Week 8 Discussion Guide: Tuesday

        In class, we will discuss Casablanca's "literary" qualities: plot, character, and themes.  To be a "scholars" of the film, we will need to construct our own written outline of the main scenes, the characters who play major and minor roles in the scenes, and the issues that emerge from the dialogue and action.  Getting the characters right also involves knowing who played the parts because sometimes what one wants to discuss is the actor's role in making meaning within the film.

     Then we will move into its shooting sequence (how it actually was filmed vs. how it was assembled) and its technique, including important shots, sound (incl. its use of music and multiple languages), montage, etc.   Additional sources: make yourself familiar with the library reserve reading, especially Behlmer (Inside WB, on studio system); Anobile (Michael Curtiz' Casablanca, a minute by minute frame analysis, but no substitute for careful viewing of the film!).  Curtiz' directorial sensibilities have been hotly debated in previous decades when "auteur theory" argued that great directors ought to exert complete authority over every moment of film they create.  The screenplay given Curtiz by the Epstein brothers and Howard Koch contain many plot details, but the visual representation of characters' emotional states and other powerful intangibles often must be created by the director and cameraman as they plan sequences of shots.  For an example of how Curtiz' European training may have introduced a classical image in the camera's representation of the scene of Rick's and Sam's departure from Paris, click here.