For those of you who are aware that the French are a nation
of cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys, but like their wine; there is at least one
more thing to admire about them: their
national anthem. Today is the 220th
anniversary of “La Marseille”, the song that made the French Revolution (if you
like the French Revolution, I tend to take Edmund Burke’s view of it). It was written on this date in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, an engineer
and captain in the French Army. It was
originally titled Chant de guerre pour l'armée du Rhin ("War
Song for the Army of the Rhine"). Here’s
a romantic representation of de Lisle presenting his song.
The song was renamed “La
Marseille” by volunteers from Provencal, who used it as a rallying song as they
stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
Now here’s the irony……..de
Lisle was a royalist! As a reward for
providing the Revolution with its song, de Lisle was thrown into prison and
almost guillotined. Still, it’s a stirring
song, and has been prominent in the many French revolutions since the
1790s. It has also been utilized
effectively on stage and in film. In Abel
Gance’s 1927 masterpiece, Napoleon,
there is a moving sequence in which de Lisle and French revolutionary Danton
introduce the song to Paris revolutionaries.
Although wildly historically inaccurate, the scene itself is a
masterpiece of film-making.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip for it. But here’s one almost everybody knows, the dueling
song scene in Casablanca, with the stalwart Paul Henreid, the ever cool
Humphrey Bogart, the incandescently beautiful Ingrid Bergman and the
incomparable Claude Rains. A little
piece of trivia, the tall thin German with the moustache is Conrad Veidt, one
of the big stars of early German expressionistic film (he played Caesar the
Sleepwalker in the classic The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari.) When the Nazis came to
power, Veidt (who had a Jewish wife) was forced to flee Germany, and ironically ended up playing Nazis on the
screen. Enjoy!
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