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As the title maintains, The Making of Casablanca details all of the behind the scenes drama that occurred during the making of the legendary work. This account relates the studio battles over Casablanca, the screenplay disasters, the arguments with the Production Code leader Joseph Breen, the influece of the OWI, the regfugee backstores of many of the minor characters, the racial debate surrounding Sam, and the impact that Casablanca has had on the last fifty years of film making. Containing many pictures and transcripts of production notes, The Making of Casablanca is the perfect overview for understanding how a studio film was made and what external forces (the Breen Office and OWI) affected film making during this time.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1997.C352 P65 2005
Essay Number Ten: On the Argument of Casablanca and the Meaning of the Third Rick by Kenneth De Luca
The appeal of Casablanca is unmistakable. Popular amongst men and women of all ages, Casablanca is frequently listed as the second greatest film of all time. What makes this film so universally popular that it can still garners passionate fans amongst generations that can not even remember World War II, the studio system, or even Bogart and Bergman? It is this question that Political Philosophy Comes To Rick’s: Casablanca and American Civic Culture tries to answer with a series of relevant scholarly essays. The tenth essay (written by Kenneth De Luca) is of particular interest to the analysis of the legendary film. This essay reflects on the relationship between Rick’s character and the ideals of America. According to this essay, Rick’s character maintains modern American appeal because he represents the personification of Jeffersonian individualism. Rick is a man who needs to be free to the point where he can actually be moral and even beautiful. By making the ultimate sacrifice of love, Rick achieves personal autonomy and also freedom from the overwhelming guilt of having done the morally wrong thing. De Luca states that Americans find this sacrifice seductive because it represents a combination of seemingly irreconcilable freedoms – freedom to satisfy self interest and freedom to be directed by some higher purpose. This essay is important to the study of Casablanca because it shows the noncommercial / non-studio system aspects of Casablanca overwhelming popularity.
Call#: Van Pelt Library PN1997.C3523 L4 1992
The object of this book is to present a detailed summary of many aspects of the making of the legendary film Casablanca. This summary includes a brief history of the Warner Brothers studio, the life of Jack Warner, short biographies of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and the traumatic story of the writing Casablanca’s screenplay. Although at first glance, this book seems to be a classic coffee-table book, its contents and writing style do much to differentiate it from this rather superficial genre. Lebo seems to desperately search for a middle ground between the aesthetically pleasing use of pictures in his book and the more academic use of detailed analysis and quotation. By blending the two styles, Lebo creates a book that is stimulating both visually and intellectually. Casablanca Behind the Scenes’ is relevant to this film’s analysis because it gives a detailed summary of the behind the scenes drama and controversy inherent to the making of the now legendary film. This analysis particularly shows the inner workings of the Hollywood studio system and gives examples of the system’s advantages and faults.