Comparison between Casablanca(1942) and Lust,caution(2007)

Casablanca (1942)

Directed by	Michael Curtiz
Produced by	Hal B. Wallis
Screenplay by	Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein Howard Koch Casey Robinson(uncredited)
Based on	Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett Joan Alison
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Ingrid Bergman Paul Henreid
Music by	Max Steiner
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson
Editing by	Owen Marks
Studio	Warner Bros.
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release dates	November 26, 1942(premiere) January 23, 1943(general release)
Running time	102 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$878,000[2]
Box office	$3.7 million (initial US release)

Lust, caution (2007)

Directed by	Ang Lee
Produced by	Ang Lee William Kong James Schamus
Screenplay by	Hui-Ling Wang James Schamus
Based on	Lust, Caution by Eileen Chang
Starring	Tony Leung Chiu-Wai Tang Wei Joan Chen Leehom Wang
Music by	Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography	Rodrigo Prieto
Editing by	Tim Squyres
Studio	River Road Entertainment Haishang Films Sil-Metropole Organisation
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	August 30, 2007 (Venice) September 24, 2007(Taiwan) September 26, 2007(Hong Kong) September 28, 2007(United States) November 1, 2007 (China)
Running time	158 minutes[1]
Country	United States China Taiwan
Language	Mandarin Shanghainese Cantonese Japanese English Hindi
Budget	$15 million[2]
Box office	$67,091,915[2]

Story and narrative

• they both based on a wartime conflict background,

• they both include love and sacrifice

Casablanca

During World War II, Casablanca, Morocco is a waiting point for throngs of desperate refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. Exit visas, which are necessary to leave the country, are at a premium. Rick obtained the letters (that will allow two people to leave Casablanca for Portugal and freedom) from the wheedling little black-marketeer Ugarte. The sudden reappearance of Ilsa reopens all of his old wounds, and breaks his carefully cultivated veneer of neutrality and indifference. Under the shadow of the German occupation, he arranged their escape, and believes she abandoned him, left him waiting in the rain at a train station with their tickets to freedom. When he hears her story, he realizes she has always loved him. But now she is with Laszlo.  He must choose between his love for the woman and helping her Czech Resistance leader husband escape the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis. Finally, he contrives a situation in which Ilsa and Laszlo escape together.

• The story of political and romantic espionage is set against the background of the wartime conflict between democracy and totalitarianism.

• love triangle

• sacrifice love for a higher purpose

• Hollywood fairy-tale 

Lust, caution

The story is mostly set in Hong Kong in 1938 and in Shanghai in 1942, when it was occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army and ruled by the puppet government led by Wang Jingwei. It depicts a group of Chinese university students from the Lingnan University who plot to assassinate a high-ranking special agent and recruiter of the puppet government using an attractive young woman to lure him into a trap.

Wong Chia Chi is chosen to play this role,  the young and beautiful wife of a Hong Kong based trading company tycoon. She is to engage in an affair with Mr. Yee, and then lure him into an isolated area where the other students will kill him. however, she becomes embroiled in an inhuman emotional conflict as she emotionally bound to Mr. Yee and yet must kill him. Mr. Yee buys Chia Chi an expensive and extremely rare six carat pink diamond ring. Since he and Chia Chi enter the jewelry shop alone, the Chinese resistance foresee a chance to assassinate Mr. Yee. But when she sees the ring, she truly believes Mr. Yee's love for her, and tells him to flee. Mr. Yee runs out of the shop, escaping the assassination attempt. By the end of the day the resistance group including Chia Chi herself are captured. Mr. Yee signs their death warrants and the resistance group members, including Chia Chi, are shot and executed in the end. 

• the heroine sacrificed her virginity, which was necessary for her to play a married woman convincingly.

• the heroine falls in love with the villain

• In the end, the heroine are killed by the villain 

Theme

they both include love, sacrifice, conflict

Casablanca

• Love, 

• nobility,  

• conflict (wartime), 

• sacrifice (love for a higher purpose), 

• choice (between"love and virtue")

• Success (Laszlo finally escapes Casablanca with Rick’s help and Ugarte’s Letters of Transit, taking the woman he loves with him.)

• self-sacrificing ideology

Lust, caution

• sacrifice (virginity),

• patriotism,

• trust and betrayal (Chia Chi trusted her lover and saved him, but he betrayed and killed her)

• love (love is a commodity like a ring, something that's easily interchangeable and perishable.)

• sex (Chia Chi falls in love with the enemy because of their sexual relationship)

Main characters

Casablanca 

• a hero who is a white man with righteous and moral characteristic (Rick Blaine, the hard-drinking American running a nightclub in Casablanca when Morocco was a crossroads for spies, traitors, Nazis and the French Resistance. He helps the woman he loves and her husband escape, putting himself at risk.)

• a woman who falls in love with the hero, (Ilsa, the woman Rick loved years earlier in Paris. When they were escaping, didn't show up at the station. )

• the woman's husband, obscure of their love (Victor Laszlo, Czech Resistance leader,  fighting against the Nazis, enthusiastic, courageous, and outspoken.)

• none of the major characters is bad. Some are cynical, some lie, some kill, but all are redeemed

Lust, caution

• a young heroine, who also is a novice spy (Wong Chia Chi, a young student who falls in with a group of radical Chinese patriots and takes a key role in their hope of assassinating Mr. Yee. Her aim is to become Mr. Yee's lover and lure him into a trap. She becomes emotionally involved with her enemy)

• a villain, (Mr. Yee, a security police chief of the"puppet"regime )

Content

Casablanca

• NO nudity, sex scene, bad character,

• They escaped finally

Lust, caution

• full frontal nudity, 

• sex scene,

• ending: the bad lives, the good dies

Conventions

they both contain

• Continuity editing,

• obeying the 180 degree and 30 degree rules, 

• the use of flashbacks

Others

Music

The beautiful song "As Time Goes By" is the motif in Casablanca, however, in Lust, caution, there is no such a motif, but only diegetic sound in most of the time.