La Marseillaise - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Music

• Django Reinhardt used the theme in "Échos de France"
• The Beatles used the song as an introduction to "All You Need Is Love"
• The anarcho-punk band Crass used the main theme and other extracts in both unaltered form and variations in their song "Bloody Revolutions".
• Thunderclap Newman incorporated the song into their 1969 single "Something in the Air".
• Neil Hannon used the primary melody for The Divine Comedy's 1996 single "Frog Princess"
• Jimi Hendrix during an 1967 Paris concert, played a psychedelic version of the anthem. A video recording of the concert was immediately confiscated by the French government due to the perceived insult to national heritage.
• Frank Sinatra, as part of French Foreign Legion
• In 1978, Serge Gainsbourg recorded a reggae version, "Aux armes et cætera", with Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar and Rita Marley in the choir in Jamaica, which resulted in him being threatened by members of an association of former paratroopers, who wanted to prevent him from singing it in a public concert.
• The Slovenian industrial/techno music group Laibach’s album Volk features a version, with Laibach’s own lyrics. The album Volk (album) is entirely composed of songs which are based on various national anthems.
• Allan Sherman, You Went the Wrong Way, Old King Louie begins with a parody of the Marseillaise before heading into a recitative and then settling into a parody of You’ve Come a long Way from St. Louis. His version begins, “Louis the Sixteenth was the king of France in 1789 / He was worse than Louis the Fifteenth, he was worse than Louis the Fourteenth, he was worse than Louis the Thirteenth/He was the worst, since Louis the First!”)
• There are various versions of the music. Sheet music can be found at marseillaise.org. An official version from the website of the French President can be found at the wayback machine's archive here: Wave File (660 KB).
• The German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten use a piece of the Beatles' introduction to All You Need Is Love in their song Headcleaner I on the album Tabula Rasa which also contains lyrical references to the earlier mentioned Beatles song.
• The Finnish Cello Metal band Apocalyptica incorporated the song into their live performance of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" in Paris, 31 October 2010.
• Hong Kong singer Hacken Lee integrated the anthem as an opening to his World Cup 1998 theme song "The Strange Encounters of a Soccer Fan."

Opera and theatre

• "La Marseillaise" is quoted in Rossini's 1813 opera, L'italiana in Algeri during the choral introduction to Isabella's 2nd act aria "Pensa alla patria." This quotation, as well as the patriotic subject matter of the aria, caused the aria to be heavily censored in pre-unification 19th century Italy.
• The song's theme was used by Jacques Offenbach in his Opera "Orpheus in the Underworld" to illustrate a revolution amongst the Olympic gods and goddesses with the lines "Aux armes Dieux et Demi-Dieux".
• The song occurs in the Monty Python's Broadway musical Spamalot when confronted by French knights in the song "Run Away!"
• The song was also sung by Mireille Mathieu

Films and television

• "La Marseillaise" was famously used in Casablanca at the behest of Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) to drown out a group of German soldiers singing "Die Wacht am Rhein".
• "La Marseillaise" was used in the film, Escape to Victory, also known as Victory.
• In the autobiographical movie La Vie en Rose, chronicling the life of Edith Piaf, ten-year-old Edith is urged by her acrobat father to "do something" in the middle of a lackluster show and she amazes the audience with an emotional rendition of "La Marseillaise".
• The introductory theme in the film Carry on Abroad includes the first few seconds of "La Marsellaise", despite the fact the film is set in Spain.
• The tune is used for the Anthem of Springfield in The Simpsons Movie. It is played behind the end credits with the words "Springfield doesn't have an anthem, We thought we had one, but we don't ... The tune we stole from the French..." It was supposed to be played when the bomb has just came but it was cut.
• The song is featured in the Monty Python sketches, "A Man with a Tape Recorder up His Nose" and "A Man with a Tape Recorder up His Brother's Nose"
• The British comedy series 'Allo 'Allo! spoofed Casablanca by having the patriotic French characters start singing "La Marseillaise", only to switch to Deutschlandlied when Nazi officers enter their cafe.
• In the cartoon I Am Weasel, when the character I.R. Baboon tries to make a transatlantic bridge from the United States to France, he mistakenly builds it to Mexico. When he reaches the end, he sings a song with a similar tune.
• In the Mr. Otis Regrets episode of Cheers, after Sam lies about a tryst with Robin Colcord's French mistress enough to make Rebecca insecure enough to get Sam to teach her, he says he's going to "invade France!" in turn Cliff, Norm, Frasier, and the rest of the bar line up, humming "La Marseillaise", as he marches in front of them then into Rebecca's office.
• In the Irish comedy Father Ted, Father Jack Hackett stands up and puts his hand on his heart any time that he hears it played.
• In Two and a Half Men, Alan clucks (like a chicken) in the tune of La Marseillaise, after Charlie flees from an ex-lover's husband. Charlie insultingly called Alan 'French' when he called fighting pointless.

Sports

• The Brisbane Lions Australian rules football (AFL) team theme song "The Pride of Brisbane Town" is sung to the music of "La Marseillaise". This song was adapted from the Fitzroy Lions song, also sung to the same music, used since the 1950s.
• An English language "rugby song" version exists, as known in France among rugby fans.
• Pro wrestler Dino Bravo used it as his entrance theme in the WWE.
• It is used in the Punch-Out series, as the French boxer Glass Joe's intro music

Literature

• At the end of Guy de Maupassant's novella Boule de Suif, which is set against the backdrop of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the character Cornudet whistles and sings "La Marsellaise" for hours during a long carriage ride in order to torment his fellow passengers, who have revealed themselves to be cowards and hypocrites, unworthy of the high ideals expressed in the anthem.
• It is also featured in Isaac Asimov's short science fiction story Battle-hymn about how the national anthem is used as a subliminal advertising ploy.
• In the Robert A. Heinlein novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, "La Marseillaise" is one of several revolutionary songs (others including "Internationale", "Yankee Doodle", "We Shall Overcome", and "Pie in the Sky") rewritten and published by the character Simon Jester in an attempt to inspire patriotism in Lunar colonists.

Other

• The carillon of the town hall in the Bavarian town of Cham plays "La Marseillaise" every day at 12.05 pm to commemorate the French Marshal Nicolas Luckner, who was born there.
• Short after the composition of the original song, the Greek revolutionary Rigas Feraios, composed the Greek version of La Marseillaise (Sons of Greeks, Arise!), that became the hymn of war against Ottoman rule and kind of Greek national anthem during the Greek War of Independence (1821–1830).
• The 19th-century Labour movement used a "Worker Marseillaise" (written 1864 by Jakob Audorf) that was later replaced by The Internationale. It was famously sung on the way to the gallows by those sentenced to death after the Haymarket Riot.
• In the game Populous, when a map is played on the Française landscape it opens with the first ten or so seconds of La Marseillaise.
• On the Belgian national holiday former Prime Minister Yves Leterme, a native speaker of Dutch, when asked by a Walloon journalist if he knew his national anthem in French, without giving it a moment of thought fluently sang the first line of the Marseillaise instead of the "Brabançonne". His televised confounding was seen as funny in Flanders, but reactions by Walloon media and politicians required Leterme to make a public apology.
• In the Nintendo series Punch-Out!!, the song is used as the theme of Glass Joe.