Casablanca (1942)

In December 1941, American expatriate Rick Blaine owns a nightclub and gambling den in Casablanca. “Rick’s Café Américain” attracts a varied clientele, including Vichy French and German officials, refugees desperate to reach the neutral United States and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, he ran guns to Ethiopia during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and fought on the Republican (loyalist) side in the Spanish Civil War.

Petty crook Ugarte boasts to Rick of “letters of transit” obtained by murdering two German couriers. The papers allow the bearers to travel freely around German-occupied Europe and to neutral Portugal; they are priceless to the refugees stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to sell them at the club, and asks Rick to hold them. Before he can meet his contact, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault, the unabashedly corrupt prefect of police. Ugarte dies in custody without revealing that he entrusted the letters to Rick.