July 10th: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐚
As we approach Bastille Day (July 14) commemorating the liberation of the Bastille prison and the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, let us recall for this week's Friday Music one of the greatest scenes from the great film Casablanca, when Victor Laslo, the leader of the resistance movement who has escaped a Nazi concentration camp in Czechslovakia, overcomes the Nazi Major Strasser's effort to force domination-of-consciousness upon the patrons talking and drinking at Rick's Cafe. Strasser has just stood up with his Nazi officers, commandeered the piano, and started to lead a singing of the patriotic German anthem "Die Wacht am Rheim." The moment Laslo hears them and realizes what they are doing, he walks over to Rick's musicians and tells them to "play the Marseillaise, play it," which they do with Laslo conducting once Rick gives the nod (finally revealing his own hidden politics). At first one by one, and then all at once in a great ricochet of resistance, the community rises up to their feet and begins singing the French anthem, reaching a high point with the words "Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos battailons!". And why is the scene so moving? Because it shows exactly how a liberatory resistance movement emerges in a group, via a ricochet of authenticity and courage, against an authoritarian effort to blanket that same group into silent deference.