Page 336 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes sense of a chronotope). We could distinguish between stereotyped intertextual frames (for instance,
the Drunkard Redeemed by Love) and stereotyped iconographical units (for instance, the Evil
Nazi). But since even these iconographical units, when they appear in a movie, if they do not
directly elicit an action, at least suggest its possible development, we can use the notion of
intertextual frame to cover both. We are interested, moreover, in finding out those frames which
not only are recognizable by the audience as belonging to a sort of ancestral intertex-tual tradition,
but which also display a particular fascination. "A suspect who escapes a pass control and is shot
by the police" is undoubtedly an intertextual frame, but it does not have a "magic" flavor. Let us
take intuitively the idea of "magic" frame. Let us define as "magic" those frames which, when
appear-ing in a movie, and when then separated from the whole, transform this movie into a cult
movie. In Casablancaw e can find more intertextual frames than "magic" intertextual frames. Let
us call these latter intertextualar chetypes. The term "archetype" here does not pretend to have any
particularp sycho-analytic or mythic connotation, but serves only to indicate a pre-established and
frequently re-appearing narrative situation that is cited or in some way recycled by innumerable
other texts, and provokes in the addressee a sort of intense emotion accompanied by the vague
feeling of a dejavu that everybody yearns to see again. I would not say that an intertextual
archetype is neces-sarily "universal." It can belong to a rather recent textual tradition, as it happens
with certain "topoi" of slapstick comedy. It is sufficient to consider it as a topos or standard
situation that comes to be particularly appealing to a given cultural area or historical period.
30.2.2 The Making of "Casablanca"

"Can I tell you a story?" asks Ilse. Then she adds: "I don't know the ending yet.") Rick says: "Go on.
Tell it. Maybe one'll come to you as you go along." Rick's line is a sort of epitome of Casablancait
self. According to Ingrid Bergman, it seems that the film was being made at the same time as it
was being shot. Until the last moment not even Michael Curtiz knew whether Ilse would leave
with Rick or with Victor, and it is plausible that Ingrid Bergman appears so fascinatingly mysterious
because she did not know which man she should look at more tenderly. This explains why, in the
story, she in fact does not choose her fate, but rather is chosen. When you do not know how to deal
with a story, you put in it stereotyped situations because you know that they, at least, have
already worked elsewhere. Take a marginal but revealing example. Each time Laszlo orders
something to drink (and it happens four times) he changes his choice: (i) cointreau, (ii) cocktail,
(iii) cognac, and (iv) whiskey (once he drinks champagne but does not ask for it). Why such
confusing and confused drinking habits in a man endowed with an ascetic temper? There is no
psychological reason for that. My guess is simply that each time Curtiz was quoting, unconsciously,
similar situations in other movies and trying to provide a reasonably complete sampling. Thus
one is tempted to read Casablancaas T. S. Eliot read Hamlet, attributing its fascination not to the
fact that it was a successful work (actually he considered it one of Shakespeare's less fortunate
efforts), but to the imperfection of its composition. He viewed Hamlet as the result of an unsuccessful
fusion of several earlier versions of the story, so that the puzzling ambiguity of the main character
was due to the author's difficulty in putting together different topics. So both critics and public
find Hamlet beautiful because it is interesting, believing it is interesting because it is beautiful. On
a smaller scale the same thing happened to Casablanca. Forced to improvise a plot, the authors
whipped up a little of everything, and everything they put in came from a repertoire that had
stood the test of time. When only a few stock formulas are used, the result is simply kitsch. But
when the reper-toire of formulas is used wholesale, then the result is an architecture like Gaudi's
Holy Family Church-the same vertigo, the same stroke of genius.
30.3.3 Stop By Stop
Every story plays upon one or more archetypes. Usually, to make a good story a single archetype
is enough. But Casablancais not satisfied with that: it uses them all. It would be nice to identify our
archetypes scene by scene and shot by shot, stopping the tape at every relevant step. Every time
I have scanned Casablanca with very cooperative research groups, the whole business has taken
many hours. Besides, when a team starts this kind of game, the chances of stopping the videotape
grow proportionally according to the size of the audience. Each member of the team sees something

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