Writing films reviews for this class

Casablanca was released on January 23, 1943

The premiere was held on November 26, 1942,
 two weeks after the allies landed in Casablanca.
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Ecco, Casablanca, or the Cliches are having a Ball

"The question is a legitimate one, for aesthetically speaking (or by any strict critical standards) Casablanca is a very mediocre film. It is a comic strip, a hotch-potch, low on psychological credibility, and with little continuity in its dramatic effects. And we know the reason for this: The film was made up as the shooting went along, and it was not until the last moment that the director and script writer knew whether Ilse would leave with Victor or with Rick. So all those moments of inspired direction that wring bursts of applause for their unexpected boldness actually represent decisions taken out of desperation. What then accounts for the success of this chain of accidents, a film that even today, seen for a second, third, or fourth time, draws forth the applause reserved for the operatic aria we love to hear repeated, or the enthusiasm we accord to an exciting discovery? There is a cast of formidable hams. But that is not enough."

"On a smaller scale, the same thing happened to Casablanca . Forced to improvise a plot, the authors mixed in a little of everything, and everything they chose came from a repertoire of the tried and true. When the choice of the tried and true is limited, the result is a trite or mass­produced film, or simply kitsch. But when the tried and true repertoire is used wholesale, the result is an architecture like Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. There is a sense of dizziness, a stroke of brilliance. "

"But precisely because all the archetypes are here, precisely because Casablanca cites countless other films, and each actor repeats a part played on other occasions, the resonance of intertextuality plays upon the spectator. Casablanca brings with it, like a trail of perfume, other situations that the viewer brings to bear on it quite readily, taking them without realizing it from films that only appeared later...."

"Thus Casablanca is not just one film. It is many films, an anthology. Made haphazardly, it probably made itself, if not actually against the will of its authors and actors, then at least beyond their control. And this is the reason it works, in spite of aesthetic theories and theories of film making. For in it there unfolds with almost telluric force the power of Narrative in its natural state, without Art intervening to discipline it. And so we can accept it when characters change mood, morality, and psychology from one moment to the next, when conspirators cough to interrupt the conversation if a spy is approaching, when whores weep at the sound of "La Marseillaise." When all the archtypes burst in shamelessly, we reach Homeric depths. Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves , and celebrating a reunion."

• Casablanca--The Internet Movie Database (1942)
  

• The English Patient: The Internet Movie Database (1996)
  
  
• Tim Dirks' Review of  Casablanca 
  
  
• The Lyrics of As Time Goes by
  
  
• Memorable quotes from Casablanca
  
  
• Casablanca as Great Art
  
  
• Brabazon: We'll Always have Paris
  
  
• Casablanca Weblinks

1. What does Rick Blaine mean when he says that his personal code is: ``I stick my neck out for nobody"?

2.  Do you think Ilsa Lund really loves her husband 
Victor Laszlo?  

3.  What role does the song, "As Time Goes By," play in the movie?  What does the song really mean?

4. Is the  relationship between Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, and Victor Laszlo a classic love triangle?  Or is this relationship much more complicated?

5.  Do you think Victor Laszlo really loves his wife, Ilsa Lund?  Does Laszlo love the larger cause of fighting Fascism more than he loves his wife? What does Laszlo mean when he says:  "Apparently you think of me only as the leader of a cause. Well, I'm also a human being. Yes, I love her that much."

6.  What makes Rick Blaine so cynical and bitter and hard-edged in the early parts of the movie?  Why has he appeared to have given up his fight to stop the Nazis?

7.  Why does Ilsa come back to Rick's bar at night to explain herself?

8.  Do you think that Ilsa has always loved and still loves Rick?  Does she mean it when she says, "If you knew how much I loved you, how much I still love you"?

9. What does Rick mean when he says: "I'm not fighting for anything any more except myself. I'm the only cause I'm interested in "?

10. How do you explain the last scene at the airport.  Does Ilsa still love Rick, and does Rick still love Ilsa?

11. What do you think Rick mean when he keeps on saying, "Here's looking at you, kid," to Ilsa?

12.  What is Rick planning on doing when he says to Ilsa:  "But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ilsa,  I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now... Here's looking at
you kid"?

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Sewall Academic Program; University of Colorado at Boulder
Created 7 August 2002:  Last Modified: 22 January, 2009
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