Rick's thoughts return to the present with Ilsa's arrival at the café. Instead of coming, though, she sends him a farewell note, and Sam and Rick leave just ahead of the Nazis.

He refuses to go without her, and she agrees to meet him at the train station.

Later, after the café is closed, Rick remembers his love affair with Ilsa: After a brief happy time together, the Nazis invade Paris and, worried that Rick will be in danger because of his record, Ilsa advises him to leave the city. Rick is taken aback when he sees Ilsa, whom he knew in Paris. Ilsa recognizes Sam, the piano player, and while Lazlo makes covert contact with the underground, Ilsa insists that Sam play the song 'As Time Goes By.' Reluctantly, Sam agrees, and a furious Rick, who had ordered him never to play the song again, emerges from his office to stop him. After Ugarte is arrested, Lazlo and his companion, Ilsa Lund, arrive at Rick's. Although Rick fought on the side of the loyalists in Spain, he has grown cynical, and when Renault advises him not to interfere with Ugarte's arrest, Rick replies 'I stick my neck out for nobody.' He makes a bet with Renault, however, that Lazlo will manage to leave Casablanca despite German efforts to stop him. That night, Renault and Strasser search for the killer at Rick's Café Americain, a popular nightclub run by the mysterious American ex-patriot Richard Blaine.Įarlier, Ugarte, a shady dealer in exit visas, had asked Rick to hold the stolen letters temporarily, explaining that he has a buyer for them and with the money from their sale, he plans to leave Casablanca. Strasser is particularly concerned that the letters not be sold to Victor Lazlo, the well-known Czech resistance leader, who is rumored to be on his way to Casablanca. Exit visas, which are necessary to leave the country, are at a premium, so when two German couriers carrying letters of transit signed by General DeGaulle are murdered and the letters stolen, German Major Strasser and Louis Renault, the prefecture of police, are eager to find the documents. During World War II, Casablanca, Morocco is a waiting point for throngs of desperate refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.

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