During the Second World War, Rick Blaine, a world-weary American, runs the popular Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca, which is a seaport of Morocco under the control of the Vichy regime in France. A senior German officer called Strasser arrives in town. On his instructions a Czech underground leader, Victor Laszlo, who is fleeing from the Germans, is taken in for questioning by Louis Renault, Casablanca’s police captain. Lazslo’s wife is travelling with him, and she turns out to be Ilsa Lund – the woman Rick had a love affair with in Paris in 1940. As the Germans were moving into Paris, Ilsa had run out on Rick, leaving him flat, but she tells him how it came about, and they make it up. Rick and Ilsa make up their minds to run off together, using two valuable letters of transit in the hands of Rick’s friend, Blaine. But at the last minute Rick makes a sacrifice… Casablanca is based on a stage play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s.