Ilsa, wounded though it is, resurfaces in kind memories, in painful jolts of anger, in desperate attempts to keep the old man, the gruff aloof man, from falling away. But grief resurfaces, and in the way that grief has, purges itself. It makes room for something else.

Almost instantly (by the next night) we see a new man beginning - one who is willing to give money through his roulette wheel. He rescues a young wife from the slimy prefect of police (Claude Rains), and when his saloon is closed down, he goes out of his way to make sure that his employees will be paid. At the same time, he begins to see that his political aloofness, like his personal aloofness, must be done away with in the battle of Good and Evil that is, at that time, taking shape in the world.

In order to rescue her husband, Ilsa offers herself as a sacrifice to Rick. Rick accepts - but plots a double cross because he knows that his love for her is so great that her own happiness - being with her husband - must come first. And more, he knows that her love for Victor is what keeps Victor going. For the ultimate victory of Good over evil, Ilsa must stay with Victor. For all that he makes the "hill of beans" line at the end, he knows the problems of three little people may mean nothing, but every little action - him sacrificing her for a greater happiness and good - works towards an ultimate good.

The backstory on the film is that the producers and writers would rush scripts over to the players in the early morning and say "learn these". They told Ilsa (Bergman) to "play it loose" with both her former lover (Rick) as well as her husband, Victor Laslo (Paul Henreid) - because they had not yet decided the ending! She was never sure who she should be "really" in love with, so what seems like her own ruse is, really, the actress' confusion: she didn't know. The final choice to be with Rick and Rick's final choice to keep Ilsa with Victor came as a surprise to them both.

In that sense, the acting is superb: they were not acting. Like humans in real life who only with hindsight can see God's Grace acting, the players can only look back and see the "real" meaning of what they had previously acted. The writers and producer could only look back and see what was "really" going on. Some may say that since this is so, the story I see may be meaningless, because no one intended this story to be told save only as an accident of fate.

But in the final analysis, I think that's what our life is like, too. God has a plan that really, includes our free will and the free choices we make - and we fail constantly - but the plan happens somehow - using our failures and using our "what we really mean" and our "whoops, lets do that again.", Through it all, though, by Grace, we are saved. A dance is drawn and we find ourselves dancing there among the notes and glissandos as if we knew what we were doing.