Journal Article

The Anthem is Mightier than the Sword. “La Marseillaise” Versus “Die Wacht Am Rhein”: A Cognitively-Couched Analysis of the Duel of the Anthems in M. Curtiz’s “Casablanca” (1942)

Grząśko, Agnieszka

2025

Overview

Music occupies a substantial role in the process of making a film and the choice of score is by no means accidental. Given its vast potential to convey emotions, it may be analysed not only from the musicological point of view. A battle of the anthems scene (German soldiers singing “Die Wacht am Rhein” versus French refugees drowning them out with “La Marseillaise” at Rick’s café) from Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca” (1942) serves as the empirical material in the linguistic analysis made from a multimodal-cum-cognitive perspective. In this article we adopt the six-space model of conceptual integration developed by Brandt and Brandt in 2005 in order to show that a number of various elements, such as the situational context in which the meaning is coined, take part in the process of understanding the message. Specifically, as far as the battle of the anthems scene is concerned, the following mental spaces are involved in the process of meaning construction: semiotic space, presentation space, reference space, virtual space, relevance space and meaning space.

• Publisher: Sciendo,De Gruyter Brill Sp. z o.o., Paradigm Publishing Services
• Subject: anthem / Casablanca / conceptual blending / six-space model of conceptual integration