Lessons From Casablanca For Our Times

Captain Renault pours Vichy water into a glass, only to think better of it.

In Casablanca, many characters are put in a situation where they have to choose between their own self-interests and standing up against the Nazis. Even the seemingly morally bankrupt Inspector Renault is placed in a position so extreme that he chooses to do the right thing in order to avoid falling into a moral abyss.

Renard is a Frenchman working as a police captain for the French Vichy government, a government installed by the Germans to serve the Third Reich. All that he is as a Frenchmen ought to oppose the Vichy government, but all that he is as a self-serving lecher desires to at least straddle the fence between retaining his humanity and profiting from his position. Rick forces him out of his position of comfort so that Renault has to choose between friendship and career. In the end, Renault chooses to side with Rick and with the resistance. He has found a moral depth below which he cannot sink, and in so doing he — like Rick — reenters the global struggle of good versus evil. Perhaps more importantly, he was inspired by Rick’s selfless act of giving up the woman he loves and sacrificing his own comfort in order to do what is right. After Rick has murdered a Nazi officer to protect a resistance leader, Renault speaks to Rick.

Renault: “Well Rick, you’re not only a sentimentalist, you’ve become a patriot.”