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 on platforms that include radio, repertory houses, television, and video. By resituating the film in the dynamically changing industrial, technological, media, 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.
By:
Barbara Klinger
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780520296459
ISBN 10: 0520296451
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 15 November 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
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
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.
Reviews for Immortal Films: """Casablanca"" and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic"
"""A terrific new book."" * Critical Inquiry *"
