The “Marseillaise” scene from “Casablanca” is brilliant on so many levels.
I watched a youtube of a singer performing the song with English subtitles.
It's a call to arms.
The most brilliant part of that scene was that it was designed to lead Americans to believe the French were on our side (as did the “Sahara” movie released the same year). The movie was released a couple of months after French troops had killed Americans landing in French North Africa.
At least in “Kelly’s Heroes” (released 25 years after the war ended) when Carroll O’Connor’s character is mobbed by French civilians and an aide tells him they think he’s de Gaulle, he points out the French aren’t even in the war...
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/in-casablanca-madeleine-lebeau-became-forever-the-face-french-resistance
I love that scene. Lebeau and her husband Marcel the roulette dealer weren’t the only singers who had escaped the Nazis. That to me makes it such a real and passionate scene.
I also love the fact that they wanted to use the Horst Wessel song for the Germans but didn’t because it was copyrighted and they were worried that lawyers would come after them.