From
the mid-‘20s until their collapse in the ‘60s, Hollywood’s seemingly omnipotent
film studios reigned supreme over the American film industry, resulting in a
period of film history now known as Classical Hollywood. Characterized by a utilitarian,
workmanlike, “invisible” style of filmmaking (which led Andre Bazin to compare
such films to photographed plays), the point of which was to call as little
attention to the camera or sound recording as possible, Classical Hollywood
cinema favored linear storylines (the only exception being the use of
flashback), an adherence to the three-act structure, clearly defined goals for
the hero to work toward and distinct story resolution, usually exemplified by a
happy ending. The Classical
Hollywood mode of production, known as the studio system, dictated that each
studio had its own employees (writers, directors, stars, etc.) with which to
make its films, resulting in a certain uniformity of style: films that often
bore more of their studio’s stamp than their respective filmmakers’. The Big Five studios that perpetuated
Classical Hollywood cinema (MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox,
Paramount and RKO) churned out thousands of these films during their “Golden
Age.” They knew exactly what the
audience wanted, and catered to them constantly, resulting in a slew of
generically and thematically similar films often featuring similar (if not the
same) stars, made in a similar fashion.
Warners’ most enduring (and, some would say, best) film — the one often
considered to be both the epitome and pinnacle of Classical Hollywood cinema
itself — is Michael Curtiz’s 1942 romantic melodrama Casablanca, itself a prime example of this cinema
of familiarity.
The
most obvious way that Casablanca
fits into the Classical Hollywood schema is its adherence to the collaborative
nature of the studio system. The
film is as much a product of Hal Wallis, its producer, and Howard Koch, Julius
and Philip Epstein and Casey Robinson, its writers (contributing romantic
intrigue, “slick shit” and “a franc for your thoughts,” respectively), as it is
of Michael Curtiz’s direction.
Adding further to the production’s collectivism was the input of Max
Steiner, who composed the music, and Murray Burnett’s and Joan Alison’s
unproduced 1938 stage play “Everybody Comes To Rick’s,” on which the film was
based. In his 1968
director-organized critical assessment of films of the sound era, The
American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, Andrew Sarris calls Casablanca “the happiest of happy accidents,” and
not without good reason. Warner
Bros. didn’t even expect the film to be their most critically acclaimed or
financially lucrative of 1942, let alone all time. For all intents and purposes, the production was half luck
and half studio panache, a Hollywood hodgepodge that was in a constant state of
flux, practically strung together on the lot, line by rewritten line, actor by
contested actor, day by turbulent day — a cinematic palimpsest of mythic
proportions; more than anything else, an improbably cohesive end product that
lends credence to there being a method to movie madness after all. It’s a testament to Classical Hollywood
efficiency that the film most emblematic of the period’s erratic mosaic of a
production style became its most beloved.
Another way Casablanca secures its place in the Classical
Hollywood canon is through its manipulation of the audience’s collective
unconscious. Classical Hollywood
cinema was contingent upon its star system, turning successful actors into
marketable, identifiable brands fit for mass consumption. Many of the actors in Casablanca, character actors and stars alike, are
examples of this commodification; filling a specific niche role early in their
career before being pigeonholed, cast similarly from then onward until they
occupied that particular place in American popular culture and became
synonymous with that particular persona in the audience’s collective
unconscious. The purpose was
twofold: means to a financial end, cashing in on what the audience considered
to be a given actor’s star appeal, and, in many cases, using an actor to the
best of his or her abilities.
Three of the actors featured in Casablanca were essentially reprising the roles
they had played in John Huston’s 1941 film noir, The Maltese Falcon, less than a year prior. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre and Sydney
Greenstreet are all examples of this most ubiquitous of Classical Hollywood
characteristics: typecasting. From
a modern vantage point, the technique seems to call attention to the film’s
artifice, giving the viewer a nudge and a wink as it expects him to watch Sam
Spade, Joel Cairo and Kasper “the Fat Man” Gutman change their names and move
to North Africa, trading their pursuit of literally jewel-encrusted birds for
that of metaphorically jewel-encrusted exit visas. These three are examples of what San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle calls
“apotheosis” actors, acting in the manner with which they themselves are
associated, muddying the border between actor and character, as opposed to
“chameleon” actors, who make a point of disappearing into their roles in an
attempt to present themselves as they’ve never been seen before. Even the name of Ferrari’s
(Greenstreet’s) café in Casablanca —
The Blue Parrot — seems like subliminal messaging, a crafty attempt to play off
the audience’s memory of and love for the actors’ previous roles.
It is important to note that, though most
often defined as a mere romantic drama, Casablanca takes influence from a good number of
popular American film genres, including film noir, melodrama, war films and the
western. The film’s uniqueness,
when compared to the broader framework of Classical Hollywood cinema as a
whole, lies in its assimilation of these disparate genres and how it toys with
the very generic stereotypes it employs.
Rick’s constructed, post-Ilsa, personality is all noir fatalism, filled with enough bitter
vitriol to qualify for what Paul Schraeder describes, in his seminal 1972 essay
“Notes on Film Noir,” as one of the seven dominant noir stylistics: “an irretrievable past, a
predetermined fate and an all-enveloping hopelessness.” Similarly generically minded, Robert
Ray spends much of his 1985 essay “A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema,
1930-1980,” detailing Casablanca’s
“reluctant hero story, clearly derived from the western.” And the film wouldn’t be the same
without its WWII backdrop, an urgent battle between good and evil that allows
for all the requisite action, suspense and melodrama to unfold. This diplomatic attitude toward genre
creates Casablanca
both in the image of, and in stark opposition to, its Classical Hollywood
cinematic contemporaries. It is
similar to everything and nothing.
Perhaps most relevant to a current study
of the film, Casablanca
exemplifies the element of Classical Hollywood that has become apparent only in
retrospect: the sheer degree to which the best films of the era have embedded
themselves in the American psyche, their quotes, images, storylines and
characters referenced and recycled seemingly ad nauseum in popular culture. Humphrey Bogart’s tortured,
self-pitying mug, drunk and staring off into space as Sam begins tinkling the
first chords of “As Time Goes By” was recycled as early as 1945 in Edgar
Ulmer’s Detour, when
the main character, Al, hears “I Can’t Believe That You’re In Love With Me” at
a roadside diner in Nevada, both films using their respective song to
precipitate their main character’s flashback to happier days (Rick recalling
Ilsa and Paris, Al remembering Sue and New York City). Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam is named after the oft-misremembered Casablanca quote, and it would seem that Rick’s
answer, “I’m a drunkard,” to the question, “What’s your nationality?” served as
cinematic inspiration as early as 1946, in the western My Darling Clementine, when one character asks another, “Mac
have you ever been in love,” only to receive the reply, “No, I’ve been a
bartender all my life.” Rick’s and
Ilsa’s mantra of “No questions,” while enjoying their bout of Parisian passion,
was memorably turned on its head by Bernardo Bertolucci in his 1972 film Last
Tango In Paris, echoed
by Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider while they perpetrate their perverse,
loveless, similarly located fling.
The most enduring films of Classical Hollywood, of the cinema of
familiarity, have now become the most familiar, essentially defining the
distinction between Classical Hollywood as a whole and those examples that have
actually withstood the test of time, which one might call “Classic” Hollywood
(not to be confused with the extremely misleading Classical Hollywood synonym,
“the Golden Age of Hollywood”).
Neither Classical nor Classic Hollywood is a title after which Casablanca sought, though it has assumed both over
time. This is Casablanca taken to its logical conclusion,
emerging from universal themes and routine filmmaking style, only to eventually
become universal itself. Classical
Hollywood arose from familiarity, and to familiarity it now returns.
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