Watched Casablanca last night

[intaglio]

The Marseillaise scene still gets me

The words
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé ! (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes !

Refrain

Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ? (bis)
Français ! pour nous, ah ! quel outrage !
Quels transports il doit exciter !
C'est nous qu'on ose méditer
De rendre à l'antique esclavage !

Quoi ! ces cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !
Quoi ! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers ! (bis)
Grand Dieu ! par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploiraient !
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées !

Tremblez, tyrans ! et vous, perfides,
L'opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez ! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leur prix ! (bis)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La France en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre !

Français, en guerriers magnanimes,
Portez ou retenez vos coups !
Épargnez ces tristes victimes,
A regret s'armant contre nous. (bis)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais ces complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,
Déchirent le sein de leur mère !

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Amour sacré de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs !
Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs ! (bis)
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents !
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !

Refrain

Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos aînés n'y seront plus ;
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus. (bis)
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre !

[Sherman A1]

1. Superb film

I must try to watch it again very soon.

[GTurck]

2. My favorite movie....

of all time and it was released the month I was born. As I remember a long ago translation of "La Marseilles" it is quite bloody and violent. The French were clearly fed up with inequality and un-earned privileges.

[brooklynboy49]

7. My co-favorite

My favorite movies are Casablanca and The Apartment. I can't choose one over the other, I've flip-flopped between 'em for years, have finally decided it's a draw (for me). I have watched both countless times, and I ain't thru yet

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

3. Madeleine LeBeau (Yvonne in the film) who cried as she sang La Marseillaise

is the only cast member still alive. She will be 91 years old on June 10th. She was married to the croupier in Casablanca ("your winnings" said to Claude Rains when he said he was shocked that gambling was taking place), the big, big French star Marcel Dalio (star of two Jean Renoir films, Rules Of The Game and The Grand Illusion). Dalio and his wife LeBeau fled France when the Nazis invaded. Dalio was Jewish, was a marked man, and was the star of The Grand Illusion,a film banned by Hitler because of its message of understanding between French and Germans and its message of friendship between Jew and non-Jew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_LeBeau

"...Early life

LeBeau married actor Marcel Dalio in 1939 (his second marriage). They had met while performing a play together. In 1939 she appeared in her first movie, the melodrama Jeunes filles en détresse (Girls in Distress).

In June 1940, LeBeau and the Jewish Dalio fled Paris ahead of the invading German army and reached Lisbon. They are presumed to have received transit visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes, allowing them to enter Spain and journey on to Portugal. It took them two months to obtain visas to Chile. However, when their ship, the S.S. Quanza, stopped in Mexico, they were stranded (along with around 200 other passengers) when the Chilean visas they had purchased turned out to be forgeries. Eventually, they were able to get temporary Canadian passports and entered the United States.

Lebeau made her Hollywood debut in Hold Back the Dawn (1941) which featured Olivia de Havilland in a leading role. The following year, she was in the Errol Flynn movie Gentleman Jim, a biography of famed Irish-American boxer James J. Corbett.
Casablanca

Later that year she received the role of Yvonne, Rick’s jilted mistress, in Casablanca. The Warner Brothers studios signed her to a $100-a-week contract for twenty-six weeks to be in a number of films. On June 22, while she was filming her scenes in Casablanca, her husband, Marcel Dalio, who played Emil the croupier in the film, filed for divorce in Los Angeles on the grounds of desertion. Shortly before the release of the movie, Warner Brothers terminated her contract. Since the death of Joy Page in April 2008, LeBeau has been the last surviving credited cast member of Casablanca. ..."

[El Supremo]

4. Pretty good acting and singing for an 18 year old. n/m

[Enthusiast]

5. I agree.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. In her case, it probably wasn't all an acting job

She lived those feelings she expressed in singing La Marseillaise. In a way, the lives of Lebeau and her husband Dalio in fleeing France and struggling to get exit visas mirrored the struggle of some of the refugees who gathered at Rick's.

Incidentally, my mother who is French had a similar thing happen to her. She was a young girl living in Marseille during the occupation. She decided to join a group of people who went to the prefecture (city hall) to sing La Marseillaise with German soldiers standing all around. She said she was so scared she could barely produce a sound from her young throat.

[rocktivity]

6. They hired Jesseye Norman to sing it for their bicentennial

Buzzkill alert: A shot of Poppy and Barb Bush.

rocktivity

[thucythucy]

9. I have a Casablanca related question that has been driving me nuts

and I have no idea where to go with this, so I thought I'd try another Casablanca fan on DU.

In the scene with Peter Lorre, where Lorre first shows Rick the famous letters of transit, I distinctly hear him say, "Signed by General Weygand. Can't be rescinded..." Yet every written version of this, including closed captioning for Deaf people, has it "signed by General DeGaulle..." which makes no sense at all.

Why would Vichy officials, not to mention German Gestapo, be obliged to honor anything signed by the leader of the French resistance? Whereas, Weygand was the Vichy leader of French Northwest Africa, which would give him, if anyone, authority to sign such a letter.

Am I hallucinating? Is it really "De Gaulle" and if so, how does this possibly make sense in the context of the film?

[intaglio]

10. Subtitling error

Weygand was the de facto ruler of the French North African colonies until the American Operation Torch
Check this bit of Wiki the man seems to have been a complete piece of work.

[thucythucy]

11. That's what I thought.

But I've even seen transcripts, what are supposed to be copies of the screenplay, with this mistake.

Basically, I think the transcriptionists just filled in the blank with the name of the only French general they knew.

Given how politically involved the writers and actors were (Lorre was himself an ex-pat, anti-Nazi to the core, and as informed as anyone about contemporary European politics) I can't imagine they'd have made a mistake like that. Have you seen the PBS documentary on the making of "Casablanca"? It describes how almost all of the supporting cast, or at any rate very many of them, were refugees and ex-pats, some of them Jewish, all of them anti-Nazi. They represented the cream of European film making, who had to flee Germany, France, and elsewhere when the Nazis took over, ending up in Hollywood. That, I think, is one of the reasons why "Casablanca" is such an incredible film--even the bit players were top notch, A rank actors--not the mention the incredible script.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Seeing it as "De Gaulle" in so many places, I was beginning to doubt the evidence of my own ears.

Best wishes.