Casablanca and the Use of Mise-en-Scene in the Construction of Propaganda

Hollywood History

The classic Hollywood movie Casablanca opens the standard cinematic progression that has marked hundreds of thousands of other movies; establishing the universal before irising in on the intimate. Casablanca initiates with a sequence of establishing shots that mean to convey necessary information about a time place to its audience in as timely a fashion as possible. But this introductory sequence at the beginning of Casablanca is also intent on doing far more; it serves the very vital purpose of the underlying propagandistic elements of this seemingly traditional romantic drama by effortlessly constructing an ideological line in the sand between the good and the dark shadows of evil that populate this foreign land.

The alien environment of the actual city of Casablanca was one that few American moviegoers still in grips of the effects of the Great Depression would be highly unfamiliar with, while at the same time instantly recognizing the emotional anxiety of these people suffering against forces over which they had no control. The beginning of Casablanca swiftly assigns a feeling of chaos and utter disorder to the lives of those in the city that, while foreign could also generate empathy.

Casablanca wastes no time in tracking from the impersonal to the intensely personal in its pursuit of good old-fashioned propaganda in support of its stance against the folly of isolationism in the face of aggressive evil. The Moroccan city is painted as a key point on the map in the process of escape by Europeans from the Nazis to America. The lighting is done so as to highlight the shadows of this city where good and evil intermingle and intertwine to create an unyielding atmosphere of moral ambiguity.