Week 8 assignment: essay – interrelationships reflection apa format | Applied Sciences homework help

1. Is the structure of The Godfather episodic, tragic, or comic? Do we experience the feelings of fear and pity? What feelings are engendered by the film? What revela- tory experience did you have from watching the film?

jac16871_ch12_299-329.indd 322 12/11/17 11:58 AM FOCUS ON Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca Casablanca (1942), a film often cited as an iconic classic, was not ex- pected to be a great success. Plans for the film began in January 1942, during World War II. France had surrendered to the Germans after only a few weeks in 1940; London was being bombed; the entire Brit- ish Expeditionary Force was stranded on the beaches of Normandy at Dunkirk and saved by English sailors and citizens powering small boats. The United States was split between supporting Hitler and decrying against him. It took the attack by Japan on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor to bring the United States into the war against Japan and the Nazis. Be- fore the film was released, the U.S. Army invaded North Africa, which gave the film more significance and hastened it into theaters. That is the historical context of Casablanca. It was a time when the United States had wakened from a political coma and victory was uncertain. Before reading any further, view Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) in the currently available restored print. Once you have done that, consider this analysis. Rick meets Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund, but he is not happy. He had loved Ilsa and is bitter because she “stood him up” in Paris when the Germans marched in. Ilsa has come to Casablanca with her husband, Victor, without knowing she would meet Rick (Figure 12-14). Captain Renault shrewdly puzzles out the relationship between them. Renault is a Vichy-French officer who will not arrest Laszlo—as the Germans wish him to. At this time, the colony in northern Africa was governed by the so-called Free French, a limited arrangement the Nazis had set up in return for France’s surrender in June 1940. The Vichy government collaborated with the Germans, and in Casablanca everyone must behave carefully. The purpose of the shot is to establish everyone’s relationship in terms of politics, character, and emotion. The artistic context of Casablanca is that of the typical chiar- oscuro film noir style of black and white with exquisitely framed and composed shots. But instead of being a film noir murder mys- tery, it is a film noir political mystery with an exceptionally strong romantic core. At first, audiences were surprised, possibly because its genre was mixed. But soon enough it became a major success and won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director. The political context involves Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a club owner in North Africa in a Free French colony. He begins as an anti-hero, saying, “I don’t stick my neck out for nobody.” But his background includes anti-Nazi activity in Ethiopia and Spain. In ad- dition, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) shows up in Rick’s Place and is recognized as an international leader of the resistance to Germany. Laszlo arrives in Casablanca to get letters of transit that will permit him to fly to neutral Portugal and from there to America. The context of romance involves Rick and Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), who meet in 1940, weeks before the Germans march into Paris. They have an affair and vow to leave Paris together. But before she fell in love with Rick, Ilsa had been told that her husband, Victor Laszlo, had died in a German concentration camp. However, when she and Rick were to leave Paris, she discovered Victor was alive and as a result she left Rick standing alone at the last train out of Paris, breaking his heart. More than a year later they meet again in Casablanca. Rick, who was destroyed emo- tionally by her leaving him, sees her and says, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine” (Figure 12-15). FIGURE 12-14 Rick, Captain Renault, Victor Laszlo, and Ilsa Lund meet at Rick’s Place. Rick and Ilsa had been lovers the year before, and the scene is tense. ©Moviestore collection Ltd/Alamy FIGURE 12-15 Rick (Humphrey Bogart), who stopped drinking when the Germans marched into Paris, is heartbroken by seeing Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) with her husband. He is still in love with her and “drowns” himself with alcohol. The tight shot is profoundly dark, in tune with Rick’s feelings. Source: Warner Brothers continued 323 jac16871_ch12_299-329.indd 323 12/11/17 11:58 AM Ilsa has Sam (Dooley Wilson) play her and Rick’s favorite song, “As Time Goes By” (Figure 12-16), thus setting up a painful memory, and a flashback portrays Rick and Ilsa’s short love affair in Paris. Among the many famous quotations from the film, it is in Paris where Rick first admires Ilsa and says, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Much of the flashback film footage of German armies on the move is authentic, showing that as early as January 1942 people in the United States knew what was really happening in Europe. They also knew about concentra- tion camps. The role music plays in Casablanca may be surprising, but the premise is that Rick is running a nightclub, and the club has its own orchestra as well as entertainers who play music, sing songs, and dance. Max Steiner was the composer for the film, but he based his work on some of the most memorable music in the club, “As Time Goes By,” and “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem. The background music hints at those melodies while providing the usual mood changers typical of fea- ture films. One of the most powerful and moving moments of the film is when the German officers enter Rick’s club and eventually rise to sing a famous German song, “Watch on the Rhine.” Victor Laszlo cannot sit, listening to it, and rises and tells Rick’s orchestra to play “La Marseillaise” (Figure 12-17). The leader of the orchestra looks to Rick, who nods his head, and the entire audience in the club rises to sing the French national anthem, drowning out the German officers. This scene is the dramatic crisis of the film because the German commandant, Major Strasser, closes down the club and begins pursuing Victor Laszlo with a seriousness he has not shown before. The music is indeed powerful. It has been pointed out that with only three American major actors in the film (Bogart, Dooley, and Joy Paige), the rest of the actors were pri- marily refugees. Many of them stood with the music playing and cried honest tears for their own circum- stances. Today, seventy-five years later, the issues of war, fascism, and tragic romance are as relevant as they were when Casablanca was made. The latter part of the film centers on the letters of transit, taken from two murdered German couriers and passed on to Rick to keep for Ugarte (Peter Lorre), who is captured and killed. Soon Victor Laszlo learns that Rick has the letters, and Ilsa tries to get Rick to give them to her. He refuses, and in a dramatic scene she pulls a gun on him but does not shoot. It is left vague but implied that she breaks down and confesses her love for him, and they apparently make love one last time. They agree to give Victor one of the letters of transit and then they will go off together. FIGURE 12-16 Ilsa tells Sam (Dooley Wilson) to play “As Time Goes By.” She says, “Play it, Sam.” The song brings back the pain Rick felt in Paris. It was “their song.” Sam knows the pain the song will cause, but he plays it, anyway, because he cannot refuse Ilsa. This moment is one of the key musical instances in which the film makes an emotional appeal to the audience. Source: Warner Brothers FIGURE 12-17 Victor Laszlo leads the orchestra in singing “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, drowning out the Nazis singing “Watch on the Rhine.” Source: Warner Brothers 324 jac16871_ch12_299-329.indd 324 12/11/17 11:58 AM Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) appears to stop Victor from getting on the plane and draws his gun on Rick after Rick tells him to drop the phone; Rick shoots Strasser, with Captain Re- nault (Claude Rains) watching. As Victor and Il- sa’s plane is in the air on its way to Lisbon and then to the United States, the French police ar- rive and Renault, surprisingly, tells them Strasser has been shot and that they should “round up the usual suspects” (Figure 12-18). Ilsa expects that the deal she made with Rick would send Victor off alone and that she and Rick would be together. But at the airport, Rick changes things. He knows Ilsa belongs with her husband and that if she stays she will regret it, “Maybe not now, but much later on” (Figure 12- 19). This scene is almost a cliché, but the point was that in December of 1942 Germany con- trolled virtually all of Europe and had millions in concentration camps where genocide was the protocol. When Casablanca was made, there was absolutely no certainty that the Nazis would be defeated. Rick’s act of sacrifice and his experience with Victor Lazslo and Ilsa Lund—giving them the letters of transit—meant that he was no longer a by- stander in the worldwide struggle against fascism. Rick, who said he would stick his neck out for no one, ends by having lost his club and risked everything for a cause. Ultimately, the film establishes its moral center in Rick. The film ends with Renault and Rick deciding they should leave Casablanca for Brazzaville, another Free French settlement, until things cooled down. In a film full of famous quotations, Rick says, walking away with Renault, “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” FIGURE 12-18 Captain Renault orders his policemen “to round up the usual suspects,” one of the most memorable lines in Casablanca. Source: Warner Brothers FIGURE 12-19 Rick tells Ilsa that she must go with her husband. Even though they both love each other, Rick sacrifices his love so that she can be with her husband, doing the work of the Resistance that will defeat Germany. Source: Warner Brothers 325 jac16871_ch12_299-329.indd 325 12/11/17 11:58 AM 326 ChApTEr 12 exPeriMenTaTion In the early days of film, complex technical problems were at the forefront—light- ing, zooming, montage, and the like. Most of these problems now have answers, thanks especially to early filmmakers such as Griffith and Eisenstein. Today the problems center on what to do with these answers. For example, Andy Warhol, primarily a painter and sculptor, did some interesting work in raising questions about film, especially about the limits of realism, for realism is often praised in films. But when Warhol put a figure in front of a camera to sleep for a full eight hours, we got the message: We want a transformation of reality that gives us insight into reality, not reality itself. The difference is important because it is the difference between reality and art. Except when unconscious or dreaming, we have reality in front of us all the time. We have art much less frequently. realistic art is a selection of elements that convey the illusion of reality. When we see Warhol’s almost direct transcription of reality on film, we understand that selecting—through directing and editing—is crucial to film art. The power of most striking films is often their ability to condense experience—to take a year, for example, and portray it in ninety minutes. This condensation is what Marcel proust, one of the greatest of novelists, expected from the novel: PERCEPTION KEY Focus on Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca 1. Examine the control Curtiz uses over lighting in the film. How does he intensify the emotional content of specific scenes? 2. Review the historical situation of the early years of World War II. What had hap- pened in Europe that made this film seem important to an American audience? 3. Film noir was a technique Curtiz had mastered in earlier films, all focused on crime and the terror it engendered in society. How effective was the film noir technique in portraying the political circumstances in this film?