Casablanca

 

Out of all of the inherent cognitive or perceptual faculties of the mind, memory is undoubtedly one of the most important. On an everyday level, memory allows us to recall dates, times, the names of people and places – or try to, in any case! On a deeper level, it allows us to indulge in the profound pleasures of nostalgia. It can be voluntary of involuntary, individual or shared, fragmented or crystal clear. But how have the mental impulses of memory traditionally been represented by directors? You guessed it: through imagery of the face. Often this cinematic technique is called a flashback.

Let us consider a film that contains what is often described as a pioneering use of the flashback: Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942), featuring Humphrey Bogart, as Rick Blaine. In one of the key scenes in the narrative, Rick is seen slumped over a table at a bar, flanked by empty bottles. Evidently distraught, he asks the piano player to ‘play what he wants to hear’. As a schmaltzy melody begins to seep into the sound-track, the camera edges closer and closer to the contours of Rick’s melancholic face, before the image eventually dissolves into another – The Arc de Triomphe, in Paris – set in an entirely different time and different place. From the present tense of the face, to the past tense of the mind: the scene proved revolutionary, and has been imitated by thousands of directors ever since.

Want to know more?

Watch the scene here

Read about flashbacks here.