Immortal Films

Casablanca is one of the most celebrated Hollywood films of all time, its iconic romance enshrined in collective memory across generations. Drawing from archival materials, industry trade journals, and cultural commentary, Barbara Klinger explores the history of Casablanca's circulation in the United States from the early 1940s to the present by examining its exhibition via radio, repertory houses, television, and video. By resituating the film in the dynamically changing industrial, technological, and cultural circumstances that have defined its journey over eight decades, Klinger challenges our understanding of its meaning and reputation as both a Hollywood classic and a cult film. Through this single-film survey, Immortal Films proposes a new approach to the study of film history and aesthetics and, more broadly, to cinema itself as a medium in constant interface with other media as a necessary condition of its own public existence and endurance.

Barbara Klinger is Provost Professor Emerita in the Media School at Indiana University. She is the author of Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk and Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home.

Contents

List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Cultural Biography of a Film

1 • Listening to Casablanca: Radio Adaptations and Sonic Hollywood
2 • Back in Theaters: Postwar Repertory Houses and Cult Cinema
3 • Everyday Films: Broadcast Television, Reruns, and Canonizing Old Hollywood
4 • Movie Valentines: Holiday Cult and the Romantic Canon in VHS Video Culture
5 • Happy Anniversaries: Classic Cinema on DVD/Blu-ray in the Conglomerate Age
Epilogue: Streaming Casablanca and Afterthoughts

Appendix 1: Casablanca’s First Appearances on US Platforms/Formats
Appendix 2: Casablanca’s Physical-Format Video Rereleases
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index