Andrea Carrion
07/17/2015
Second Film Scene Analysis
‘Casablanca’

Casablanca (1942) is a melodramatic film, which was directed by Michael Curtiz. The film mixes many different topics like love, politics and war. I find it to be a very interesting and amazing film, also I love the fact that it’s still in black & white.
This story takes place during World War II in Casablanca, Morocco. During that time the French controlled Casablanca and in order to get out you needed a passport or permit. The main characters in the story are Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund, Victor Laszlo, Sam (the pianist) and Captain Renault. Throughout the film the feelings between Ilsa and Rick are portrayed and it helps you understand that at some point they probably were in love, but that love didn’t consumed and the feelings between them are something that remain unsolved.
On the other side of the story when Ilsa appears in Casablanca, she’s not with Rick anymore. Instead, she’s married to Victor and this is part of the drama of the story because it’s kind of a love triangle, even though nothing happens between her and Rick. But as audience you can still get the fact that they still have feelings for each other, for example when she tells Sam “Play it Sam, play our song” and at some other point she thinks about letting go Victor to stay in Casablanca with Rick.
The final scene of Casablanca is the key to the melodrama in the movie, here you can finally see what happened between Ilsa and Rick and why they took different paths, but still you’re not able to know if they get back together or not. This makes the movie super interesting and at the same time it can be frustrating to many people because it’s not the typical happy ending. Another thing that makes the scene even more dramatic is the background music, which you can hear while listening to Ilsa and Sam talk.

Analysis of a scene:

The scene that I chose to analyze is probably my favorite scene in the movie, because I find it to be the scene when you notice the love triangle between Ilsa, Rick and Victor. This is the scene when Ilsa says, “Play it Sam”.
The length of the scene is 3 minutes. You can see Ilsa sitting the table of a café. As the scene continues she proceeds to call the waiter and asks him to call the piano player. Sam, who is the piano player, comes over to Ilsa’s table. This shot is an over the shoulder, and only the faces can be seen.
On the next shot the camera makes a slow zoom towards Ilsa, she can be seen wearing a white blouse. In this shot the camera used is a hand held camera, this can be noticed from the way that the shot tilts up and down. For all over the three minutes of duration of the scene the camera used is hand held, this is well done because it keeps moving over between Ils and Sam. At some other point the camera pictures both of them and it also uses and over the shoulder shot when Ilsa is waiting for Sam to respond. I found this shots great because as audience you’re able to watch the facial expressions of both characters and gets you more into the movie. The sounds in the scene are diegetic sounds, for example the noise that comes form the people that are in the café, but it’s important to state that evan though there’s a lot of background noise, the director managed this scene in way that keeps you focused on the development of the conversation between Sam and Ilsa. Another important detail is the way in which Ilsa’s tone of voice changes depending on what she’s saying or what she wants. For example, when she tries to convince Sam to play the song here tone of voice is more kind and low. The tone in this scene is set by the way in which it was designed. The camera keeps the focus mainly on Ilsa or Sam’s face, this illustrates that they are having a conversation, and of course marks the moment when she says “Play it Sam…” It’s clear to see that the intention was to let the audience be able of reading her expression in her lips; this is why a close up was used. Another important thing to notice is how the camera moves between Ilsa and Sam while he’s playing the piano, this is another illustrator of what the characters were feeling.
Finally, I think it’s important to say, how even though editing wasn’t that advance during the time that the move was shot; the fact that the director took care of every detail makes this scene, and the film a masterpiece. Source:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/