Film Journal: Casablanca

1) Relate what was discussed in class or the text to the screening
Last week in class we talked about the uprising of one of the most influential romance films of the 1940's, Casablanca. In this film, there are snippy lines that go back and forth between Rick and Ilsa, the two lovers that fall in and out of love throughout their stay in Casablanca. One of the main themes of the film covers lost love and romance inside a chaotic world [the early 1940's] where there is only self sacrifice and honor while dealing with the military and problematic causes of the war during World War II in this French Moroccan territory. There was a constant flow of refugees from the war that were going through Casablanca in hopes of getting Visas to travel to Lisbon, and then to the U.S. sometime after.

2) Find a related article (on the film, directed, studio, actor/actress, artistic content, ect.) You can use the library or the Internet. Cite the article or copy the url to your journal entry. Summarize in your own words the related article but do not plagiarize any content.
THE ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE
The article I am going to be relating to the film is the film article from Rogerebert.com. One of the first sentences in the article states that "No one making 'Casablanca' thought they were making a great movie." The sentence alone shocks me, because it's almost the opposite as Citizen Kane. As soon as Citizen Kane came out, it flopped, but as soon as Casablanca came out, it blew up. I figured that someone living back then would have loved the morality behind Citizen Kane much more than anything Casablanca, but it was the opposite. This article is essentially what Roger Ebert thought of Casablanca as a film. He elaborates on the quote I cited at the beginning of this section ["No one making 'Casablanca' thought they were making a great movie"] by saying that it was another A List movie including the big stars of that time frame, and setting their acting careers in stone, saying that they would have moved on to great roles in the future, which they did.

3) Apply the article to the film screened in class. How did the article support or change the way you thought about the film, director, content, etc.
Reading the entirety of the article on Roger Ebert's website definitely made me think much higher of Casablanca. After seeing more modern films that have stood out to me much more than Casablanca, which I have seen six times, I always thought that Casablanca was just rather inferior to other strong holds in the romance department such as When Harry Met Sally, Dirty Dancing, Titanic, and many others. Now that I look at Casablanca as a whole, I see that it has much more than just grimy dialogue in a rogue bar between gamblers and refugees. There are some comedy aspects, such as in the beginning scenes of the film where you meet the first couple characters. There is a lot of drama and foreshadowing that I never saw before because I just didn't notice any. I also picked up on how much the lighting influenced it because of the black and white characteristics.

4) Write a critical analysis of the film, including your personal opinion, formed as a result of 4 things: the screening, class discussions, text material, and the article.
Over the course of the screening, I was somewhat uninterested, to be honest. I loved the role of Rick, but Ilsa was very bland. She seemed like she was trying too hard [and her voice kind of made me get shivers down my spine] but acting is no reason to hate a film. Because I have seen it five times before I had seen it in class, in class being my sixth, I figured I would look for extra things to like about the film. Eventually, I learned to like it as more of a historical piece rather than a film piece. The class discussions helped me learn more of a backstory to the film, showing me how it was made, and teaching me about the creation of the film through Michael Curtiz [the director.] The article gave me repercussions of historical facts about the film, showing me more of a professional standpoint of how the film is seen from a critic's standpoint. All in all, I have learned a lot about the film, and it has definitely helped out with the history of film, but there are much better, even though Casablanca stands out on its own.

CHECKLIST FOR PLAGIARISM 

1) (X) I have not handed in this assignment for any other class. 

2) (X) If I reused any information from other papers I have written for other classes, I clearly explain that in the paper. 

3) (X) If I used any passages word for word, I put quotations around those words, or used indentation and citation within the text. 

4) (X) I have not padded the bibliography. I have used all sources cited in the bibliography in the text of the paper. 

5) (X) I have cited in the bibliography only the pages I personally read. 

6) (X) I have used direct quotations only in cases where it could not be stated in another way. I cited the source within the paper and in the bibliography. 

7) (X) I did not so over-use direct quotations that the paper lacks interpretation or originality. 

8) (X) I checked yes on steps 1-7 and therefore have been fully transparent about the research and ideas used in my paper.