Comparing Casablanca And Classical Hollywood Cinema

What makes for a classic Hollywood film? Increasingly, films have evolved to the point where the standard by which one calls a “classic Hollywood film” has evolved over time. What one calls a classic film by the standards of yesterday is not the same as those of today. The film Casablanca is no exception to this. While David Bordwell’s article, “Classical Hollywood Cinema” defines what the classical Hollywood film does, the film Casablanca does indeed conform to the very definition that Bordwell provides the audience with in his article. However, while it is true that the film capers closely to Bordwell’s definition, this is a controversial, as well as subjective, claim to make because everything other than the ending of the film indicates

how closely the film conforms to Bordwell’s definition.
One thing Bordwell mentions in his article that is a characteristic of a good Hollywood film is its style. According to Bordwell, style “typically encourages the spectator to construct a coherent, consistent time and space of the fabula action” (Bordwell 26). To this, style often refers to the way a scene is affected by lighting,, and the very camera movements. In Casablanca, there are various examples where the film conforms to how much the style of a film defines a Hollywood film. One such instance of this is how the camera, on multiple occasions, focuses directly on the faces of the many primary personages in the film, namely Rick Blaine, the owner of the famed Rick’s nightclub, and Isla Lund, Rick’s former lost love who brings her husband, Victor, to Casablanca where they hope to get a visa to Lisbon and hopefully to a free America.
The way the film uses the camera to focus on each character’s face is exactly the way Bordwell describes the typical Hollywood film should use cameras. Bordwell says the way that a film frames human figures matters in ways that features close-ups of the main figures. This is highly evident in Casablanca with Rick and Isla. With such close-ups, the camera always follows the major characters in a scene, but medium close-ups are also present in the film where all the audience can see is the chest-up of that character. This is famously exemplified in the “Of all the gin joints” scene where we get close-ups on Rick and Isla’s face. Even the flashback scene shows the distinctive features of Rick and Isla’s faces as they embrace one another in love. This scene is exactly in line with Bordwell’s definition of the typical Hollywood film because among the majority of scenes, this one in particular, the film centralizes focus of the camera on the major characters of the film.
Additionally, the lighting in the film also plays into Bordwell’s definition of what a classic Hollywood film should exemplify. The lighting of a film intricately ties into how the film intends on showing certain scenes through the use of the camera angles. Such examples of this are how during these close-up scenes we see the lighting of certain characters brighten significantly. This is seen, again, in the famous “Of all the gin joints scene” because of how the audience sees multiple close-up scenes of Isla’s face, most notably how we see tears flowing from Isla’s cheeks.
Another way lighting plays into the classic feel of a Hollywood film, according to Bordwell, is how “a dark street will realistically motivate single-source lightning; the closeup of a woman will be more heavily diffused than that of a man” (Bordwell 27). One famous example of this is how the tension builds up when Isla returns to Rick’s nightclub after her husband goes to meet with a meeting with the local resistance against the Nazi regime. In this scene, we see how the lighting is much darker than scenes where we are focusing on Rick and another character. Watching the film, the audience gets the sense that the film attempts to create a certain mood through the lighting whenever Isla and Rick are alone. When the two are alone, like in this very scene, the tension builds up due to how much darkness there is in both the room and between the two former lovers. Conversely, when there are conflicts between Rick and Captain Louis Renault, the French commander in the city, represented towards the end of the film before Isla and Victor leave the city, the lighting of the room is significantly brighter. This is not to say that there exists no conflict between Rick and the French captain, but rather how the film conforms to Bordwell’s description of the effectiveness of the lighting by the contrast between scenes between Rick and Isla, and Rick and Renault.
Another element that Bordwell classifies as vital to the classic Hollywood film is the focus on the characters. While it may seem obvious, Bordwell states that the “most “specified” character is usually the protagonist, who becomes the principal casual agent, the target of any narrational restriction, and the chief object of identification” (Bordwell 18). While the case can be argued that Rick is the main character, it can be asserted from the movie that the two major protagonists of the film are Rick and Isla, as the majority of events revolve around the love affair between the two. It is here that we begin to see where Casablanca begins to conform to Bordwell’s definition of classic Hollywood films, albeit only slightly. This is primarily for two reasons: the focus on the two major characters, and the lack of fate for secondary characters in the film. For the first point, and as explained above, Rick and Isla are arguably the major characters, and everything that goes on within the course of the film’s events revolves around Rick and Isla, although it is primarily around Rick.
Equally important is how we see there to be a lack of character development/explanation for certain secondary characters, as Bordwell describes this to be a common sight among classic Hollywood films. This is definitely present and can be proven by examining one character in particular: Sam, the pianist for Rick’s nightclub. From the start of the film, we see him as an integral part of the nightclub, as well as a companion to Rick seeing as how he was with Rick and Isla in Paris. Despite Sam being a semi-large part of the movie, he is sold along with Rick’s nightclub to Signor Ferrari, another owner of a nightclub in Casablanca who runs the black market. According to Bordwell, what transpires to Sam in the film is typical among the classical Hollywood films, which shows how the discarding of secondary characters and their fates in the movie in Casablanca is another example of how the film conforms to Bordwell’s definition.
Perhaps the most evident, and probably largest, example of how Casablanca both conforms and diverges from Bordwell’s description is centered on the story development.

Bordwell makes notice of how little an audience may know entering into a film, as is the case with Casablanca. This is most notably signified both by how the opening of the film famously opens with narration of a news report, setting the stage so that the audience knows what is going on in the film. Despite this, the audience, while watching the film, would still possess curiosity about certain events, specifically about Rick and Isla’s past in Paris. This is notably explained through the use of flashback, which Bordwell makes mention as a significant aspect of the classic Hollywood film. The audience gets a taste of this in one notable scene when Rick is sitting in his nightclub after hours thinking about the events with Isla in Paris. Bordwell submits, “[a] flashback can quickly and covertly fill a casual gap” (Bordwell 23), and we get evidence of this in Casablanca as seen through the progression of Rick and Isla’s

past.
However, it is towards the denouement of the film that it becomes obvious how Casablanca significantly differs and diverges from Bordwell’s definition of the classic Hollywood film. Serving as the major centerpiece of Bordwell’s article is a certain reliance on the “happy ending.” Bordwell even says that the “happy ending seems more characteristic of Hollywood than of other classicisms” (Bordwell 31). In a like manner, one of the most quintessential signs of the classic Hollywood film, according to Bordwell, is how such a film “presents psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals” where “characters enter into conflict with others or with external conflict. The story ends with a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem and a clear achievement or nonachievement of the goals” (Bordwell 18). Dissecting this definition provided by Bordwell allows one to see that Casablanca astonishingly both conforms and diverges from your classic Hollywood film.
To begin, the film almost directly follows this definition through its major characters, as well as minor ones, that struggle to resolve their problems.

Most notably seen with Rick, one can clearly see how he serves as a central protagonist to the story, as he struggles to both solve the problem of dealing with his ex-lover, Isla, as well as trying to survive in Casablanca. Despite this, the film does not caper to this happy ending because we do not see “the romantic sphere and the other sphere of action… coincide at the climax” (Bordwell 19). While it is true we see Rick able to effectively, with help from Captain Renault, deal with the Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser by effectively killing him and the French captain allowing Rick to go free, we do not see a resolution of the romantic element. In fact, Rick and Isla never end up together in the end in what most audiences would be able to predict would be a happy ending. This is a significant contradiction to Bordwell’s definition and article because Casablanca tailors in almost every way to the provided definition, yet the most significant, and perhaps most important, part of the film ends in an atypical way that is uncharacteristic of the classic Hollywood

film.
As a summation, one can define the a classic Hollywood film, based on David Bordwell’s article, “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” as a film that effectively uses lighting and camera work while focusing on its central characters while developing the plot so as the protagonists resolve their problems by the end of the film. Despite Casablanca slightly faltering to this definition, specifically around how it does not effectively end in its protagonist, namely Rick, solving his problems, the film still effectively shows signs of lighting/camera work while successfully developing its characters in their respective fashions and filling in gaps about their stories through creative use of montages and flashbacks. In the end, Casablanca definitively stands as a classic, Hollywood film because it is successful in both developing its story and effectively telling that story in a compelling way that satisfies audiences even to this day.