In Our Time

Casablanca

2026-10-29

Recorded at the Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield, Misha Glenny and guests discuss Casablanca, one of the greatest films from Hollywood’s Golden Era.

The film stars Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman and features the unforgettable song As Time Goes By.

Casablanca opened in November 1942 when Europe had been at war for three years and the USA for one. It was among Hollywood’s first major films to explain to US audiences why the war was worth fighting, and alongside this became a huge box office hit.

It was created by a cast and crew full of emigres and refugees from lands under Nazi control. They produced a movie that has authenticity as well as astonishing emotional power that continues to this day.

With

Ian Christie

Emeritus Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck University of London

Pamela Hutchinson

Film historian and critic

Sheldon Hall

Emeritus Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.

Producers: Simon Tillotson & Sam Peach

Reading List:

Rudy Behlmer, Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986)

Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 (Columbia University Press, 2013)

David Gerstner and Janet Staiger (eds.), Authorship and Film (Routledge, 2003), especially 'The Auteur theory: Michael Curtiz and Casablanca' by Peter Wollen

Aljean Harmetz, The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II (Hyperion, 2002)

Noah Isenberg, We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend, and Afterlife of Hollywood`s Most Beloved Movie (Faber & Faber, 2020)

Colin McArthur, The Casablanca File (Half Brick Images, 1992)

Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (Pantheon Books, 1988)

David Thomson, Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie Studio (Yale University Press, 2017)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

A world-class seminar every week. Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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A world-class seminar, every week. In Our Time explores the ideas, people and discoveries that have shaped our world, spanning history, philosophy, religion, science, literature, art and culture. On Thursdays, hear brand-new episodes hosted by Misha Glenny and leading academics. On Mondays, discover Misha's Archive Picks: classic conversations from the In Our Time archive, originally presented by Melvyn Bragg. Recent episodes have featured topics as wide-ranging as the Roman Arena, Handel's Messiah, John Keats, On Liberty and the Mariana Trench, bringing expert insight to pivotal events, influential thinkers and remarkable discoveries. Throughout the archive, you can hear discussions on historical figures such as Marie Antoinette, Nefertiti, Mary Wollstonecraft, Karl Marx and Albert Einstein; explore great works of literature such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the poetry of John Donne; uncover the stories behind cultural masterpieces including Van Gogh's Sunflowers and Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel; or journey from Jupiter and the death of stars, to the theories of Plato and Aristotle. In Our Time celebrates the pursuit of knowledge and the enduring power of ideas.