Movie Analysis

Introduction

This paper intends to analyze the movie Casablanca which was released in 1942. The main focus of this paper is to examine the elements of the style that how the director makes one think and feel as he presents the event. This is done by analyzing how the director uses action, composition, editing, lighting and sound to give us perspective on the facts of the story. Further, it explains the theme of the movie, which is analyzed by the historical circumstances in which the film had been conceived. In addition to this, it discusses the value judgments of the film on the esthetics worth of the film. Moreover, two outside critical opinions are also discussed in this paper.

Discussion

Synopsis of the Story

The film is based on the scenario during the World War II. Many Europeans were on a run from Germans and wanted to seek refuge in America. Many of them fled to Casablanca in order to fly to neutral Lisbon to get from where they hope to continue to reach America. Most of the refugees were not able to reach out across Casablanca. The corrupt French police chief Captain Louis Renault, who works with the Germans issued transit visas only for payment with money or sex. Shady characters like the Italian Ugarte offer visas on the black market for ceilings. Further, it also holds in the city on the American Rick Blaine, whose nightclub Rick's Café is a meeting place of many immigrants. Rick has operated in the 1930s for the smuggling of weapons attacked by Italy and Ethiopia on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. He has now, however, become a disillusioned cynic (Nachbar, pp 23).

One day two German officers got killed and transit visas were stolen, as a result made an arrest of Ugarte in Ricks Café, the Commission identified him as the perpetrator. Ugarte asks his friend Rick, who kept him for transit visas, until the excitement had subsided. Rick hid the documents in his piano pianist Sam. Ugarte gets arrested in the evening in the bar by Renault's people however, the visas remain undetected.

Rick learns of Renault, the famous and influential Czech resistance fighter Victor Laszlo, which the Nazis had escaped several times on the way to Casablanca. Laszlo wants to settle with his wife Ilsa Lund in America, while the German Major forced him to Casablanca after traveling to prevent him.

Laszlo requires two transit visas who studied with Ilsa. Ilsa is a former lover of Rick. The two met in Paris a year ago and have had a passionate affair. Ilsa recognizes Sam and asks him again, to play the song As Time Goes By, as he did in Paris for her always. Rick rushes as he hears the song and gets shocked when he faces Ilsa. She had broken his heart earlier. They wanted to leave Paris together when the Germans invaded France but Ilsa did not appear at the rendezvous point and she let him down by telling ...