Apparently, my age as a filmmaker is starting to show.  Not too long ago I was showing a group of younger people (high schoolers) a few things on filmmaking.  They had a strong interest in it (had made several short films anyway) and were planning on attending a film school.  However, they found me out through a friend of theirs and asked for advice on certain things, from a professional's standpoint.

Pictured from left: Sydney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, Ingrid Bergman

The use of shadows intently cast over bodies and faces is a recurring theme in the film CASABLANCA (1942). We see them almost every time Ilsa (Bergman, right) and Lazlo (Henreid, center) are in a scene, portraying their physical trappings inside the city of Vichy controlled Casablanca in French Morocco. In this particular shot, the shadows featured most prominently, perhaps at their most obvious use in the movie, are the cross bars sprawled over the bodies of Ilsa and Lazlo, again indicating imprisonment, literally and, on a deeper level, emotional turmoil. The cross pattern also makes me think of the Christian cross, bringing to mind the symbol of the French Resistance, perhaps implying a higher power looking over them. Perhaps.

Girls in pink and boys in blue - quite a lovely image

Note: The second entry in my “Observations on a Shot” series for TMP covered this shot from 2009′s UP. You can read the full article by clicking here.

Up was one of my favorite pictures from 2009, so when the chance to write about the film presented itself, I naturally jumped at the opportunity. I chose the above shot (or more accurately, if strictly sticking to proper film term use, the capture or re-rendering – more on that in a bit.) for a couple of particular reasons. One, it was readily available on the net as a frame still; so no hardcore searching for a high quality resolution was needed. There’s nothing more frustrating (other than trying to convince an adult that Justin Bieber is in fact a teenage boy and not a lesbian) than picking a shot from memory and not being able to find or create a good enough reproduction.