How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Casablanca.
Quote #4
RICK: Nothing can stop them now. Wednesday, Thursday at the latest, they'll be in Paris.
Because there are currently no German troops in Casablanca (Strasser's boys don't really count), the flashback is really the film's best opportunity to give the audience a sense of the impending doom of military invasion. We can understand Rick and Ilsa's desperation as the Nazis close in on Paris, as their paradise starts to crumble. Note to John Milton: Paradise Crumbling would have been a better title.
Quote #5
ILSA: Was that cannon fire, or is it my heart pounding?
Here's another line that comes during the flashback, as Ilsa can hardly distinguish the pounding of cannon fire from the pounding of her heart. It's props to this movie that she can get away with this kind of melodramatic dialogue without the audience starting to leave the theater.
Quote #6
RICK: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean, what you're fighting for.
LASZLO: You might as well question why we breathe. If you stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
With all the indirect references to war, here's a flat-out statement of what's at stake, according to Laszlo—the end of the free world as we know it. Everyone knew in 1941 that the Germans would overrun Europe and Great Britain if the U.S. didn't get involved. This was probably why Laszlo was so insistent on getting there. By 1941, the U.S. was supplying weapons, but people like Laszlo knew that the whole "Arsenal of Democracy" approach wasn't cutting it.