With globular eyes and meek voice, one of the most memorable faces of Casablanca is surely Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre. Peter Lorre plays Ugarte in a believeable manner,who sells letters of transit to refugees who are in hope of a place without war. Peter Lorre himself had been one of those people who flee his country in hopes of a better life and a carreer. His career shows how Hollywood’s movie industry was seen as the monopoly power over the film industry so that most actors and filmmakers wanted to be a part of it while Hollywood being influenced subtly as a result of these émigré actors. As an émigré from the since his childhood, Lorre is a perfect example for an expatriat. Born in Rozsahegy,Hungary, he moved to Vienna in 1912 in which he acted in a primary school production. Even though he studied bussiness in university and followed a bourgeios job by day, he followed his passion by night. He honed his skills with Jacob Moreno's Theater of Spontaneity. After Vienna, he started acting in Lobe and Thalia theaters in Breslau, Germany in which he took on roles in different genres including comedies, farces, and dramas. As an actor with diverse talents, he …show more content…
caught the attention of Bertolt Brecht. As he became “the hottest thing on the Berlin stage” (376 Riggs) in his words, Fritz Lang wanted to cast him in his movie, M(1931). His performance was so successful that the role stuck on him as a serial murderer. When he flee from Germany, he was not only escaping Nazis and Reichstag fire, he was also trying to run away from the image that was created for him. Even after joining émigré actors in Paris, people would still know him as the murderer. As the advent of sound limited film making to major studios and the attacks of Nazis, which would eventually lead to WWII, were making Europe dangerous, American film industry became much more powerful and was on its way to have a monopoly over the world’s film industry. Since he was stuck with a label, he knew if there’s one way to fix his image it would be in United States. In his words, “Ever since I came to this country I've been trying to live down my past. That picture M has haunted me everywhere I've gone.” ( 387 Riggs) Even though Hollywood opened its doors to émigré actors, in some ways Hollywood sterotyped them into roles and didn’t give them enough room to be the artists they want to be. As studio era movie making gave importance to “stardom”, emigres stuck with their roles from their country of origin. Peter Lorre was correlated with sinister villian and Hollywood movie industry took advantage of that image. There were movies that let him put some creative input as an actor, such as Maltese Falcon(1941), but his acting style turned more neutral and he put less and less creative input in his works as he accepted roles he did not want. Hollywood definitely had one of the most powerful film industries in the world and it had the power to tell the stories it wanted to tell.
The foreign actors and crew members definitely brought something new to the table. Their vision and their methods of storytelling was much different than classical Hollywood era. Although the number of foreign crew members and actors was high, the way Hollywood stories were told did not change. In the case of Lorre, he wanted to become much more of “objectified commodity image” ( 101 Baer) but he wasn’t given the chance to use his creative power fully so he went back to Germany in 1951. When he realized Germany was not ready to take in his movies such as Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (1952), he went back and dully accepted parts that spoofed his sinister movie
personality. As a final comment, I would like to say, I believe the effects of the studio era can still be seen today. There are many people who are coming from all different parts of the world with one thing in mind; to make it in Hollywood. And some lucky ones make it as creative filmmakers and actors. To climb the ladder, however, they usually assimilate American storytelling techniques and become a name on the credits. As welcoming we think the industry is, the mainstream stories are usually told from an American perspective and the influence from the international is really limited.
Casablanca was directed in an era almost entirely dedicated to propaganda, as far as the film industry is concerned. The movie promoted America and the Allies similar to most films of the time, but it did so in a much different manner. The story told in Casablanca follows the main character, Rick, through his personal affairs and love tango with another lead character, Ilsa Lund. The film begins with Rick alone running his saloon based in Casablanca, in which he seems very indifferent to other people’s affairs, and comes off as very exclusive. He is delivered letters of transit by a man named Ugarte, which are nearly priceless to any refugee desiring to flee to the United States or another unoccupied country. Rick continues to act disinterested, reluctantly agreeing to hide the documents. He holds onto them even after Ugarte is killed for having stolen the letters, although there did not seem to be an...
This is a movie in another movie that has a story from the past that is repeated nowadays: the same conflicts between exploited and exploiters, enslavement, injustice, protection of the public against those who put a price, and also the story of how the union of many sometimes gets what seemed
In the essay “Beautiful Friendship: Masculinity & Nationalism in Casablanca”, Peter Kunze lavishly explains the magnificence of Michael Curtiz’s 1942 film Casablanca. Kunze focuses on how the movie not only highlights an exchange of relationships, but how the film has an underlying meaning between these relationships. He also implies that there is a more complex meaning behind every character in regards to their gender, economic, and social roles. The overall thesis of his reading is “the patriarchal ideology underlying the narrative commodifies Ilsa, leading Rick to exchange her with other men in an act of friendship and solidarity as well as to dissuade any perception of queerness between the strong male friendships in the narrative” (Kunze
Robert B. Ray categorizes Casablanca as "the most typical" American film. Ray uses Casablanca as a tutor text for what he calls the formal paradigm of Classical Hollywood as well as the thematic paradigm that addresses the conflict between isolationism and communitarian participation. The film is typical in its appropriation of an official hero Laszlo, who stands for the civilizing values of home and community, and an outlaw hero Rick, who stands for individu...
Unlike their classical counterparts, these films could eschew the American national ideology of the time without their production companies facing the threat of lost profits. For example, in being produced by a studio based in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Jadran Film), the original Winnetou movie could afford to take liberties with dominant narrative conventions that would have been considered too risky by the Hollywood standards. In actuality, however, having a Native American as the hero in Winnetou proved to be an advantageous decision in the Central European nations where the film performed best given the unpopularity of the United States in these countries at the time of the movie’s release during the Cold
...ed. This character is different from most leading male characters in classical Hollywood cinema, because he is rebellious, reckless, crude, arrogant, a thief and a murderer; most of Michel’s characteristics are generally reserved for the villain of a film.
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
...enshoff et al. (2009), it is important to mention that films that are produced by Hollywood are first and foremost strictly business. To Asian viewers, it may be easier to detect these faulty portrayals, but whether Hollywood casts a Korean to play a Japanese role, or a Chinese to play a Korean, it is all the same because Hollywood uses what works to sell its product well.
The Latin American film genre is one of the most known genre worldwide and one of the most popular and successful of all of the genres in this business around the world. Yearly a number of productions from Latin America become favored and demanded successes, often-earning high levels of recognition and recommendation. In foreign film categories and in events and functions such as the Oscars, which are very highly respected around the world, Latin American films are awarded and praised and unquestionably make audiences sit on seat’s edge to bear mind films being produced in countries here. Latin American films are most likely to be as successful as they are because of the mixture of all of the elements, which their cinema provides, including
In 1982, the journalist Chuck Ross, in an experiment for Film Comment, mailed the script of Casablanca to 217 agencies under a different title and under a different authorship name. Although many rejected it for external reasons, eighty-one agencies read it and of those, fifty-three did not recognize it as the classic. But here’s the cherry on top: forty-one agencies criticized the iconic, Oscar-winning script with harsh words. One wrote, “Story line is thin. Too much
Hollywood has for over twenty-eight years created and supplied products associated with movies to all main film studios, leisure and entertainment industries. The most revered clients recognized in the entire world include Disney, Paramount, Colombia, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and Universal among others. For this basis, the greater part of the actors all over the world wants to labor and make a living in Hollywood. The exceptional and distinctive characters have their own customs, beliefs and cultures which aid them to pursue fame and fortune in this Dream Factory. Every talented person desires this American dream. There are numerous prospects that make life better and in Hollywood, t...
In Hollywood, the films are very straight forward with the idea or messages that the director is trying to reveal in order to keep American viewers hooked on to the film. Whenever a foreign film is Americanized, there are always significant changes in the character’s love life between one another, and the organization of the plot; from the symbolism of the film with the theme of the films are altered. This method is very effective because American audiences want to understand the whole concept of the film, where the language is understandable and the film makes sense. American films tend to have more action, drama, terror and a bit of narrative in between to keep the audience entertained and not bored out of their minds while the foreign movies
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) uses the human figure of Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his pattern of behavior within the mise-en-scene of the film to show that acts of kindness drive the plot of the film forward in order to illustrate the power of kindness and the positive results that it can have on our lives. Over the course of the film, the narrator for the majority of the movie, Zero Moustafa (played by both Tony Revolori and F. Murray Abraham) reflects on his life as a young lobby boy at the Grand Budapest Hotel who is mentored by Monsieur Gustave, the owner and manager of the building. Throughout the majority of the film, there are multiple acts of kindness that Monsieur Gustave exhibits including allowing Zero
In the early years of cinema French filmmakers truly held one of, if not the most notable position in the field. Starting from Lumiere Brothers and their first film showing in Paris in 1985 and influencing works of George Melies, French cinematography developed in parallel with and equally fast as the American industry (CITE). For many years, native films from such big companies as Gaumont and Pathe Freres dominated all French screens with great success (CITE). But the beginning of the World War I in 1918 weakened not only the country’s position and economy but also the position of France in the film industry. Big amounts of small production companies were born instead of large production corporations; single movies that were released were