In that sense, much movie music is certainly heard by its audience both as part of and apart from the film in which it appears.Īs noted by Jeff Smith (1998), popular music was for a long time thought to be unsuitable for underscoring the reason being its lack of dynamic change and its repetitive form that made it unable to adjust to the changing actions and events on screen. Additionally, a Peatman survey showed that Hollywood and Broadway together accounted for more than 80 percent of the most-performed songs in 1942" (Smith 1998: 31). ( \Casablanca\Trivia, august, 2002).Įven though the sound track album is a more recent invention of the combined music and film industry, the circulation of popular tunes between movies and theaters, and later records and radio, has its origin back in the early years of the 20th century: "Between 19, film songs were regularly found atop Variety's weekly roster of the twenty-five most-played songs. (It contains the rarely-sung introductory verse, not heard in the film.) Max Steiner, in a 1943 interview, admitted that the song "must have had something to attract so much attention." However, because of the coincidental musicians' union recording ban, the 1931 Rudy Vallee version became the smash hit. According to the song remained on the radio "Hit Parade" for 21 weeks - but not in the same version as in the film: It was sung by Dooley Wilson as the character Sam (and probably played by the pianist Elliot Carpenter). By way of the play Everybody Comes to Rick's (never to be produced on stage but nevertheless the basis for the movie that became Casablanca), the song ended up in Casablanca. It was written by Herman Hupfeld and first appeared on Broadway in 1931 in Everybody's Welcome. And all of this applies to Casablanca.Īs is the case for many other popular tunes used in Hollywood movies, As Time Goes By had an earlier life. Thus, a Hollywood composer will both compose new music and use and arrange already written tunes for specific narrative purposes. Furthermore, some well-known songs and melodies, like national anthems and "classical highlights," can be used together with recognizable pastiches of specific musical styles, to signal time, place or cultural identity (see Langkjær 1996). Otherwise, an already popular tune might provide melodic material to be combined with other motifs in the instrumental musical score and thus be part of the symphonic orchestral sound. As those popular tunes often appear as part of the fiction, they will be played in the manner of contemporary popular music and combine instrumental and vocal means of expression, including lyrics.
They can be popular tunes to be heard in scenes in restaurants, clubs, from a radio or the like. But even though every film in Hollywood has its musical composer, many a tune heard as the story unfolds has a previous life. Apart from Casablanca, he has done music for movies such as King Kong (1933), Gone with the Wind (1939), and The Big Sleep (1946). He is one of the most productive Hollywood composers, and has written scores for about 150 films. The name Max Steiner ought to be familiar to anyone who has ever glanced at the names written with big letters in the opening credits of films from the 1930s and 1940s. In the case of film music, Casablanca can be considered a case study in how popular music as film music can be highly foregrounded at a time when the pop score pure and simple was an option not even to be considered. The central use of popular music, including As Time Goes By, somehow matches this as the quotability of dialogue is complemented by a "hummability" or "singability" of the music. It has often been stated that almost any line spoken in Casablanca is quotable (Jørholt 1989). Dramatic conflicts of love and politics are given flavor by combining the style and mood of exotic settings with popular American tunes.
In its combining of several genres and archetypical situations, Casablanca has acquired an outstanding reputation as the quintessential Hollywood movie (Eco 1987). No.14 - CASABLANCA Casablanca and Popular Music as Film Music Casablanca and Popular Music as Film Music P.O.V.
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