Casablanca+Review,+Sarah+Cho

Love is Lost Through Time

Do you think that black and white movies are cheesy? Well, at first, as a young audience I thought that the movie would be boring, and awkward. However, after watching the movie, “Casablanca” for a while, I understood the fun and romance of watching a black and white movie. This movie mainly focused on the political issues and the theme love between men and women. Due to this theme, love, it grabbed my attention and I was able to comprehend the movie better. Overall, the movie was a very classical movie to be watched at this age since the problems introduced in there are the ones teenagers will experience sooner or later. Thus, it was a good lesson for me to learn by watching a movie. The movie starts with a scene in Rich’s cafe. This cafe is where all the generals from France and Germany go to have a talk and enjoy the drinks. Rich is a very solid character who does not like to interact with other people even in his cafe. However, when a couple comes in, everything he built in the cafe such as rules were broken. Others saw a totally different person in him since that woman was the one Rich fell in love in Paris. But due to a tragic reason, they had to separate, since then, he had never seen her until that day. Many disasters happen, and they eventually find out that they are still in love with each other somehow. The positive views about this movie was the setting. Setting shows the World War II, and the relationship of Rich and Ilsa as a tragedy but also romantic one. If it weren’t a setting so strong and dramatic, then the meaning of their relationship would have had no meaning to the audience. Since the movie was in black and white, it was able to show the main ideas of the movie, rather than focusing on the movie set. Today’s movie are hard to focus because there are many other things in the movie that grabs the attention of the audience other than the plot and characters; such as fashion and bags. But since the movie was shown in black and white, audiences attention all derived to the character’s relationships. In addition, a factor that made the movie interesting was the music and sound effects. Since people in my age have a hard time watching a movie that is produced in black and white, the sound effects such as the guns were much less realistic than today’s. Thus, grabs the attention of the audience by influencing the curiosity of the old-days’ filming items. While watching this movie, it was very irritating about the fact that the camera was always so closed up into the characters’ faces. This made the audience question a lot with what was going on around the character, which later became a key to misunderstanding the story. Although, lacking technology lead the movie to be produced in black and white, it was somewhat a distraction to the audience who have been used to watching movies in colors. Also, from time to time it was hard to evaluate the scene because the colors did not show. Even though in some parts of the movies, the scenes had to be a nervous, solid, and serious scene, due to the sound effects and the movies implied, it destroyed the serious mood of the part. If it had used the sound effects of today’s movies, then they might have produced a movie better than the original. Also, the actor’s acting were very stiff, and seemed rather unprofessional to me. Those acting became one of the factors of disruption in analyzing the main plot of the story. Personally, I was not able to imply if the character was mad, serious, making a joke, or furious. Without the ability of the characters’ professional acting, the idea of the movie would be hard to be understood. In this movie, there were several main characters that changed the whole theme and plot of the movie. The actors’ characteristics portrayed in the movie was a good blend with the movie and a success. However, the acting that they brought into the camera was rather a part of disruption. Especially Ilsa was unable to portray her deepest feeling into the camera, which later even leads into questioning the plot of the movie. Ilsa’s part of acting was very awkward because when she had to get mad, it did not seem that she was mad but rather just concerned with the problem. The intensity of the feelings were not shown in the movie. However, I liked Rich’s acting because he was able to show the change through camera from his characteristics in the beginning and at the end. The impression I received from Laszlo was that he is a man with pride, honor, respect, and wealth, but even all of those factors won’t amount to the woman he loves. Even though his wife cheated on him, he was still able to love her just the way she was. In my opinion, with his requirements, he would have been able to meet other women in a short amount of time, but he stayed by her side no matter what. This character would be remembered in many lives of the audience, because at some point in life people will experience love, and they would have learned by watching this movie that they need to give their best effort to the girl in order to keep them and go on with them. But some will not remember Ilsa because they wouldn’t want their girl to have an affair with another man when they are not with them. “Casablanca,” was a movie that included many themes to relate to daily lives, and as well as history. If people want to learn about the life in World War II and learn to know what to do to a woman they are in love, then I highly recommend to watch this movie. To be able to understand this movie, people need analytical mind, and must think in a political mind as well. (4)