CASABLANCA [1942]...

..is love...

Forever, forever and ever, everyone can say that Casablanca is one of the most unforgettable films of all time. I never saw such a cinema as Michael Curtiz's most salient style in my viewing list. If one has to recommend a classical film to a non-classical cinephile, it is of great pleasure to put Casablanca on the top list along with Citizen Kane (1941) and Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Casablanca replicates the feeling of euphoria driven by the fundamental aspects of its filmic composition, the cut, oh so lovely and how the film rolls, and elusive dialogues so true. And when the camera pans on the horizon, characters lit up. Rick, when he lights a smoke, fills the frame with an incredible effect of mystery and submissiveness, oh, when Llsa looks at the screen with her wide open eyes. And everything comes forward, towards that frightful claustrophobia of being locked in Casablanca, and one's search for freedom in America. How i love cinema, indeed!

But i am a bit sad after watching Casablanca, not that because it was overtly passionate and sentimental in some degree (of course if my taste for films would overrule the whole point of criticism, i can give it a zero star for that) but this hidden feeling that it can never be true. It remains in its diegetic world, and never comes out of there. It is true for all films, even so for documentaries which is, in a way, the closest filmic representation of reality. With this held in my hands, i can frightfully say that every film disappoints me. But to say that the measure of every film is its level of representation of reality is preposterous. Every film can be both as stylistic and truthful as Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) but one stands out for its own world view. Vertov's reality, however true, fits in distortions and canted angles and superimposition, and that the Russian metropolis, according to his film, can be filmed this way.

Reality is separate to filmic reality. Diegesis remains central to this discourse on representativeness. However, to distinguish this aspect one does not even have to read an article on film theory. The distance of the viewer to the screen of the cinema alone creates this sense of artificiality, that the world of cinema is exists only ona two-dimensional worldview and that it can never occur outside of that flat screen. Film remains there, and it can be deduced further as streaks of light coming from a projector. The way Casablanca came to me was a through the electrification of the liquid crystals on my laptop screen somewhat also related to optical virtuosity of my DVD drive. We may arrive at a conclusion that all of cinema lies under the restriction that it can never be true.



If how is Ingrid Bergman related to Ingmar Bergman, i really don't know!

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ZOMBIE Nowadays... tsk tks tsk

I do love you, Mwuah!

Thank God it's Friday! Ciao for Thursday. As suppose to my exam a little while ago i had this funniest experience ever! I slept at around two thirty in the afternoon hoping to get a quick nap to wave off my sleepiness (you should know that i did not slept at all). If i were to wake up by four o'clock, i would have reviewed a lot for my exam, but since i slept a long three and a half hours, i woke up seven o'clock in the evening, one hour late for my six o'clock exam. I arrived at the Engineering College quarter to seven, sneering for my oversleeping. Gladly, my instructor extended the exam till ten o'clock in the evening so i finished the exam for almost three hours. What a fine it is!

Anyway, I suggest that you read SENSES OF CINEMA. There is a new issue, Issue 51 available. Click that booty now!

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