Character Analysis
Ilsa's the awesomely beautiful—we mean, it's Ingrid Bergman, seriously—love interest in Casablanca. She met Rick in Paris and fell in love with him there. She was married to Victor Laszlo at the time but thought her husband was killed in the war. When she finds out Victor's alive, she leaves Rick with no explanation. Victor, by this time a hero of the Resistance, needs to escape the Germans who are after him, so they go to Casablanca. And when, "out of all the gin joints in the world," she walks into Rick's café, she's pretty overwhelmed with emotion and nostalgia. It doesn't take long for her to get that flame going again.
A Woman of Many Faces
All right, so technically Ilsa's only got one face. We counted.
But, as Gollum would say, she's "very tricksy." We'd like to believe that everything she says is genuine, but let's look at her track record:
- She tells Rick in Paris that she's going with him, but then leaves him wet, sad, soaking and alone in the rain at the train station
- She pretends not to recognize Sam when she first sees him, but she so does
- She never told Rick about Victor, and since Paris, she has clearly never told Victor about Rick. Yeah, you'd usually want to keep an affair a secret, but when you've been told your husband is dead… you'd think he might forgive you for the transgression. She never even gave him the chance.
- She goes to Rick's apartment to get the letters of transit, and turns a gun on him. That's not very nice.
- When the gun thing doesn't work, she tells Rick she loves him and, next thing you know, she's in his arms.
When she tells Rick she can't leave him again and is content with just helping Victor get out of town, she seems sincere…but can we really be sure it isn't just another ruse? After all, it doesn't seem to take her long to accept the fact that she's leaving with Victor, rather than with Rick. On the other hand, that long, loving look at the airport…
How to explain all this? Well, the movie seems to explain it by showing us that she's a woman in love. And we know how irrational women in love can be. Throughout the film, she struggles to decide which man she should be with—she loves them both, and her relationship with Rick is unfinished business or sure.
When she walk's in to Rick's café, she begs Sam to play the old song that reminds her of Rick. In one of the most famous scenes in all of… oops, there we go again:
ILSA: Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake.
SAM: I don't know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By'.
Ilsa's a little undone by seeing Rick again. We get some flashbacks of their passionate love affair in Paris that's ended by the beginning of the war in France. In Casablanca, she sneaks over to visit him again, but he's too bitter and devastated to hear any explanations of why she deserted him. When she confronts him about getting the gun and realizes he'd been so hurt by her that he's willing to be shot, she confesses her real feelings:
ILSA: Richard, I tried to stay away. I thought I would never see you again, that you were out of my life […] The day you left Paris, if you knew what I went through, if you knew how much I loved you, how much I still love you.
Ilsa claims she had to stay in Paris back then with the injured Laszlo. She didn't tell Rick the truth because she feared he'd stick around in Paris to be near her and get captured by the Nazis. She tells him now that she's his forever and she'll give up her husband.
ILSA: I can't fight it anymore. I ran away from you once. I can't do it again. Oh, I don't know what's right any longer.
That scene seems very convincing, right? When she does finally leave with Laszlo at the end of the film, it's at Rick's insistence. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn't had a change of heart? So, tricksy? Maybe.
We'd rather say… conflicted.
Ilsa Lund's Timeline