Casablanca

1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening. 

In class, we learned that Casablanca was ranked as the #3 Top Film of All Time by the American Film Institute, behind only Citizen Kane and The Godfather. The film was released in 1942 and was directed by Michael Curtiz, who won the Oscar for Best Director for his work on this film. He also received Oscar nominations for his other works including Captain Blood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Four Daughters, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Casablanca was written by Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch, It was based on the unproduced play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” and has been called “Near perfect entertainment balance of comedy, romance and suspense.”

The film was honored with three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. It had also been nominated but didn’t win for Best Back and White Cinematography, Best Score and Best Editing, as well as Best Actor for Humphrey Bogart and Best Supporting Actor for Claude Rains. Bogart, also known as Bogey, was ranked the #1 best male actor of all time by the American Film Institute. Despite not winning for his performance as Rick Blaine, he eventually won the Oscar for his role in The African Queen. Ingrid Bergman was also honored by the AFI, being ranked as the third best female star of all time. She won the Oscars for Best Actress for the films Gaslight and Anastasia, and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Murder on the Orient Express.

Casablanca carried the themes of honor, sacrifice, lost love and romance in the chaotic and unjust world.  The film took place and was made in the early 1940’s during WWII. The setting, French Morocco, was a “neutral” territory where many refugees congregated in the hopes of obtaining exit visas to that would allow them to escape Europe and the Nazis’ reign of terror.  The city of Casablanca served as the exit point to freedom.

Memorable scenes in the film include the competing national songs, with Laszlo and the refugees singing “La Marseillaise” and the Nazis singing their own anthem. The film is also notable in that Ingrid Bergman did not know who her character was going to end up. Two different endings were filmed before it was decided that Ilsa would go off with Laszlo.

Casablanca has remained in the public’s conscious due to the unforgettable and oft-repeated lines such as “Here’s looking at you kid,”  “Round up the usual suspects,” “We’ll always have Paris,” “Play it (again) Sam,” and finally, “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”

 2)  Find a related article and summarize the content.  (on the film, director, studio, actor/actress, artistic content, etc.) You can use the library or the internet.  Cite the article or copy the url to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the related article but do not plagiarize any content.

http://hollywoodlostandfound.net/features/casablanca/

While Casablanca is now regarded as a classic, production on the film was rife with chaos and uncertainty. The film’s history began in 1938 when Murray Burnett and his wife visited Europe. They went to a nightclub in the south of France that entertained Germans, French and a collection of refugees with jazz music played by a black pianist. This served as Burnett’s inspiration when writing the play “Everybody Comes to Rick’s” two years later with his collaborator Joan Allison.

The play told the story of nightclub owner Rick Blaine, whose friends included Sam, the piano player, and Rinaldo the French Prefect of Police. The visa-dealer Ugarte would give Rick the stolen letters of transit to hide before being apprehended by Agent Strasser of the Gestapo. Then, Czech patriot Victor Laszlo arrived with Lois Meredith, a woman from Rick’s past, further complicating things as she begged Rick to help get Laszlo to safety.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 8th, 1941, Warner Bros. story analyst Stephen Karnot read the play and recommended it be made into a movie to production head Hal. B. Wallis. Warner Bros. purchased the rights a few weeks later on December 27 for $20,000. Though the play was reworked to make it fitting for a motion picture, certain elements remained the same. In both versions, Rick bets that Laszlo will successfully escape, Ferrari offers to purchase Rick’s café, and Laszlo leads Rick’s customers in performing “La Marseillaise” to drown out the Germans. Several lines from the play also made it into the movie, including; “No one ever loved me that much,” “Call off your watchdogs,” and “What a fool I am, talking to a beautiful woman about another man.”

It took the efforts of several writers to translate the play to screen. Wally Kline and Aeneas McKenzie worked on the project for the first six weeks of 1942, before Julius and Philip Epstein took over. William Wyler was also considered to direct, but Hal Wallis ultimately gave the position to Michael Curtiz who was known for films such as Angels with Dirty Faces and The Adventures of Robin Hood. Endeavoring to drum up publicity for the film, Warner Bros. told the Hollywood Reporter that Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan and Ronald Reagan would star in Casablanca.

Despite this, a month later, Wallis sent a memo to the head of casting, Steve Trilling, telling him that Sheridan would act with Humphrey Bogart as the film’s leads.  Later still, it was decided that the female lead should be a European and Lois Meredith became Ilsa Lund. Ann Sheridan was no longer fit for the role and was replaced by Swedish actress, Ingrid Bergman. Bergman had come to Hollywood to star in the 1939 film Intermezzo, and was under contract to MGM head, David O. Selznick, who stalled negotiations to loan her out to Warner Bros. Bergman and Selznick had desired for her to be cast as Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls, but after the role went to Vera Zorina, Selznick agreed to trade her for Olivia de Havilland for eight weeks of filming. (Bergman did end up starring in For Whom the Bell Tolls after Zorina was let go, being offered the role the day after Casablanca wrapped.)

George Raft and James Cagney were both early considerations for to star as Rick. Though Raft in particular campaigned for the role, Curtiz and Wallis both decided on Humphrey Bogart, whose star power was already on the rise after appearing in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. The studio also initially wanted Philip Dorn as Victor Laszlo, but the actor was unavailable due to his commitments at MGM. Jean-Pierre Aumont and Carl Esmond both tested, but the role of the legendary freedom fighter eventually went to Paul Henreid.

The character Sam was almost changed into a female by Wallis. Lena Horne and Hazel Scott were both considered before it was decided that Sam should remain a male. Dooley Wilson was loaned from Paramount for the part. Wilson had been a drummer and could not actually play piano, so Elliot Carpenter played for him offstage. British actor Claude Rains was cast as Renault. He had previously starred as the titular character in The Invisible Man. Two of Bogart’s former cast mates in The Maltese Falcon, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, were cast as Ugarte and Ferarri, respectively. Strasser was changed from a Gestapo agent to a Nazi official, and Conrad Veidt was borrowed from MGM for the role.  

When Casablanca began production on May 25^th, the script had not yet been finished. Bergman had no idea which man her character would end up with and was told to “play it in between.” Screenwriter Howard Koch came onboard to assist the Epsteins, who only had three more weeks left to work on the project. Koch was given responsibility for the film’s ending as well as the flashbacks of Ilsa and Rick and the other romantic scenes. He added Rick’s back-story as a freedom fighter for loyalist Spain and a gun-runner in Ethiopia, as well as the line “I don’t buy or sell human beings,” when offered money for Sam, the piano player.  

In the original play, all of the action took place in the café’s main room. For the film, the gambling room and Rick’s upstairs quarters were added on to the café. The set was built on Stage 8 on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. Other locations were filmed on sets that had already been built for other films. Except for the scene featuring Strasser’s arrival in Casablanca, which was filmed at the old Metropolitan airport in Van Nuys, the entirety of the film was shot in the studio.

The script was continually rewritten during production and new pages were being delivered directly to the set to be shot. Though the Epsteins and Koch reworked each other’s drafts, they never actually worked together on the film. According to Julius Epstein, he and his brother Philip came up with the ending when one night they simultaneously turned to each other and said “Round up the usual suspects,” a line often used by Renault in their script as he showed contempt for his job of rounding up the menaces of Casablanca. In the end, this would be used by Renault to show allegiance to Rick and cover up his shooting of Major Strasser. Hal Wallis himself wrote the last line of the film, that Bogart recorded in post-production; “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Casablanca went 11 days over schedule, for a total of 59 days of filming. Principal photography wrapped on August 3, 1942. On July 11^th, Warner Bros. composer Max Steiner was brought in to write the film’s score. After watching the film, Steiner opposed the use of “As Time Goes By” and instead wanted to compose an original song in it’s place. However, this would have meant that scenes with references to “As Time Goes By” would have had to be reshot and Bergman had already cut her hair for another role, so the song stayed. “As Time Goes By” proved to be a hit and was featured on the radio program “Hit Parade” for 21 straight weeks in 1943.

The film’s original release date was set for June 1943, but plans changed after the Allies landed in Casablanca in November 1942. Casablanca was released on Thanksgiving Day in New York, 18 days after the landing, with a general release following on January 23, 1943, during the Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin conferences. Due to the film’s immeasurable success, the lead actors had a meteoric rise in popularity.

Bergman would later star in hits such as Gaslight, Spellbound and Notorious. Bogart was established as a romantic star and signed a new contract with Warner Bros. that made him the highest paid star in the world. Casablanca was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three, for Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture, cementing its status as a legendary fixture in Hollywood history.

3) Apply the article to the film screened in class.  How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.

The article provided insight into the making of the film. When Casablanca was being made, World War II was still occurring and it was not yet sure who would triumph in the war. Many of the secondary characters and extras were portrayed by actual refugee actors who had escaped from the Nazis. Even some of the actors who played the Nazis were in reality German or Jewish refugees.

What I find most interesting is the fact that at the time of filming, it was not yet decided if Ilsa would end up with Rick or Victor. This gives credence to several lines of Rick’s, such as “This is still a story without an ending,” and speaks highly of Bergman as an actress, who was able to portray Ilsa as truly being caught between two lovers while she, herself was blind to the outcome.

This is also slightly strange in hindsight, considering Bergman’s real life turmoil only a few years later after she left her husband for Italian director Roberto Rossellini and was denounced on the floor of the Senate.  

It is also interesting to learn about the different actors who were considered for the various roles. Casablanca would have been extremely different with James Cagney as Rick Blaine and an American as the female lead. As Casablanca is one of the most adored and referenced films of all time, it is intriguing to consider the effect it would have had with a different cast or an ending where Ilsa would have gone off with Rick instead of Victor.  

4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including  your personal opinion,  formed as a result of the screening, class discussions, text material and the article.  I am less interested in whether you liked or disliked a film, (although that can be part of this)  than I am in your understanding of its place in film history or the contributions of the director.

Casablanca is a dazzling film and somehow manages to enchant audiences more and more upon repeat viewings. Though the film was mostly filmed of the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, the lush scenery and gorgeous costumes make it seem as though the viewers have been transported into the heart of 1940’s French Morocco.

Rick Blaine may not be the typical male lead, but as he portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, he exudes not only suavity but valiant sacrifice and a cool appeal that makes him every bit the hero that Victor Laszlo is purported to be. Likewise, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund is not only the epitome of beauty and grace but radiates a gentle warmth that draws in the audience just as she draws in both Rick and Victor.

The supporting characters, most notably Claude Rains as Captain Renault and Conrad Veidt as Major Strasser, also delight with their respective roguish debauchery and despicable cruelty. Though when Renault ultimately repents in the end as he changes sides to become Rick’s savior, it somehow does not feel forced or unbelievable.

Though Casablanca is rife with memorable sequences and legendary dialogue, the one that always stands out in my mind is the dueling music in the famous “La Marseillaise” scene, wherein Victor Laszlo riles Rick’s patrons into a heartfelt rendition of the French national anthem, in opposition to Strasser and his men singing the German patriotic song “Die Wacht am Rhein.”

In a film where the music is so meaningful, this is especially provocative as this small act of rebellion is as much as the refugees as Rick can get away with. The actors’ faces glow with passion and ardor and the fact that many of the actors were refugees in reality makes the scene even more poignant as Yvonne, played by French exile Madeleine LeBeau, sheds tears while exclaiming “Vive Le France.”

From the beginning illustration of the journey from Paris through North Africa to Portugal, up until the breath catching moment where Rick lets Ilsa go, telling her “We’ll always have Paris,” Casablanca lives up to every accolade it has received, delivering iconic moment after iconic moment, and serving as not only a cinematic masterpiece, but as a rallying cry for patriotic support in a time when it was desperately needed. For that, Casablanca will always be both adored as an entertaining spectacle and cherished as a piece of world history.

CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM

1) (x) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class.

2) (x) If I have reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper.

3) (x) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text.

4) (x) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper.

5) (x) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read.

6) (x) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the sources within the paper and in the bibliography.

7) (x) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality.

8) (x) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.