Page 340 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes nourished authors working for a culture of instinctive semioticians. With Casablancath ings go
differently. So Casablancaex plains Raiders, but Raidersd oes not explain Casablanca. At most it
can explain the new ways in which Casablancaw ill be received in the next years. A day will come,
and it will be a sad one, in which an overly smart, over-sophisticated audience will read Casablanca,
as conceived by Michael Curtiz, after having read Calvino and Communications 4. That will be
sad, but it will happen. Only in the course of this symposium have we been able to discover, for
the last time, the Truth. Apres nous, le delug.
Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) The films casaslanca was made on a very ............... .
(a) small budget (b) big budget
(c) medium (d) None of these
(ii) Casablanca have genres of ............... .
(a) the adventure movie (b) patriotic movie
(c) gangster movie (d) All of these
(iii) In this film two stars Humphrey Bogard and ............... have perfect chemistm.
(a) Ingrid Bergman (b) Bogey
(c) Dejavn (d) None of these

30.3 Summary
• Umberto Eco (1987) provides an interesting discussion of inter-textuality in his chapter
‘Casablanca: Cult movies and intertextual collage’. Eco points out that the film Casablanca
was made on a very small budget and in a very short time. As a result its creators were
forced to improvise the plot, mixing a little of everything they knew worked in a movie as
they went. The result is what Eco describes as an ‘intertextual collage’. For Eco, Casablanca
has been so successful because it is not, in fact, an instance of a single kind of film genre but
a mixing of stereotyped situations that are drawn from a number of different kinds of film
genres. As the film proceeds, he argues, we recognize the film genres that they recall. We
also recognize the pleasures we have experienced when we have watched these kinds of
films.
• A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult
following with a specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame
outside small fanbases; however, there are exceptions that have managed to gain fame among
mainstream audiences. Many cult movies have gone on to transcend their original cult status
and have become recognized as classics.
• Cult films are often known to be eccentric, often do not follow traditional standards of
mainstream cinema and usually explore topics not considered in any way mainstream-yet
there are examples that are relatively normal. Many are often considered controversial because
they step outside standard narrative and technical conventions.
• A cult film is a movie that attracts a devoted group of followers or obsessive fans, often
despite having failed commercially on its initial release. The term also describes films that
have remained popular over a long period of time amongst a small group of followers.
Although they may only have a short cinema life, cult films often enjoy ongoing popularity
through long runs on video, thus being issued in video "runs" with more copies than other
movies. The movie Office Space (1999), which lost money during its box office run, managed
to turn significant profits when word-of-mouth made it a popular video rental and purchase.

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