Analysis of a scene from 'Casablanca'.

by mariabarrancofgmailcom (student)

Casablanca in the shadows

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film that is focused on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her husband to escape of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis. I decided to analyse a shot of this film because I think Rick is an interesting character because he wants to show that is a cool person but in the bottom of his soul he has feelings and I want to analyse that feelings.

The shot I choose to analyse is not last particularly long or highly relevant but I choose it because I think that this shadow silhouette of Rick shows us his dark side. First of all, it is very important to contextualise the shot in the film. It occurs when Captain Renault warns Rick not to help his friend Lazlo. The captain and Rick are talking outside the Café when an employee of Rick tells him that something has won a lot of money and they do not have enough cash to pay him. Rick gets up to go to the strongbox while the Captain follows him and they cross the whole place while Renault explains that they are going to arrest someone that night. Rick climbs the stairs to his office with Renault and we can see only the shadow of Rick taking the money while the Captain is speaking.

Having described the scene, let's analyse it. First of all, we have to divide the shot in two parts. The first one is when they are in the Café and they are going to climb the stairs, and the second one is when they come into the office. As we can see, the first part of the shot starts with a long shot of the café with the Captain Renault and Rick in the middle of the scene. With this long shot we have access to the space where we can see the people talking and drinking and it is used to set the scene in the film because we can see inside the coffee and the frenetic pace over there. At the beginning of the shot, the camera has a high angle but when Rick goes up to his office the angle is low because they are in the first floor and before they were in the ground floor. Moreover, we know that the shot is not particularly long but we can see that there are many important camera movements. The shot starts with a long shot and when Rick is climbing the stairs to his office the camera follows him with a pan right and a slight zoom out at the same time. The camera crosses the wall to follow the protagonists of the shot, the Captain and Rick, but the third character, the casino employee, almost disappears because of the position of the camera. This means that the character is not relevant in the scene.

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Secondly, as I said before, we are facing a long shot so it is hard to guess their facial expressions and characters but, if we watch the shots before, we can get an idea of their personality. After seeing the movie, we can deduce that Louis Renault is the corrupt prefect of police but he makes no bones about the fact he is corrupt, so we can conclude that he is corrupt but we can trust him because he is honest with his nature. However, Rick is a person who does not reveal his feelings but his actions show that it is not a man of ice. The character and Rick's face transform to Captain Renault with whom he has a tasty duel dialectic. With Renault we can see him smile and relax for the first time. As I said before, it is very difficult to know what they want to say with their faces but we can analyse other important aspects as the clothes. Renault dressed in a decorated military uniform, he is a constant reminder of the war. Conversely, Rick is wearing a bright white tuxedo and bowtie. His ensemble is sculpted to his body, producing an air of sophistication and strength. This costume implies that he is an important figure. Rick walks with his arm in the pocket and the other arm holding the cigarette, showing that he is not interested in the subject that they are talking about.

The shot occurs inside the Rick’s Café, main place of the film. The first part of the shot is downstairs when people are enjoying, dancing and drinking and the second part is upstairs when Rick opens the door to his office. The structure of the café is the typical Moroccan architecture with white and high ceilings and open spaces with few white walls. Rick’s Café is an important place of the film because it is a unique place and gaming house that attracts a varied clientele including people who want to flee to America. There, the people waiting their chance goes frequently to play in the casino or drink and dance in the other room. Moreover, We're talking about a time when smoking was very common and we can see during the film people smoking including our protagonist, Rick, he is always smoking. Cigarettes are a theme throughout the movie because cigar smoke were a general practice at any casino at that time and Smoking gives a feeling of darkness, mystery, and Rick represents everything.

One of the reasons why Casablanca has been so famous is the music and the memorable quotes. First of all, we must explain that in films there are two types of sound: the diegetic sounds and non-diegetic sounds. The diegetic sounds are from noises that are happening in the scene that have not been edited in (the voice of characters, music coming from an instrument, footsteps, etc.) and the non-diegetic sounds are those that are neither visible on the screen and have been added to make the experience more believable: one example is when the trumpet and trombone players raise their instruments to play “La Marseillaise”, the music begins before they start playing. In the shot, we do not have non-diegetic sounds because it is a normal scene that has no need to add any sound. But we can hear a lot of diegetic sounds like the conversation between Rick and Renault, the piano playing in the background, footsteps when they climb the stairs, the sound of the door and the safe, sound counting bills, etc. Sound is synchronized to image; music contributes to the mood and atmosphere of scene. But that's not all, the soundtrack of Casablanca written by Max Steiner, As Time Goes By, has become a very important song for the cinema. is one of the most famous songs of the history of cinema; it appears as a continuing musical and emotional motif throughout the film. Rick and Ilsa regard it as "their song" and associate it with the days of their love affair in Paris.

Light plays an important role during this film and during the shot because it emphasizes the characters. The 3-point lighting system complements the background lighting and eye lights. In the first part of the shot, the Café is very bright and the light came from different sides but Rick and Renault are the main characters of the scene and the light they receive is high-key lighting. But, when they are climbing up the stairs the light changes and it is back light and when they came into the office, the light is very important because we cannot see Rick while he is taking out money from the safe but we can see his shadow. It is a very dark scene that suggests dark emotions. Many of scenes with Rick, show half his face in the light, and half shadowed.

To conclude my analysis, we have to talk about editing. The importance of editing is to make absolutely clear the spatial organization of the scene. Not only is editing important to the storyline itself, but it is important in the sense that it allows for the meshing of several genres. With the use of cuts, the director can show simultaneous scenes at once that depict a different genre. For example, Laszlo and Karl must escape the Nazis, but at the same time we can see a romantic scene between Ilsa and Rick. Moreover, as we know, the film was never shot in Casablanca; everything was recorded in a studio. Editing allows see the physical continuity errors with the dimensions of Rick’s bar but when shots are cut together, they keep the viewer focused on the characters and story rather than obvious mistakes. Editing is also essential in building up suspense for the ending. Editing allows us to know that Captain Renault called the German Officer. It also allows us to see the shots of the captain approaching the airfield. Without editing in the phone conservation, the finale would be a boring predictable affair.