Professional Writing: Process and Practice
EN 1700 – Fall/Winter 2009/2010 – Jan Rehner
Lecture 5 – Casablanca – Oct 19
Casablanca
- Mass fantasies produced for mass audiences.
- Casablanca’s dialogue:
o Used in other movies.
- Emblem of the studio system – Warner Brother’s style.
- In many ways an accident.
- Reagan was going to be role of Rick.
- The plane in the movie is fake – cheap wood surrounded with fog.
o Dreamy romantic moments surrounded with the fog.
- Ilsa doesn’t know who she’s supposed to be with.
- Roberto claims that it is special that it is the emblem of the movies. Hollywood
archives. Combines motifs and genres of classical areas. Suspense, thriller,
mystery and melodrama.
Propaganda
- Timing could not have been better.
- Shows after the day after pearl harbour entering World War II.
- Through the movies, government portrayed a message to the public about the
war.
- War film, it is not a combat film.
- Works because it has a battlefield where every individual can take part in.
- Self-sacrifice equates with heroism.
- During the making, solidified USA image of imagination.
- Movies became part of the American dream.
- Rick is the rebellious hero, lone wolf, defends the weak, individual who follows
his own role.
- Pure wishful thinking – America.
- The film opens and ends with plane that are leaving for America (sign of hope)
o People are watching.
o Crooks.
o Human life is cheap. People are bought and sold for transit papers.
o Rick stands out as the individual that follows his own higher code.
- The café where Rick is called Rick’s Café. Embodies the idea of a melting pot.
Sink harbour and become just one country.
- Everybody who works at the café is family. Everyone is international. Came to
America the same way as portrayed in the beginning of the movie.
- Stracer is anti-Nazi (left Germany), and helped Lazlo leave.
- Casablanca is a love story – star crossed lovers. Love found, lost, redeemed,
and sacrificed to a higher cause.
- Message: political church.
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Movies shape our values, our definitions of concepts – gender recognition,
beauty, violence and death.
They can and do alter our sense of reality.
Movies have become more sophisticated, must acknowledge that movies give us
a social construction of reality. Movies are never neutral. Encode particular views
and values. May leave out certain points of view. They influence people’s values
and beliefs even our behaviour.
To substitute reality with the movies.
Film is very seductive; its power lies that it can create levels of reality that are
more desirable than the reality.
We can enter movies reality easier than our own lives.
We really need to ask ourselves do we surrender to the images we are exposed
to.
Who is going to the control of these images? Producer or the audience
(consumers).
Consumers should be aware of the messages, cannot let them replace our own
lives.
Decode movies:
o Must develop a perspective of what you might call the skill of critical
observation. Look deeper, don’t stay at the surface. Active viewing as
opposed to passive viewing.
o When analyzing and writing about film, all cultural texts – movies and films
have their own language. How to read film.
Film writing:
o Write with awareness and be mindful of film discourse, not just as if it were
a short story in motion.
Reading the Movie: Narrative and Film Discourse
- Narrative is the voice. (What) (Plot/Action).
o The unfolding of events is revealed through the technical language of film
discourse.
- Film discourse (how)
o How do we read the visual content of the film?
- Denotative and connotative meaning:
o Words have literal meaning or applied/associated meanings.
- Did the producers wanted to condemn the French by informing the Vichi
government?
- How could I encode that visually in the film?
- The images all tell you something, important for the context of the film.
- Films use complex code – interrelated. Convey meaning.
6 Common Forms of Discourse: (Visual Elements)
- Lighting – photography is about (talking with) light. The language of lighting is
sought out in the movies. Low-key lighting dark lighting in Casablanca. The film
has a sense of darkness to it. Warner Bros. style. Lots of shadows and
silhouettes. Creates suspense and intrigue. In black and white film, shadows
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convey exoticism of the locale (dancing girl, palm tree). Most of all lighting
portrays Casablanca as limbo, neither safe to leave or stay. Uses shadows to
create the image of window blinds… Create the impression of the bars in prison.
When a director goes from low-key to high lighting, goes to optimistic moods.
Used to highlight important details. Upbeat mood is signified in high lighting.
Back lighting lighting source behind the person. Front lighting shines faces.
Bottom lighting makes people look sinister. Movement from light to dark lighting.
Lighting is critical to reading the character.
Motion – major language of film. When the camera moves forward and
backwards its tracking. Camera can move from side to side – scanning. Up and
down. Every time it does that it changes our perspective. If the lens is tilted, one
can look bigger, more powerful, more presence on the screen. If downward,
smaller, and vulnerable. Camera movement direct us to look in different ways.
Camera movements direct us to look various ways, a close up increases intimacy
with the character, and obscure cam view prevents the identification of a
character.
Framing – define field vision. We can only see what the director puts there. It’s a
kind of visual narrative. The amount of information in one frame is highly
significant. Mise-en-scene, means everything in to shot read with great
significance.
Editing – how the director moves from one slide to the next. Not seen, only its
product. Continuity: you barely notice between the shift from one shot to another.
Dissolved shot: from present to past. From the past back into the present (Rick).
Reaction shot: shows the reaction of a series of events. Point of view shot:
optical vantage point.
Sounds (diegetic, non-diegetic) – Diegetic: any sound that can be heard in the
world of the film. In Casablanca, dialogue with background noise. Non-diegetic:
not part of the film - commentary. Directly speaking to the audience.
Colour – bright colours.