CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (9)
By:
February 1, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
CASABLANCA
When Casablanca opens, Casablanca is officially neutral but more like purgatory — French-run but Nazi-aligned. Actually, it may be hell. At Rick’s Café Américain, owned by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), the Nazis move freely, the Vichy police enforce their will, and the stateless try desperately to leave. Major Strasser — the high-ranking Luftwaffe officer played by Conrad Veidt — has arrived to track down Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), the famous Czech resistance leader who’s escaped from a concentration camp and is now trying to flee to Lisbon (and then America). German officers drinking in the café hang around partly to keep an eye on Laszlo, partly because Rick’s is the place to be — a watering hole where refugees, gamblers, and spies rub shoulders.
Halfway through the movie, those officers start singing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” an anthem pledging to defend the Fatherland’s honor — the sound of nationalism puffed up into proto-fascism. This is Laszlo’s cue. He strides to the bandstand, orders “La Marseillaise,” and Rick nods. The band begins to play.
“La Marseillaise” was written in 1792 by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle and sung by volunteer soldiers marching from Marseille to Paris during the French Revolution. It was the sound of defiance against kings and tyrants. “La Marseillaise” was so powerful, Napoleon banned it only a decade after it became the national anthem. The ban was lifted in 1879 — 63 years before Casablanca’s writers used it to overpower fascism again.
And for those on set, it wasn’t just a scene. Producer Hal Wallis, composer Max Steiner, and writers Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch were Jewish, and many of the extras were refugees from occupied Europe, paid a few dollars a day to relive what they’d just escaped. Veidt had been one of Germany’s biggest stars until he fled after refusing to divorce his Jewish wife. In Hollywood he played Nazis as an act of vengeance.
When the band strikes up “Allons enfants de la patrie / Le jour de gloire est arrivé!” the café rises to its feet. You can see tears in the extras’ eyes. The Nazis are drowned out. Laszlo’s wife, Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) sits at a table as he stands, unbroken, calling the band to bravery. Laszlo had been imprisoned for years, yet he commands the room. Just after Rick told him he’d slept with his wife.
Most of Casablanca is about star-crossed Rick and Ilsa, but in that moment Ilsa falls in love with her husband — maybe for the first time, and possibly only for that moment. She’s so guilt-ridden she can’t look up, then gazes at him with the same reverence she gave to her role as Joan of Arc. So do we.
“La Marseillaise” becomes a love song at the end, as its trumpets serenade Rick and Vichy Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) into the great unknown, Victor and Ilsa’s plane disappearing into the fog. Casablanca was released in 1942 while the war was still raging, its outcome uncertain. Audiences were waiting for a happy ending. They got a real-life cliffhanger.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (Mad Jenny) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on TBD | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIA | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!