It’s a song that resembles us. “La Marseillaise”, the international anthem

La Marseillaise is arguably the most famous French song in the world, not only because it is the national anthem of France, but also because of its appropriation by politics, sport and entertainment for more than two centuries.

In partnership with the exhibition It’s a song that resembles us – Worldwide hits of French-language popular music At the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, these chronicles look in detail at each of the stories presented there.

The Marseillaise is a war zone and easily becomes one again. All French people know that it was during the French Revolution, when the Austrian armies, enemies of the new regime, threatened to invade France, that Captain Claude Rouget of Lille wrote in one night this anthem intended to galvanize the Army of the Rhine, whose headquarters was in Strasbourg. And long after the call to defend the homeland in danger in 1792, the Marseillaise regained its ability to confront the adversary.

There, German army officers sang a patriotic anthem and The Marseillaise will shut them up. In the film Casablanca by Michael Curtis, “Play the Marseillaise!” says Victor Laszlo, a resistance fighter hunted by the Nazis, to Rick’s orchestra, the Casablanca nightclub in Morocco, where German and French officers, spies, businessmen, fugitives of all origins rub shoulders. Rick is Humphrey Bogart. Rick agrees to play the Marseillaise, to prevent the German soldiers from singing, even if he will have to suffer the consequences.

Casablancaa Hollywood film released a few weeks after the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, is a war film without combat, just a few gunshots in the night. But this scene is perhaps one of the peaks of symbolic violence, as if it were seeking the initial meaning of The Marseillaise.

In this episode of This song reminds me of usyou hear excerpts from:

The Warner Bros. Studio Chorus and Orchestra, The Marseillaise in the movie Casablanca by Michael Curtiz, 1942

Omo Bello with the Republican Guard Orchestra, The Black Marseillaise by Camille Naudin, 2019

Serge Gainsbourg on stage in Strasbourg, 1980

Serge Gainsbourg, To arms and so on, 1979

Speech by General de Gaulle and MarseillaiseMay 8, 1945

You can also extend this column with the book This song reminds me of us published by Heritage Publishing.

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