Page 342 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 31: Umberto Eco’s ‘Casablanca: Cult Movies and
Intertextual Collage’ (Deconstructing and
Disciplinarising Hollywood)

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
31.1 Introductory Note
31.2 Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage
31.3 Summary
31.4 Key-Words
31.5 Review Questions
31.6 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Understand Casablanca deconstructing.
• Discuss Casablanca as Cult Movies.
Introduction

Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey
Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney
Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn
between, in the words of one character, love and virtue. He must choose between his love for a
woman and helping her Czech Resistance leader husband escape from the Vichy-controlled
Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis.
Although it was an A-list film, with established stars and first-rate writers-Julius J. Epstein, Philip
G. Epstein and Howard Koch received credit for the screenplay-no one involved with its production
expected Casablanca to be anything out of the ordinary; it was just one of hundreds of pictures
produced by Hollywood every year. The film was a solid, if unspectacular, success in its initial
run, rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North
Africa a few weeks earlier. Despite a changing assortment of screenwriters frantically adapting an
unstaged play and barely keeping ahead of production, and Bogart attempting his first romantic
leading role, Casablanca won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Its characters,
dialogue, and music have become iconic, and the film has grown in popularity to the point that it
now consistently ranks near the top of lists of the greatest films of all time.

31.1 Introductory Note

Umberto Eco (b.1932) was born in Allesandra, Italy, and studied at the University of Turin. He has
taught at universities in Turin, Milan, Florence and Bologna, and is a frequent academic visitor to
the United States. In 1981, he achieved international fame with his novel. The Name of the Rose,
which was both a bestseller and a literary success. This has continued with Foucault’s Pendulum
(1988; trans 1989) and Baudolino (2000). Before that, he had established himself as an authority in
the fields of semiotics, cultural studies and literary theory, which such publications as A Theory of
Semiotics (1976) [first published in Italy 1975], The Role of the Reader: explorations in the semiotics

336 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY