PLAY IT AGAIN, JAMES: Lileks on Casablanca:

The older you get, the more you appreciate the benefits of the censor’s code. In the modern version, Lazlo would say “I know you slept with him when you thought I was dead,” and she says “And I’ll do it again to get the letters. Don’t take it personally.” It would be all out in the open. The inability to say these things led to a scene that makes you wonder how people at the time interpreted it: this wasn’t how people acted, talking around the truth.

But it was how movie people acted. How our better selves might act. If we found ourselves in a movie, set in Casablanca. Wherever, and whenever, that was, or is, or will be.

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