Rick (Humphrey Bogart)’s Timeline and Summary
- Taking things chronologically (and what else would you do in a timeline?) Rick spends some time running guns to Ethiopia, and at another time fights on the side of the Loyalists of Spain.
- Rick meets Ilsa in Paris. She never tells him she was married and that (she thinks) her husband died in a concentration camp, so he has no clue. In fact, they really don't know much of anything about one another. That's how to make love last, kids.
- Thinking that he is going to be leaving Paris with Ilsa, Rick arrives at a train station but is stood up. He reads a letter left for him by Ilsa that says, "Later tater." (paraphrasing)
- Okay…present-day (in the world of the movie, anyway).
- Rick's an apolitical, cynical, emotionally shut-down owner of a successful nightclub in Casablanca.
- Ugarte, one of his shady club patrons, entrusts a couple of letters of transit to Rick, who hides them in a piano.
- Rick hears Sam, the piano player, playing "As Time Goes By," which used to be his and Ilsa's song.
- He sees Ilsa there with a man who turns out to be Victor Laszlo, a leader of the Czech Resistance. So he sits down for an awkward drink with them instead.
- Later that night, Ilsa shows up and tries to explain what happened with the whole "abandoning him" fiasco. Rick is hammered and doesn't want to hear it.
- Laszlo comes to Rick and offers to pay a fortune for the letters of transit, but Rick isn't an uber Laszlo fan and refuses.
- Since hubby's plan backfired, Ilsa shows up at Rick's apartment with a plan of her own. She threatens to shoot him if he doesn't give up the letters, but Rick is actually in the mood to get shot, so that doesn't work. Instead, she tells him she still loves him and wants to stay in Casablanca with him. Quite a change of heart.
- Rick tells Ilsa he'll get Victor out of town, actually he arranges with Renault, the Captain of Police, to catch Victor in the act of accepting the letters, making him an accessory to the murder of the German couriers.
- However, once Renault tries to make the arrest, Rick holds him at gunpoint, forcing him to arrange for Ilsa and Victor to fly out of Casablanca without any problems.
- With the plane heading down the runway, Rick has to shoot Nazi Major Strasser to keep him from calling the radio tower. Renault snap-changes allegiance and walks off into the sunset (read: heavy fog) with his good buddy Rick.