Sam, Ilsa, and Rick in the Cold War

The Last Reel: A Sequel to “Casablanca”
by John Moore

Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2024 
$25.95 / 9781771715140

by Ron Verzuh

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“Just remember this: a kiss is just a kiss.” It one of the most famous lines in the movies. Bogie sending his love Ingrid Bergman to safety from the Nazis to the tune of “As Time Goes By.” But what happened next? Over eighty years later, John Moore’s novel picks up where Casablanca left off.

Moore argues that the movie’s story of Rick’s Café Americain in Casablanca during the early 1940s gave short shrift to two of the characters. He sets out to enhance the roles of Sam the piano player (as in “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’”) and Ilsa Lund, Bergman’s character.

Jumping to the early 1960s, the Nazis are gone, of course, but the Cold War is in full swing as John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon to become the 35^th U.S. president. The novel’s plot dips in and out of a planned meeting between JFK and General Charles de Gaulle as he shapes France into the Fifth Republic and is poised to withdraw France from NATO.

Tension builds in the political background while in the foreground Rick Blaine, now an operative with the U.S. intelligence service, consorts with his old friend Louis Renault, the cop who made sure Ilsa and Victor boarded the plane. As they catch up on old times, Rick learns that Sam, now a club owner in Paris, has secreted Victor to a safe house. The Russians, the East Germans, and the Americans are all after him.

Enter Ilsa, the old flame who Rick kissed goodbye as a plane revved its engines to fly her and her husband Victor (a Czech agent wanted by the Nazis) into the North African night and to safety. 

Thus ended the movie, but it didn’t put out the torch Rick was carrying. Right? So, a kiss is not, in fact, what he claims. 

Sam, by the way, is now married to Josephine Baker, the American “danseuse” who became famous for her banana dance and played a courageous role in the French Underground. She and Sam have set up an orphanage in the south of France and live contentedly far from American racism.

In another reminder of the film plot, Rick meets with Kaspar Guttman, played with such memorable smarminess by Sidney Greenstreet. Guttman is ostensibly in antiques—a worn Maltese Falcon sits in his shop, a conflation of one old Bogie film with another? The Bogie character, lighting another Gitane, warns “the Fat Man” to behave himself and continue protecting Victor.

Moore takes time to flesh out Victor’s politics and we are exposed to the Cold War drama involving the Soviet Union seizing Eastern Europe as the “spoils of war.” Shades of the current situation in Ukraine.  

“People in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia and Poland are meeting in the closed churches, even in trade union halls, to express their dissatisfaction with Moscow’s version of the Communist utopia,” Victor tells Rick. Here we get a history lesson on the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, a prelude to the 1968 Prague Spring. Moore also uses his characters to share views on politics then and now.

I won’t spoil this fun reading experience with any further details on what happens next. I will tempt readers with the knowledge that Ilsa is not what she seemed on the airport tarmac. A side character, Erik Strasser, is the Stasi (Eastern Germany secret police) agent who pursues Rick to find out who shot his father in Casablanca, adding some additional tension. For the rest, The Last Reel awaits you.

Squamish writer Moore (Raincity: Vancouver Reflections) has had a great time just remembering this great Hollywood tale. He clearly enjoyed the writing. Some examples of his wordsmithing: “Guttman made a one-act play out of lighting [a cigar],” “I could use my feet to chill martinis,” and he “grimaced as if he was chewing penicillin tablets.” 

The prose is pure Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Examples: “Blaine’s smile was as cold as a tombstone in the rain,” Renault’s voice was like a snake’s tongue in his ear,” and Ilsa’s “smile was as false as the accidental expression of certain cats.” 

If ever Moore decides to transform his novel into a screenplay for a Casablanca sequel, an intention suggested by naming his chapters as acts and scenes, I’d like to request a reserve seat. It promises to be a marvellous viewing treat.

Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron has recently reviewed books by Tom Langford, Ron Thompson, John Ibbitson (ed.), Bob McDonald, Rosemary Cornell, Adrienne Drobnies, and Tim Bray [eds.], Derek Hayes, and George Galt for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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