You Must Remember This (Scene 1, Take 1)

French 75
(Wikimedia Commons)

(This year [2018] marks the 80th anniversary of Everybody Comes to Rick's, the play on which my favourite movie of all time, Casablanca, is based. Over the next few days I'd like to spend some time on a rather unusual exploration of the movie.]

Hanging on a wall in our house is a pen-and-ink sketch: a fantasy portrait of me and Lorna, a wedding present from the late Bob Doyle and the artist, the still-extant George Barr. The sketch is based on a scene in Casablanca: the scene in which Bogart is sitting, drinking and flashing back to his Paris romance with Ingrid Bergman. (This scene contains the classic line "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.")

Casablanca is my favourite movie and has remained so for decades; and as I have watched it over and over (and over), one thing has gradually stood out about this movie: for a picture set in a saloon, there is an awful lot of drinking not being done. (With all due respect to Connie Willis's Remake.) During one of my recent rewatchings, I decided to keep track of the fates of the various drinks ordered by the characters in the film.

The first drink we see being served is a gin-and-tonic, delivered by Sasha the Russian bartender to an obviously English customer. As the main raises the glass―or, rather, the straw (!)―to his lips, the scene cuts to "Professor" Karl, the waiter played by "Cuddles" Sakall, delivering a tray of drinks to a table. Nobody picks up these drinks.

The first person to actually take a drink is Ugarte (Peter Lorre). Perhaps to indicate that he's a Bad Person (and shortly to come to a Bad End), Ugarte orders a second cognac before he's even taken a sip of his first. One sip is all we see him take, though by the end of his conversation with Rick (Humphrey Bogart), Ugarte's glass is a little over half empty. The scene ends with Ugarte picking up his second drink and just leaving the first one on Rick's table.

The first person to actually finish a drink is Yvonne (Madeleine Lebeau), Rick's sometime girlfriend as the picture begins. She is obviously a Bad Person, because she tosses off an entire cognac in one gulp. When she tries to order a second, Rick cuts her off and sends her home in a taxi. This scene segues into the first of many scenes shared by Rick and Capitaine Louis Renault (Claude Rains), prefect of police.

This scene is a wonderful example of what I'll call bibus interruptus: no fewer than three times before he actually takes a drink, we see Louis lift his glass toward his lips, then stop. Fortunately there is consummation: Louis not only takes a sip, he actually drains his glass. Of course, when he and Rick get up, Louis leaves a nearly full bottle of cognac on the (outdoor) table.

Rick and Louis progress into Rick's office, where Rick pours Louis a fresh cognac from his own private stock (a particularly ugly Art-Moderne cut-glass decanter). Once again, Louis teases us, lifting and lowering his glass without actually drinking. Eventually Louis gets up and leaves the office, abandoning the drink without even sampling it.

Tune in tomorrow, cocktail fanciers, when another Bad Person takes the stage and the decadence grows.