Cinema as Resistance

19.10.2025

Historical Context: A World at War

Released on November 26, 1942, Casablanca stands as one of cinema’s greatest achievements—not merely as a romantic melodrama, but as a sophisticated piece of wartime propaganda that captured the tumultuous spirit of World War II. Directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid, the film emerged at a critical moment in history, just as American forces were landing on the shores of North Africa and the United States was grappling with its role in a global conflict. ​ Casablanca unfolds in December 1941, in the Moroccan city of Casablanca under Vichy French control. Following France’s surrender to Nazi Germany in June 1940, the country was divided: northern and western regions fell under direct German occupation, while southern France became the collaborationist Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain. French Morocco aligned itself with Vichy, implementing anti-Jewish legislation and maintaining a precarious collaboration with Nazi Germany.

​The city of Casablanca became a crucial transit point for refugees desperately seeking to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. Thousands of displaced persons—predominantly Jews fleeing persecution—passed through this North African port, attempting to secure the elusive combination of exit visas, transit visas, and immigration permits that would allow passage to Lisbon and ultimately to freedom in the Americas. Many languished for months or years, trapped by bureaucratic obstacles and the constant threat of Nazi pursuit.

​Warner Bros. deliberately rushed the film’s premiere to coincide with Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa that began on November 8, 1942, and culminated in the capture of Casablanca on November 16. The nationwide release was then timed for January 23, 1943, to capitalize on the secret Casablanca Conference, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to coordinate Allied strategy. This strategic timing transformed Casablanca from entertainment into a powerful instrument of American war propaganda.

The Film as Anti-Isolationist Propaganda

Before the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, 93% of Americans opposed entering World War II. Warner Bros., the only Hollywood studio to openly position itself against Hitler and the Nazis, recognized that the film industry had a crucial role to play in shifting public opinion. Casablanca addresses American isolationism directly through the character of Rick Blaine, whose famous line—“I stick my neck out for nobody”—epitomizes the traditional American reluctance to engage in “Old World” conflicts.

Rick’s Café Américain functions as a deliberate allegory for America itself. The café is a melting pot where refugees of all nationalities gather, yet Rick maintains his studied neutrality, profiting from others’ desperation while refusing to take sides. His arc from cynical isolation to active resistance mirrors the transformation American policymakers hoped to inspire in their citizens. The film’s message is unambiguous: neutrality in the face of fascism is moral abdication, and individual sacrifice for the greater good is the only honorable choice.

​What lends Casablanca its extraordinary emotional power is that many of the actors were themselves refugees who had fled Nazi persecution. Of the 75 actors in the film, nearly all were immigrants, and of the 14 who received screen credit, 11 were foreign-born. This wasn’t acting—it was lived experience projected onto the screen.

Conrad Veidt, who played the menacing Major Strasser, was a prominent German actor who had fled Germany in 1933 with his Jewish wife. When required to complete a racial questionnaire, Veidt—though not Jewish himself—defiantly listed himself as a Jew and refused Nazi offers to divorce his wife and align with the regime. Helmut Dantine, who plays the young man at the roulette table, had been a teenage leader of the anti-Nazi youth movement in Vienna and was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp for three months after the Anschluss in 1938.

Madeleine Lebeau, who plays Yvonne, escaped occupied France via Lisbon with her husband Marcel Dalio—the same route taken by the fictional characters Ilsa and Victor Laszlo. During the filming of the La Marseillaise scene, actor Dan Seymour noticed that half the cast was weeping, suddenly realizing “they were all real refugees”. Lebeau’s tears in that iconic scene were genuine—a French refugee mourning her occupied homeland. ​

The La Marseillaise Scene

The dueling anthems scene is widely considered one of the greatest sequences in film history. It serves as the pivotal turning point where neutrality collapses and the battle lines are definitively drawn.

The scene begins with German officers—led by Major Strasser—gathered around Rick’s piano, loudly and triumphantly singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” (The Watch on the Rhine). This 19th-century German patriotic song, rooted in Franco-German enmity and particularly associated with German militarism during the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, functions as a deliberate provocation. The Germans sing with arrogance, their anthem representing the occupation and humiliation of France.

Victor Laszlo, the Czechoslovak resistance leader who has just been denied help by Rick, hears the singing and immediately recognizes it for what it is: a cruel assertion of German dominance over the refugees who have fled their terror. Without hesitation, Laszlo strides directly to the house band and demands they play “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem.

This is the moment when the film’s central question—will Rick join the fight?—receives its first answer. The band leader instinctively looks to Rick for permission, knowing that nothing happens in Rick’s café without his approval. Rick’s nod is a small gesture, but it carries enormous weight. It represents his first act of resistance, his first crack in the armor of cynical neutrality he has constructed since Ilsa left him in Paris. By allowing the anthem to be played, Rick chooses a side.

Within seconds of the band launching into “La Marseillaise,” the entire café—except the Germans—stands and joins the singing. The response is instantaneous, as if everyone had been waiting for this moment, for someone to give them permission to resist. The refugees were ready; they just needed a spark, and Victor Laszlo provided it.

The visual composition of the scene is masterful. Major Strasser attempts to rally his soldiers to sing louder, but their voices are quickly drowned out. The Germans represent institutional power but are overwhelmed by the passionate conviction of the dispossessed. The mise-en-scène emphasizes the isolation of the Nazi officers as the camera captures the sea of standing refugees, their voices rising in defiant unity.

The scene functions as a crucible that reveals the true nature of every major character.​

Yvonne, who earlier appeared with German soldiers to make Rick jealous, is transformed by the anthem. As the song builds, tears stream down her face, and upon its completion, she passionately shouts “Vive la France!”—a complete rejection of German occupation and a reclamation of her identity. Her transformation represents the larger trajectory of the French people: initial accommodation giving way to resistance.

​Ilsa watches her husband with an expression that evolves from dread to admiration to love. She knows Victor’s public defiance will put him in mortal danger—it’s the same reckless courage that landed him in a concentration camp before. But it’s also precisely why she fell in love with him. The scene wordlessly communicates the central conflict of the film: Ilsa loves Rick, but she admires and respects Victor’s unwavering commitment to the fight against fascism.

Victor Laszlo emerges as a true resistance leader. Paul Henreid’s performance radiates conviction and bravery; this is the one scene where Victor’s legendary status as a coordinator of the European resistance becomes tangible. His intensity as he leads the singing—the fierceness with which he repeats “Play it!”—shows why he is indispensable to the anti-Nazi movement.

The emotional power of “La Marseillaise” forces Major Strasser’s hand. The public display of defiance cannot be tolerated, and Strasser orders Captain Renault to find a pretext to shut down Rick’s café. The scene transforms the film from uneasy coexistence to open confrontation. From this point forward, the stakes escalate dramatically: refugees begin organizing, a curfew is imposed, and the atmosphere darkens. The anthem has reminded everyone why they’re fighting and what’s at stake.

​The choice of “La Marseillaise” is profoundly significant. Written in 1792 during the French Revolution, the anthem is a call to arms against tyranny. Its English translation captures its militant spirit: “Arise, children of the fatherland / The day of glory has arrived! / Before us lies tyranny / The bloody flag is raised! / To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! / Let’s march until the impure blood waters our fields!”.

​The anthem represents revolution, liberty, and resistance against oppression. Its deployment in Casablanca connects the struggle against Nazi fascism to the broader historical struggle for human freedom and dignity.

The Film’s Enduring Legacy

Casablanca premiered in New York just two weeks after Allied forces landed in North Africa, making headlines worldwide. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1943 and has remained in the cultural consciousness ever since, ranked #2 on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest films.

​The film was banned in Ireland in March 1943 for violating wartime neutrality by portraying “Vichy France and Nazi Germany in a sinister light”. More remarkably, Warner Bros. released a heavily edited version in West Germany in 1952 that removed all Nazis and most references to World War II. Victor Laszlo became a Norwegian atomic physicist named Victor Larsen, pursued by Interpol rather than the Gestapo. The La Marseillaise scene was completely excised. A German version with the original plot wasn’t released until 1975.

​Casablanca succeeded as propaganda precisely because it worked first as compelling cinema. The romance between Rick and Ilsa provides the emotional core, but the film’s deeper message—that personal happiness must sometimes be sacrificed for the greater good, that neutrality in the face of evil is complicity, and that love itself demands resistance—resonated powerfully with wartime audiences and continues to resonate today.

​The La Marseillaise scene remains the film’s beating heart, a moment when cinema transcended entertainment to become a rallying cry for freedom. As refugees stood and sang in Rick’s café, drowning out their oppressors with the sheer force of collective conviction, they embodied the spirit of resistance that would ultimately defeat fascism.