Boris Muravchik
Instructor: Victoria Prather
The American Cinema
04/30/2011
Legends of the Classical Hollywood
When people are trying to explain why exactly this movie is great, they mention three Oscar statuettes, casting, dialogue, and finally the political and social role that this movie has played in the American society, but nobody says that this movie is outstanding because of the techniques of cinematography. Technically this film was amazing; such films were very unique in the 1940’s. From the beginning Warner Brothers planned this movie to be a "B" category movie, without most outstanding actors and with a small budget. In addition, the script was based on a play with a hard to believe story, and because of that, no one wanted to put this in the production. Over a long period of time professionals worked on the script, trying to make the story more realistic, they managed to come up with the dialogue, many of which have made history, but by the beginning of filming the script was still unfinished. And who knows what would have been the fate of this film, if not for several circumstances. Already during the preparatory work of the movie, the producer has been changed to Hal B. Wallis. It was him who decided to replace Ronald Reagan with a big Hollywood star Humphrey Bogart, who played the title role. Wallis also invited Ingrid Bergman (she definitely was an actress for a film of class "A") for the lead female role. Movie got lucky with the director Michael Curtiz who was very experienced and respected for his professionalism.
Plot of the film was interesting. Name of the film coincides with the city in western Morocco, which was then a French colony. In the fictional world of the film, story is centered around a night club/casino "Rick's Cafe Americain”, whose owner is Rick Blaine, an American with an uncertain past. Bergman plays a Norwegian Ilsa Lund Laszlo, who arrived in Casablanca with her husband Victor, a Czech by birth and a fighter against... [continues]
Instructor: Victoria Prather
The American Cinema
04/30/2011
Legends of the Classical Hollywood
When people are trying to explain why exactly this movie is great, they mention three Oscar statuettes, casting, dialogue, and finally the political and social role that this movie has played in the American society, but nobody says that this movie is outstanding because of the techniques of cinematography. Technically this film was amazing; such films were very unique in the 1940’s. From the beginning Warner Brothers planned this movie to be a "B" category movie, without most outstanding actors and with a small budget. In addition, the script was based on a play with a hard to believe story, and because of that, no one wanted to put this in the production. Over a long period of time professionals worked on the script, trying to make the story more realistic, they managed to come up with the dialogue, many of which have made history, but by the beginning of filming the script was still unfinished. And who knows what would have been the fate of this film, if not for several circumstances. Already during the preparatory work of the movie, the producer has been changed to Hal B. Wallis. It was him who decided to replace Ronald Reagan with a big Hollywood star Humphrey Bogart, who played the title role. Wallis also invited Ingrid Bergman (she definitely was an actress for a film of class "A") for the lead female role. Movie got lucky with the director Michael Curtiz who was very experienced and respected for his professionalism.
Plot of the film was interesting. Name of the film coincides with the city in western Morocco, which was then a French colony. In the fictional world of the film, story is centered around a night club/casino "Rick's Cafe Americain”, whose owner is Rick Blaine, an American with an uncertain past. Bergman plays a Norwegian Ilsa Lund Laszlo, who arrived in Casablanca with her husband Victor, a Czech by birth and a fighter against... [continues]
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