Haggai

Naughty dialogue in Casablanca

There's one scene in particular that I'm wondering about, which I only really noticed after seeing the movie for at least the 5th or 6th time, when the DVD SE came out earlier this year. It's from the scene where the young Bulgarian wife asks Rick for help in getting to America. I don't think her name is given in the movie, although she says that her husband's name is Jan. The IMDB credits say that the character's name is Annina, so that's what I'll go with here (a trivia note from IMDB, not sure if it's mentioned anywhere on the DVD, is that the actress who played her, Joy Page, was Jack L. Warner's stepdaughter).


The innuendo here seems pretty obvious to me. Captain Louis, who takes advantage of his position in order to have romantic trysts with beautiful women, is...well, horny, like most of us men, only more so!

Now the following exchange, which comes just before the above one in the movie, is the one I'm wondering about:


One interpretation of this, which would have been scandalous enough back in the early 1940s, is that Renault is "broad-minded" enough to be involved with a married woman. But, am I just a complete fiend for thinking that there also might be a hint of the...er...as an infamous Seinfeld episode put it, "the menage"? Were the original playwrights, or the Epstein twins, or Hal Wallis, or whoever wrote those lines, as shamelessly naughty as I seem to be making them out to be?

John Watson

Possibly I'm contrarian , but I'd just say the dialogue was sophisticated.

SteveGon

Perhaps not shamelessly naughty, but it wouldn't be the first time screenwriters slipped something like that past the censors.

As for Captain Renault, well, he does seem a tad effeminate...

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Mike Broadman

That's the way I've always dug it.

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Haggai

Thanks, Mike B. I just knew there had to be someone out there who's as deep in the gutter as I am on this point.

Lew Crippen

Which now gives a different slant to Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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george kaplan

Actually I believe there was a book written about what happens after Casablanca, in which the Louis & Rick became lovers.

While I'm open to that interpretation of the line, I've always just read it as being broad minded by allowing the husband to come along, when the long term plan is to get into the wife's panties at some point.

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Chad R

I think that was exactly the intention. It's one of those lines that slid by simply because it could be interpreted many different ways, especially since Louis' affairs were only ever hinted at. It went over the heads of children and gave adults a good chuckle.

John Thomas

I guess people will see what they want to in just about anything.

Adam_S

actually they didn't slip anything past the censors. IIRC the censors had the original line changed to 'broad-minded' because the original line was to explicit in suggesting that Renault traded visas for sex. I believe this was an especially offensive case for the censors because it was clear that she was married yet prostituting herself.

It's only today that audiences interpret such a line to suggest a 'menage'.

all this and more in The Censorship Papers

Remember that the studios were sending pages of scripts as they were being written for the first stage of approval from the Hayes office and Joseph Breen. Much racier dialogue was toned down in Casablanca, stuff that makes the illicit sex and activities much more explicit. There were also several silly things changed that boggle the mind. :p

adam

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