Casablanca/Awesome
- Seeing a group of German soldiers in Rick's bar singing a war song, Victor Laszlo gets the band to play La Marseillaise (with Rick's nodded assent), which he and all the other customers start singing along with, completely drowning out the Germans. The final touch is when Yvonne (who had previously been flirting with a German soldier) starts weeping as she sings, and shouts "Vive la France! Vive la démocratie!" after the song is over.
- Yvonne was played by Madeleine LeBeau, a French expatriate who had fled Paris in 1940 to escape the German Army. Those are real tears of patriotism that you see in her eyes during the song.
- Made even better by the fact that the most heartfelt line was "To arms, citizens! Form your battalions!" [1]
- Laszlo gets a lot of awesome. His character has already escaped from a concentration camp and then evaded the Germans most of the way across Europe with them hot on his tail the whole time. Even other characters in-universe are impressed. But his best awesome line is when he's pointing out to Major Strasser that killing him won't stop the resistance:
 |
Laszlo: For every one of us you kill, ten more will rise, and hundreds after them. Even Nazis can't kill that fast. |
 |
- Captain Renault's riposte to Major Strasser: "We musn't underestimate American blundering. I was with them when they blundered into Berlin in 1918."
- Captain Renault has just seen Rick kill Major Strasser. The cops show up and look to him to tell them what's happened. "Major Strasser has been shot," he says. A pause, while Rick looks tensely at him. "Round up the usual suspects."
- In one of the most famous I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy speeches ever as Rick tells Ilsa that they can't be together because the world is more important than they are. His CMoA as he gives up the most important thing in his life for others.
|
Rick: I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Here's looking at you, kid. |
|
- And just before that, when Rick reveals that he was only fake defecting to Renault, saving Victor and Ilsa and showing he's completely defrosted.
|
Renault: Have you taken leave of your senses? |
|
- The whole movie is one for Humphrey Bogart, who, given only his second chance to play a heroic protagonist (third if you count High Sierra), and first to play a character who wasn't a total bastard, a chance he only got because other actors turned it down... he turns in arguably the most iconic performance in film history. This pretty much flipped his type casting, and he didn't play another villain until near the end of his career.
- Paul Henreid, too, given less screentime and far fewer awesome and immortal lines than Bogie, somehow manages to avoid becoming a Romantic False Lead... which is exactly what happened to every "Viktor" in every Casablanca homage/retread/imitation since.
- Back to Casablanca