Ilsa Lund is a young woman fresh from her parent's home in Oslo. At the house of some friends, she meets a man about whom she'd heard her whole life--Victor Lazlo, a Czech Resistance fighter. He opens up for her a whole beautiful world full of knowledge and thoughts and ideals. Believing that she loves him, she secretly marries him, and not even their closest friends know about their marriage. Lazlo fights the good fight, but is taken to a concentration camp. Ilsa is frantic, and a few months later she learns that Lazlo is dead. She is hopeless until she meets and falls in love with Richard Rick Blaine, an American cafe owner in Paris. When the Germans march into Paris, they both know that Rick must leave because of his political past. During their last few days a friend comes to Ilsa with good news: Lazlo is alive, but very sick. But now Ilsa is faced with the moral dilemma of being torn between two men, so she has to let Rick go. She leaves him at a train station with a note saying that though she cannot tell him anything, she loves him. Lazlo and Ilsa continue to fight the good fight, and they end up in unoccupied Morocco hoping to buy letters of transit from Ugarte so that they can board a plane to Lisbon and catch a plane to America to continue Lazlo's work. Thinking that they will make the deal in the cafe Rick's Cafe Americane, Lazlo is unpleasantly informed that Ugarte has been arrested, and Ilsa makes a discovery that Rick owns the cafe, and instead of the passionate man she once loved, he has turned into a drunken, heartbroken mess. When she tries to explain everything, she is drunkenly denounced as a whore. The next day, word gets out that Ugarte is dead, but that the letters of transit were not found on his body...it is believed that Rick has them. However, Rick will not yield the letters to Lazlo's money, nor when Ilsa holds a gun to his stomach. When Ilsa reveals the truth, Rick agrees to help them; he lets Ilsa believe that Lazlo will leave with the letters of transit, and she will stay with him. However, when they get to the airport, Rick manipulates her into boarding the plane with her husband, saying that she will surely be arrested, that she will regret it, etc. Ilsa boards the plane to Lisbon with Lazlo, presumably to America. Show less «