Casablanca Ryan Zamboni

Casablanca Review: Ryan Zamboni

Casablanca was produced in Hollywood, California in 1942. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film starred Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Heinreid. This melodrama quickly rose to fame and continues to be one of the most highly regarded films of all time. It was so good that it received multiple awards, including an Oscar, Best Picture, Best Director, and best screen play.

            Even with its high ratings, I can’t say that I was overly drawn into it. I think that I have a predisposition to thinking that older films will be un-enjoyable the black and white is just not every exciting for me. Regardless of what I thought of the content of the film, it was pretty interesting to see many of the techniques in cinematography put to use in a pretty textbook sense. It was very clear in the setup of the shots, such as the reoccurring close-ups, over the shoulder shots, and medium shots. Also interesting to me was something that I had never really taken the time to notice in that the director used the lighting pretty extensively in his guidance of the audience’s mood. Reading the first bit of the book has really actually affected the way that I view movies.

            Now that I’ve done my rundown of what I thought of the technical elements, I’d like to say that the story line was fairly interesting despite my sort of lack of interest for the film itself. The setting is Casablanca in the French occupied country of Morocco in December of 1941, and I guess that the overall story behind the film is that Ilsa tries to explain to Rick why she left him in Paris, this conflict soon escalates to include Laszlo and his struggle to escape to Lisbon. The story really starts when Ilsa is passing through Casablanca when she enters a cafe owned by her ex, who had the letters hidden away, forcing the two to make contact. The story escalates until Rick and Ilsa are together at Ricks place, followed by Ricks decision to let Ilsa leave with her partner at the time, Laszlo. The movie winds down at the airport where Rick makes comments about his personal sacrifice to let Ilsa away from him again, and his personal sacrifice continues to include the murder of Strasser, which allowed Laszlo to escape, but had negative effects for Rick.

             I felt that this movie was extremely effective in exemplifying the major sections covered in our first readings, and it was a good learning experience to have viewed it. Others may be big supporters of this movie, but I’ll probably never see it again. It allowed me to see the topics of this class in action and that was very helpful.