Nobody Knew How Casablanca Ended

Casablanca is the film people quote when they want to sound like they've seen old films. It's also a film that was being written while it was being filmed, by writers who did not know how it ended.

Production began in May 1942 with an incomplete script. The Epstein brothers had written the early material; Howard Koch was brought in to work on the rest, and the three of them were producing pages while cameras were already rolling. The famous ending — Ilsa leaving with Victor, Rick walking into the fog with Louis — was not settled when the scene was shot.

Ingrid Bergman, who played Ilsa, asked the writers who she was supposed to be in love with, so she could play it accordingly. She was told to play it as if she loved both men. So she did. In the finished film she looks at both of them with exactly the same longing, and the audience has spent eighty years arguing about which man she really wanted.

That ambiguity is not subtext. It's the physical residue of a production that hadn't made up its mind.

The most quoted line in the film is also the most misquoted. **Nobody in Casablanca ever says "Play it again, Sam."** Ilsa says "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" Later Rick says, "You played it for her, you can play it for me... If she can stand it, I can. Play it!" The version everyone remembers was invented by audiences, then cemented by a Woody Allen play and film in 1972.

Which is a useful thing to know about famous films generally. The memory of a movie is a separate object from the movie, and it gets edited by everybody who watches it.