PART I: Principles of Composition, Mixing, and Editing

• Narrative cueing
  • Referential/Narrative
    • Where and how is music used to establish elements of time, place, and characterization? [Give three to four examples.]
    • Where and how is music used to establish point of view; where is it used to help create or emphasize a particular character's subjectivity?
  • Connotative
    • Where is music used to set mood? How might conventions of orchestration and melody come into play in these scenes?
    • Are there instances of "mickey-mousing"? Does Steiner use the "stinger" in Casablanca?
• Continuity
  • Where is music used to provide formal and rhythmic continuity in Casablanca? [Be prepared to cite the two instances you deem to be the most striking.]
  • How do musical themes and motifs come into play in these instances?
• Emotion
  • In which scenes is music used to represent emotion? [List at least two.] Which emotions are represented by the music?
  • Recalling Gorbman's categories, do any of the scenes in the film use music to create an "epic feeling"? If so, which ones?

PART II: Themes

• Themes and motifs
  • list four or five of the most important themes in Casablanca
  • which ones are also motifs?
  • identify the diegetic elements with which the themes you have identified as motifs are associated; in other words, why do you call them motifs?
  • what are some of the minor themes?
• Identify those places where the musical themes and motifs are presented diegetically.
  • Where are they presented nondiegetically?
  • Are the borders between them ever problematized or made ambiguous? Where? Why?
• Scene: Ilsa'a first entrance (26:25)
  • With whom do we first associate the ATGB theme?
  • What is Ilsa's relationship to the theme?
  • How does Rick respond to the theme? What does this tell us about his relationship to the theme?
  • What happens to the theme throughout the rest of this scene?
• Scene: Rick's flashback and Ilsa's return to the café (37:00)
  • What important theme recurs here?
  • Again, what is Rick's relationship to it; that is, what are its major emotional associations for him?
  • What happens to the theme, and what is its function as a purely cinematic code?
  • After the transition to the flashback, when do we get to hear the theme again?
  • There is a rupture in the ATGB theme; where does it occur? What might it signify?
  • What allows it to pick up where it left off and continue?
  • When do we hear it next? Is there a disjunction between the music we hear and the pictures we see?
  • When do we next hear the theme? What other theme enters? What is its significance?
  • When do we next hear the ATGB theme? Again, what is its formal function?
  • What new theme enters in this scene? Who or what does it represent?
  • What other theme reappears in this scene? What is its emotional import to the scene; i.e., what is Rick implying about Ilsa and how does the music give us a clue as to how Ilsa feels about the possibility of explaining things to Rick? With what image was it first associated?
  • On the surface, what would be the cultural connotations of a theme like ATGB; what do you expect it to normally signify or represent? But so far, what emotional situations has this theme accompanied?
• Scene: the hotel room of Laszlo and Ilsa followed by the scene in Rick's apartment the night Ilsa comes to ask for the exit visas.
  • What are the important themes?
  • Does the music establish a character's subjectivity in the first scene? If so, whose? How do themes come into play?
  • What happens to ATGB in the following scene?
  • Again, does the music establish a character's subjectivity? If so, whose and how?
• Scene--the airport
  • What is one of the main cinematic functions of the rapid succession of themes in this scene?

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