The Era of Classic Hollywood Film Was Dominated By

The era of classic Hollywood film was dominated by the “studio system,” a time when a handful of major players had the means for both production and distribution of films.1 The major Hollywood studios at this time kept directors, composers, actors, musicians—and all the necessary film professionals—under contract to create films for the studio. Remarkably, in the 1940s each of these studios was producing about 50 films per year—almost one every week! It is a testament to the talent and efficiency of the studio system that, with such a high volume of production, there were quite a few first-rate films among them. Casablanca (1942), produced by Warner Bros., is a case in point. Based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, “Everybody Comes to Rick’s,” the film’s script went through a series of revisions—even as shooting was taking place. What resulted was the very timely setting of Casablanca in early December 1941 (just days before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor), and a love story that sacrifices itself to the greater needs of a world at war, turning the protagonist, Rick Blaine, into one of the most memorable and heroic characters in all of cinematic history. For all the uncertainty that accompanied the final script revisions—even the stars didn’t know whether Ilsa would end up with Rick or Victor—there seems in retrospect almost an inevitability that the story would take the shape it did. Indeed, as soon as the United States had entered the war following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood had turned its efforts to making patriotic films. Casablanca premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City on November 26, 1942, to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa and the capture of Casablanca. It went into general release on January 23, 1943, to take advantage of the Casablanca conference, a high- level meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt in the city. The movie thus was very timely and, not surprisingly, it contains many elements of propaganda. The studio system only rarely allowed the emergence of the Hollywood film director as auteur; that is, as the one whose creative decisions shape the film to conform to his or her artistic vision. In those days—with a few notable exceptions—the producer was largely responsible for a great many of those decisions, and producer Hal B. Wallis can rightly be credited with the film’s success, more so than director Michael Curtiz. Granted, Curtiz was noted for his well-paced staging; he had directed Captain Blood (1935), an exciting and popular sea adventure, as well as The Adventures of Robinhood (1938). (Recall that we previewed the opening of the latter in Lesson 4.) In both cases, though, it was Hal Wallis who had tapped Curtiz as director and paired him with Erich Korngold as composer. And for Casablanca, it was Wallis’ decision to bring in his favorite composer, Max Steiner. 1 The “big five” studios of the classic Hollywood era were: Paramount, Loew’s/MGM, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO. In Lesson 4 we watched the first two minutes of the film’s opening. Let’s extend that clip, and this time watch the first six-and-a-half minutes of Casablanca. Casablanca Opening The Warner Bros. logo music (0:00 – 0:15) was composed by Max Steiner in 1937 for the film Tovarich. What do the music and images tell us about the film? First, that Warner Bros. is being “branded,” and Steiner’s music gives it import. Second, the names Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid were well known to audiences, movie stars from the A-list, signifying the studio’s highest quality. Third, the WB logo has already dissolved to a map of Africa when the three stars’ names appear, and drums have entered, beginning the process of situating us for the story that is about to unfold. When the title “Casablanca” appears, the music takes an exotic turn toward the Middle East (0:17 – 0:57), signaled by the use of a diatonic scale containing not just one extra-large scale step (an Augmented 2nd), but two of them. As we observed in Lesson 4, scales containing this interval tend to sound exotic to Western ears. Never mind whether the music is authentically middle-eastern—it’s not! Still, the primitive drums and Arabic sounding melody succeed in situating us in a place that is foreign to American audiences, vaguely somewhere in the Middle East, and the title “Casablanca” tells us exactly where. The music takes another geographic turn (0:57 – 1:05), this time toward France, with the quotation of the French national anthem, La Marseillaise (timed precisely with the credit of “Music by Max Steiner”). This is, after all, a movie about World War II, and Casablanca was at that time part of unoccupied France. The credits for producer and director conclude the title sequence, with director Michael Curtiz’s name coinciding with a dissonant chord that serves as a transition to the opening of the story. The main title music, then, (0:00 to 1:11) consists of the logo music and two themes: an exotic middle-eastern theme and a western theme, La Marseillaise, which would be familiar to audiences. In a very real sense, the music has given us a broad overview of the film we’re about to see, one in which western protagonists play out their respective parts relating to a love story and a war story, against the exotic and alluring backdrop of Casablanca. The narrated prologue (1:12 – 2:18), which opens the story, is accompanied by music (“refugee” theme) that blends traces of middle-eastern elements with Romantic idioms. There is a newsreel feel to the montage sequence, and the music clearly serves the function of providing continuity across the series of dissolves and overlays that illustrate the narration. The prologue concludes as the map trail zeroes in on Casablanca, and we are introduced to the city from above, with the sight of a high Mosque tower, looking out across the city toward the sea. The camera finally tilts downward to view a street in Casablanca, and is then lowered by crane to street level. Diegetic sounds are heard for the first time, and at this point the underscore returns unabashedly to an exotic middle-eastern theme similar to the one we heard in the title music, now played by a reed instrument that is suggestive of an instrument of middle-eastern origin—as though we are hearing diegetic music without seeing the musicians. There is a famous saying in the world of architecture, that “form follows function.” The saying holds true for many disciplines and arts, and it is especially fitting in the case of nondiegetic film music. The music’s form will always be subordinated to the form of the narrative, because the music’s function is to support the narrative. Composers of film music learned early the value of writing short musical phrases, often making use of sequential progressions. These compositional techniques are elastic, and they allow the music to “follow” the narrative in either a literal or figurative sense. Max Steiner was a master of writing music to “follow” the narrative. “Music should fit the picture like a glove,” he said. Consider the remainder of this opening clip (beginning at 2:23), which sets up the main elements of the narrative with remarkable concision. A dissolve takes us from the city street to the interior of military/police headquarters. Notice an almost fanfare quality to the musical transition that “announces” we are about to hear something important. (Steiner uses the first five notes of the German national anthem, “Deutschland über Alles,” set in the minor mode for this fanfare.) Notice, too, that a soft drum roll on timpani underscores the reading of the bulletin. Casablanca Opening Twenty seconds later (at 2:43) a dissolve carries us back out to the streets of Casablanca as police begin the roundup of suspicious characters. For the first time in the film we encounter cuts between shots (rather than dissolves and fades), which are essential to the continuity editing system. For the next minute, diegetic sounds of police whistles, sirens, and vehicles combine with Steiner’s underscore to convey—finally—temporal continuity. The action is fast, and Steiner’s score stays with it every step of the way, at least figuratively, if not literally. A clear instance of mickey-mousing occurs after the man running from the police is shot, when he falls to the ground with a nondiegetic thud. As the police discover that the literature in his hand is from the French underground (3:47), the La Marseillaise theme returns, except now in the minor mode. This theme bridges the cut to the next scene outside police headquarters, where we see the motto of formerly free France still etched above the archway: “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” The scene across the street at an outdoor café, involving a couple and a pickpocket, provides a bit of comic relief, even as it continues to provide us still more information, such as the proclivities of Captain Renault, the prefect of police. Moments later, the diegetic sound of an airplane draws the attention of everyone. As we join the throngs of refugees looking longingly toward the plane, the “refugee” theme returns precisely at the moment we see the plane in the sky (4:59). We get a beforehand introduction to the Bulgarian couple, as well as to Rick’s Café Americain, before we see the plane land at the airport nearby.

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