Rick Blain Through the Eyes of Victor Lazlo

by Douglas Williams

Rick Blain from Michael Curtiz’s immortal Casablanca (43) seems to not care for anyone or anything until, as we all know, Elsa comes back into his life bringing both love and pain into Rick’s existence. While the focus of the film is the relationship of Rick and Elsa, Victor Laszlo, Elsa’s husband, has much broader goals. He is an enemy of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich, he is a danger to them. His influence over those oppressed by the Third Reich is very strong and prevailing.
For a character so present in the plot, Laszlo really has little to do with the romance between Rick and Elsa. He hardly even seems to notice the strong pull each has to the other. Laszlo’s business is, in his mind, on a distinctive level. Laszlo is fighting for the people who have been affected by the war where as Rick and Elsa exist on a human level, a physical level. Their concerns are only of each other and their love. Laszlo, who has and always will have Elsa, looks too far forward to even notice his wife, it is his curse. He obviously cares for her a great deal, their committed love can be seen in most every scene they share together, yet Laszlo does not understand the value that Elsa has, how fortunate he is to have her.
In the flashback Rick has of Elsa and he in Paris the contrary can be seen. Rick appreciates Elsa, knows what he has and how valuable it is, how fleeting it may be. Although Elsa is young their romantic history with others seems to be vast. They have experienced the pain of love and have, in Paris, formed the greatest of relationships. They don’t ask questions about the past, they live in the present where their love lives. They feel for each other in the most pure way, they do not burden their relationship with jealously of past experience—they simply live to love each other.
It is Laszlo that is Elsa’s unknown past. It is he who unknowingly separates Rick and Elsa. Through all of this, the past with Rick and Elsa, Laszlo is oblivious. He seems to have no desire to know because he has no time to listen or to care. His ambitions are far greater than the troubles of three people. Rick also tries to fool himself into believing that Laszlo’s ambitions really amount to more than his love for Elsa, which is why he decides to let Laszlo instead of himself, board the plane in the film’s climax.
Laszlo has been getting breaks like this all his life. He escaped a concentration camp and has jetsetted all over Europe rebelling against the Nazis. People have performed innumerous favors for him so that he could continue to inspire people in this way. Rick is only one of the many. So he was attracted to his wife to some degree, Laszlo has no idea how deep their love and history together run. No matter how many days Elsa lives she will never live another without thinking of Rick yet Laszlo will never realize this. Rick helped him onto the plane, as he should in Laszlo’s eyes and in doing so Laszlo again just barely escaped from those trying to capture him. Rick was just the person who helped him do so. Laszlo forgot about Rick the moment he stepped onto the plane. His goal is complete, he has moved on and will continue to rebel wherever he goes. Rick, to him, is just a simple café owner who did something right for once; the reason to Laszlo makes hardly any difference.
Perhaps it is the attention Rick gives to Elsa at each moment that draws her to him. Laszlo, always looking to the future has no time to look across the table to the woman he is wed to. Rick is the completely contradictory, he only cares about the present and can only perform in terms of what is occurring at the moment. He has nothing to look forward to until he is reacquainted with Elsa. This may be why he is able to make the painstaking decision to let her and Laszlo go, he lacks the compete foresight of the suffering he will surely have to endure for the rest of his life. He does of course see that he is letting his love go but he is doing so for what he assumes is the greater good. He is, for once, acting as Laszlo would. Laszlo is simply more equipped to perform the duties of the greater good therefore Rick must sacrifice himself. This is Rick’s mistake, in his world, as in ours, the troubles of three people amount to much more than a hill of beans.