Classical Hollywood Film - Casablanca
In the halcyon days of Hollywood, the many hundreds of films that were being produced had lured the world’s finest talents, drawn by the lavish production opportunities for the creative firm and the chance to perfect techniques of filmmaking, still in the process of refinement. The Hollywood style began as a studio style based on a model of mass production.
The term “Hollywood style” itself, as explained by Guy Westwell in the Oxford dictionary of film studies: “Marks a group style associated with fiction films made under the Hollywood studio system between 1917 and 1960 defined by recurrent features of narrative, storytelling, and visual style”. In this way, a certain method of film production formed, reproduced, and strengthened several aesthetic norms, established by Jan Mukarovsky, as a new approach to filmmaking replaced the artisanal working practices typical of the pre-1916 period. A handful of major studios, employing thousands of workers, manufactured films in a factory-like environment. They were run by iron-fisted moguls who turned out stories with assembly-line efficiency. Although the studios have faded, filmmakers working today continue to employ basic stylistic principles established in the studio era. It was the director on the set who coordinated each crafts’ contribution to the storytelling process, scripting, costume and production design, lighting, camera movement, editing, and acting, supported by an army of experts and technicians working together to accomplish the most emotionally compelling result. Inside Hollywood, the group style assumed a life of its own, becoming enshrined in technical manuals on scriptwriting, direction, lighting and sound design, and assumed by filmmakers as the only right way to put a film together. Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz and based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's, is one of the greatest love stories ever told, made in 1942 in the consummate studio style. At least six writers worked on the script and the cast included 34 nationalities, but what truly engaged international audiences in Casablanca was not the dialects, but the way the picture was directed, lit, photographed, acted, and edited.
As a classical Hollywood film, Casablanca’s primary concern is the telling of a story with a basic enigma-resolution narrative structure that sees romance as the principal line of action, and as the film is narrated with big American aspects it easily lures the American audience’s attention. Hence, to point out what the audience needs to see or hear to read and understand the scene, the director uses the actors, who with the help of dialogue, lighting, sound, camera movement, and editing develop the point across the film. The strong emotions and loving triangle within the three main characters in Casablanca highly contributed to some of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. It is clear though that the protagonists of this romantic drama are Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) and Isla Lund (Ingrid Bergman) as the story is mainly focused around their romance. The structure of the film doesn’t hold a chronological and linear narrative as the story is repeatedly interrupted by flashbacks, the only acceptable time manipulation adherent to the classical Hollywood style, used to present a memory sequence of a character. The flashbacks that come across Rick’s mind introduces the two protagonists’ remarkably tragic love story.
Initially, Rick is portrayed as a hard-hearted shadowy man in Casablanca and the audience at first would think it's a film centered on war and historical events but Ilsa is then introduced and everything changes from then, unrolling the truth slowly. In one specific scene, the audience sees Rick drinking alone at the bar after the café closes while the pianist plays a song that makes him think about the past. In this flashback, Rick is portrayed in Paris as a visibly happy and romantic man with Isla by his side. The two of them are pictured having a wonderful time and are clearly in love. However, they avoid talking about their life before Paris. When the rumor that the Germans are approaching Paris gets to Rick he asks Isla to leave with him. At the train station the next day, Rick is waiting for Isla under the pouring rain, but she will never get on that train. A note is the only thing he will have left of Isla, saying they could never meet again. The great pain caused by that heartbreak turned him into the man he is portrayed as in Casablanca. So, as Isla enters the café, the flashback ends and the woman is immediately scorned by a drunk Rick. By entering once again into his life, Isla broke Rick’s equilibrium. Following this moment of disruption, Rick starts facing obstacles and his mind is extremely distressed as he realizes his feelings for Isla never ceased and hers may have never too. Then the realization befalls when Isla discovers that the transit papers, she and Lazlo needed to fly back to America, were actually in Rick’s possession. However, a sudden turn of events brings Isla to confess to Rick her ever-present love for him. With the hope that Isla would stay by his side in Casablanca, Rick hands her the papers. Soon though he realizes that asking Isla to leave Lazlo for him would be extremely selfish and rushed, so, instead, he self-sacrifices and wishes them happiness. A new and final equilibrium is achieved as Rick watched their airplane liftoff, accepting his own fate. Throughout the narrative, the protagonists undergo a major character development, a key concept of the classical Hollywood style, that sees psychological motivation as a significant driver of the plot. For instance, Rick Blaine’s character is portrayed in the first scenes of the film as a mysterious, careless man in Casablanca, and even though he never goes back to be the man he was in Paris, Rick still undergoes a meaningful change, overcoming skepticism and apathy to become the selfless hero he turns out to be at the end of the film, as he was the one who attempted to repair the disruption of equilibrium.
Multiple characteristics of the classical Hollywood cinema are resembled in Casablanca; some are also shared with the film noir subgenre; including lighting. The film’s flair and emotional touch have its origins in the black and white, high-contrast style inclined to alter reality for an emotional effect. The cinematic lighting in Casablanca followed a three-point lighting system: the key-light representing the light origin of the scene, then the fill-light and the back-light used to provide counteract to the first. For instance, during the specific scene portraying Isla’s confrontation with Rick, she is shot in the light and he instead in the dark, illustrating the difference of their emotions. The use of back-lighting on Isla enhances her innocence and morality, while Rick is hidden in a shade of rage and disbelief. Just as the audience tries to understand their feelings, that light of contrast between the two diminishes. Then when Rick accuses her, the game of shadows now portrays Isla in the darkness making the audience question her and does so from Rick’s point of view. The solo teardrop falling down her cheek as she begins to cry is enhanced through the lighting, making it appear almost as a sparkle, showing her innocence and readdressing the blame on Rick. The scene ends with a shot of the dark room portraying Rick with his head facing down and feeling miserable. So, the lighting in this scene is able to let the audience feel the tension and connection between the two unsettled lovers. Other elements, part of the stage of production, work together with lighting to achieve the outcome of the film. In Casablanca, the music, for instance, made by Max Steiner, is repeatedly used throughout the film with different tones to harmonize with the type of scene. As music, editing is so attractive and high in quality as it is seamless and consequently made the audience feel like the film was happening in front of their eyes. The camera movement in Casablanca, as it follows the classical Hollywood style, followed a formal way of shooting a scene. This claim is sustained by Dede Allen, American editor of the time the film was produced, as she explains: “You always start with a long shot and then you work your way into the close shot, go over shoulder if you have them, and then close-ups” ; a method used in Casablanca.
Overall, The style of Hollywood filmmaking at its height: so effortless, so masterful that it’s often invisible to the audience. This claim is sustained by the production designer Richard Sylbert as he states: “The whole point was to do something so well that nobody noticed what you did” meaning that the style becomes illusionistic. Despite it’s so deceptive and more subtle, resulting harder to see, being a film studies student, you learn how to look at it and it’s not invisible at all, instead, it’s very precise and artful. In fact, according to John Belton: “Every detail in the scene serves a purpose, advances the narrative and gets used up by the conclusion of the scene”. The story, acting, lighting, sound, camera movement, and editing of the film Casablanca are so great that the audience solely focused on the narrative, not about the filmmaking process.
