Hey Scott, a bit late to this week's discussion but I dug up part of a diary entry that I wrote on Casablanca. I love what you've written about time because it makes Rick and Ilsa's relationship take on a mythic dimension and Rick's choices, a heroic cast. Here's what I had written, which echoes some of the points on resistance that you've already made: "There is a brilliant treatise here on the politics of collaboration and resistance that finds a centre in Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blane. He is steadfastly neutral in his position of an exiled American, living under the German occupation of French occupied Morocco; his very location is a purgatorial, intermediary zone. Rick's philosophy is that he only takes care of himself, resolute in warding away any trouble. But here in this world, if a character is not actively resisting the Nazi occupation they are colluding with it. There are those who have found a way to make a profit out of resistance, like Ugarte and Ferrari, who sell forged documents to help European exiles flee to America. However, they ask a high price (and often a morally compromising one) to help the oppressed escape. Their profiteering risks lives that could be helped and although they are technically undermining the Nazis are their actions also not hindering the resistance? Ugarte overreaches and murders two German officers in an effort to secure transit papers and, whether it is for profit or ideology, he has marked himself out to the authorities leading to his death. Rick on the other hand has been allowed to set up shop (his "gin joint") and to remain in business, even to become profitable, since he is not resisting. The price of resistance is then death, whilst acceptance is a comfortable life. He will allow both the trading of transit documents and the political arrest of agitators to occur in his bar with little comment on either. This is again reflected in Victor Lazslo (Paul Henreid), a resistance writer, who is able to drink and frequent Rick's bar so long as he is not directly antagonising the Nazi occupation. It is the arrival of Rick's former lover, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) that turns things on its head. With the reminder of Ilsa and the love that they had, Rick begins to be humanised. Whilst he purports to remain neutral and have no care for either side (a sentiment echoed by Renault in his support for Vichy) he rescues a young woman from prostituting herself to pay for exit papers and flagrantly opposes the Nazi occupation when he allows a rendition of the Marseillaise to counter the german anthem, Die Wacht am Rhein, being sung in his bar. This scene also reveals that the French collaborators of the Nazi occupation to be merely pragmatic, biding their time for the wind to change and support to turn against the Nazis. Renault joins in with the other patrons to join the rousing song as does a French woman Rick spurned earlier who has now become a consort to a Nazi officer, tears in her eyes."

Great observations, Jacob. Really good point: If you are neutral, you are actually supporting the Nazis. So Rick is living in denial with his business / life philosophy as he is about thinking he is over his past with Ilsa. Her arrival on the scene transforms Rick's 'Old World' (per Joseph Campbell) into the 'New World,' forcing him to confront both the past and his supposed neutrality. At the beginning of the movie, Rick is in a classic state of Disunity. When fate - the Story Universe acting as God - intersects him with Ilsa again, that is the necessary starting point for him to move from Disunity to Unity. Thanks for those comments, Jacob. Really astute take on Casablanca.

I like your concept of a purgatorial state as being a theme.