Arts & Events

During the extremely rainy weather in the Bay Area over the recent holidays, like many people I mostly stayed home. One of the ways I entertained myself was to take another look, perhaps for the umpteenth time, at the 1942 film Casablanca directed by Michael Curtiz and memorably starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. I have fond memories of viewing that film while in Cyprus with an Iranian friend who was a dissident of the theocratic regime of Iran’s Islamic Republic. My friend’s tales of the oppression enforced by Iran’s morality police dovetailed appropriately with the Nazis’ attempted oppression in the Unoccupied France of wartime Casablanca. 

Of course, a key moment in Casablanca occurs when freedom fighter Victor Laszlo, played to perfection by Paul Henreid, invites the band in Rick’s nightclub to play La Marseillaise, and the French patrons sing loudly in order to drown out the song Die Wacht am Rhein being sung by the German Nazi officers. This scene is indeed a stirring one, though I question whether it needed to end with a close-up on the tear-streaked face of Yvonne, played by Madeleine Lebeau, who shouts “Vive la France! Vive la démocratie!” 

Anyone who has watched Casablanca closely must be aware that the character of Yvonne is hardly beyond reproach. We first see her at the bar at Rick’s drinking brandy. She is rude to Sascha, the Russian bartender, who keeps telling her “I loff you.” Yvonne’s response is “Oh! Shut up!” When Rick approaches,Yvonne asks Rick “Where were you last night?” 

Rick replies “That’s so far in the past I don’t remember.” Yvonne then asks Rick “Will I see you tonight?” Rick replies “I never plan that far ahead.” To this Yvonne bemoans the fact that she should “fall for a guy” like Rick, suggesting that there has been something going on between Rick and Yvonne. Then Rick instructs Sascha not to serve any more brandy to Yvonne, telling her she’s already had too much to drink. Then Rick escorts Yvonne out of the nightclub and orders a cab to take her home, against her objections. And Rick orders Sascha to accompany Yvonne to make sure she gets home safely, though he adds, to Sascha’s chagrin, that Sascha should come right back to the nightclub. 

We next see Yvonne defiantly returning to Rick’s nightclub on the arm of a German Nazi officer. 

Seeing this, Rick observes that Yvonne seems to be “switching sides.” Tensions mount when a French officer standing at the bar where the Nazi officer brings Yvonne mutters “Sales Boches!” 

Overhearing this the Nazi picks a fight with the Frenchman. Rick intervenes and orders the Nazi to leave, which he does, leaving Yvonne behind. 

Thus far, what little we can say about Yvonne is that she seems to be throwing herself at Rick, perhaps against his wishes or at least against his better judgement, drinking too much, and then objecting to being sent home by Rick, only to return the next day on the arms of a German Nazi officer. Yvonne seems a very young, immature, almost ditzy woman, quite capricious in her behaviour and apparent lack of convictions. 

Going online after my reviewing of Casablanca, I was intrigued to discover an article entitled “In Casablanca, Madeleine Lebeau Became Forever the Face of French Resistance.” This article was written by Noah Isenberg and appeared in the journal Humanities, Winter 2017, Vol. 38, No. 1. Having done quite a bit of research about the French resistance, and having written a review of the remarkable documentary film on the French resistance Le Chagrin et la Pitié by Marcel Ophuls, (which appeared in my book Film and Revolution, Indiana University Press, 1975), I was truly confounded by the argument that Madeleine Lebeau’s portrayal of Yvonne in Casablanca somehow became forever the face of French resistance. This, it seemed to me, could only be the opinion of an American who gets his or her view of history from Hollywood movies, even if, like Casablanca, it is a rare good Hollywood movie. 

However, I was truly dumbfounded when, at the end of Isenberg’s article, he quoted Audrey Azulay, France’s Minister of Culture, asserting of Madeleine Lebeau’s portrayal of Yvonne in Casablanca, “She will forever be the face of the French resistance.”This is not only claptrap. It is plainly wrong and, moreover, is yet another attempt by the French government to distort and co-opt the true nature of the French resistance against the Nazis. As the documentary film Le Chagrin et la Pitié made abundantly clear, the French resistance was largely carried out by working-class members of the French Communist Party joining with simple peasants. Granted, there were a few intellectuals who provided inspiration and leadership, but the true core of the resistance was by left-wing communists, socialists, and anti-fascists. For anyone to argue, on the basis of a close-up of a tearful but patriotic Yvonne in Casablanca that Madeleine Lebeau became forever the face of French resistance is ideologically pernicious poppycock.