Cynical Cinema

The Battle of Algiers is available in a glorious three-disc collection from the Criterion Collection.  I borrowed it from the public library here in Ottawa, so I know it is available there for free.  I highly recommend paying nothing for the opportunity to be blown away by this wonderful classic film about the Algerian reistance to French colonialism.  It was the recipient of the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, among many other international awards, and it stands up as one of the finest foreign films of all time.  It has a fantastic score by Ennio Morricone (most famous for the music from The Good The Bad and the Ugly), put director Gillo Pontecorvo on the map, and is a highly political film that is amazingly balanced in it’s portrayal of the struggle and the conflict that took place over two years in Algiers.  Although Pontecorvo is clearly more on the side of the Algerians in the film, he manages to convey both sides of the story, and understand the opinions and reactions of both the French and the Algerians.

First, a little history.  In 1945, the French had suffered horrible atrocities at the hands of the Germans in World War II.  But the day that Germany surrendered and the armistice was signed, the French marched on Algeria with orders to shoot and kill anyone they saw waving an Algerian flag.  On May 8th, 1945, the French carried out what has been called the “Setif massacre”, where they murdered more than 6,000 Algerians.  Algeria, at that time, was still considered to be a part of France, and when the war with Germany ended the French wanted desperately to remind the Algerians of this fact.  Over the next ten years, the French practiced colonial repression throughout Algeria, and the seeds of the Algerian war of Independance were sown.  In 1954, a terrorist group calling themselves the FLN, or Front de Liberation Nationale, began hostilities toward the French, attacking many targets, both military and civilian.  And that is where The Battle of Algiers begins.

The film opens with the French torturing a man, and subsequently hunting down Algerian rebels and executing them in prison.  This is the end of the first phase of the revolution, and the movie quickly backtracks in time to the beginning.  The revolutionaries were Islamic, and based their actions on muslim ideals in the war against colonialism.  Drugs, drink, and prostitution are forbidden.  There is a scene where a bunch of kids, influenced by these ideals, attack and beat a wino who is staggering through the city of Algiers.  Pontecorvo doesn’t shy away from the unpleasant side of things.  He certainly doesn’t sympathize with an ideal that causes kids to beat up a defenseless man.  And he is willing to show the devastation caused on both sides when it comes to acts of terrorism.  While we understand the feelings and the desperation that led the FLN to plant bombs, we also see the devastation caused by those bombs.  One particularly intense sequence comes about when a woman (ostensibly Djamila Bouhired, although she is never named) has just planted a bomb in a milk bar, and looks around at the faces of everyone in the bar.  We are allowed to see the people there, we can feel that they are harmless people who are about to die, and we can decide for ourselves - is it worth it?

In the end, there are no characters with whom the movie expects us to sympathize or identify.  We see the actions take place, we see the results of those actions.  We see the French police bombing buildings full of civilians in Algiers, and the FLN bombing racetracks and bars full of civilians.  Neither side is terribly sympathetic, but the events represented are terrifically accurate.  This IS what really happened.  Right down to the detail.  After the French police bomb a building and kill innocent Arabs in Algiers, a mob descends on the city square, intent on attacking the police with sticks and bottles and whatever they can get their hands on, perhaps an action that would have ignited a civil war.  But the members of the FLN stop them.  They turn the mob back saying, don’t take this into your own hands.  Let us deal with it.  Let us avenge you.  This really happened, this is totally accurate, and avenge them they did.  The whole tone of the movie is amazingly realistic.  There is one real actor in the film, he plays the French military commander charged with breaking up the terrorist ring.  Every other major figure in The Battle of Algiers is played by a non-actor.

All this gives the movie a sense of hyper-realism, as though you are watching a documentary rather than a drama.  The Battle of Algiers was one of the first films to do this well, blurring the edges between documentary and docudrama and political drama.  It means, also, that we don’t become invested in any of the characters specifically.  So we don’t really care, on an emotional level, what happens to them, and we are more affected by the atrocities perpetrated by both sides.  The bombings happen in real places - the same places they did in the actual war.  They are carried out the same way they were in 1955, by hot women and women with kids who wouldn’t be stopped by the French police at the roadblocks and barriers. 

 The Battle of Algiers is still an amazingly relevant movie today, especially in the light of the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the American war on muslim terror.  The French military captain, addressing his troops in the film says:  “there are 400,000 Arabs in Algiers.  We know they are not our enemies.  It’s a small minority group that holds sway through terrorism.”  Some good advice.  But of course, not all the French get that message, and later on in the movie we see a young, innocent Arabic boy being beaten by some French people in the wake of another terrorist bombing.  Another prescient line, this time delivered by a leader of the FLN:  “Acts of violence and terrorism don’t win wars.  You can start that way, but at some point the people have to do something.”  The idea being that  only when the people as a whole are completely behind something like independance, and completely committed to the cause, can such a thing be achieved - diplomacy is always more effective than terrorism.  The Algerian people show this unity through an 8-day strike, where they shut down the business of the entire country in order to show solidarity while the French-Algerian question is being debated in the UN.  The French, of course, attack the striking workers, because now the whole country is an enemy - they are all on strike, they must all be FLN.  And despite this crackdown, despite the international community rallying, to some degree (including such thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre in France) on the side of the Algerians, the UN, (as they are wont to do), decides that doing nothing is the best course of action.

Eventually, the terrorism subsided, and was wiped out.  But the Algerian people still remembered, and in 1960, two years after the end of the FLN, the people took to the streets, demonstrating and waving Algerian flags for the first time since the massacre in 1945, and eventually achieved their independance in 1962.  The Battle of Algiers is an incredible document representing that time, with some fantastic footage and a ground-breaking style.  The riot and battle scenes are confused, intense, and terrifically realistic.  The crowd scenes and the bomb explosions look more like something you would see on the news than movie-crowds and movie-bombs.  And throughout, it remains incredibly impartial, given the subject matter and the pro-Algerian feelings Pontecorvo must have had.  His only real point of view in the movie is the right of all people to freedom, especially freedom in your own home country.

There are some amazing special features, as well, on this three-disc Criterion Collection set.  “Gillo Pontecorvo:  The Dictatorship of Truth”, is a 1992 documentary examining the director’s youth and politics and how those informed his filmmaking.  “Marxist Poetry:  The Making of the Battle of Algiers” is a documentary produced by Criterion in 2004, detailing the development, the production and the politically-charged release of the film.  “Five Directors” features Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing), Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), Oliver Stone (Platoon), Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) sit together and discuss the importance, the influence and the style of The Battle of Algiers.  “Remembering History” is a documentary that uses the film as a point of reference for the Algerian experience during this time.  “Etats D’Armes” is a half-hour excerpt from Patrick Rotman’s 2002 documentary “L’Ennemi Intime”, and focuses on the tragedies of the French-Algerian war.  “The Battle of Algiers:  A Case Study” features an ABC News investigative reporter, and two former national co-ordinators of counter-terrorism, about the contemporary political relevance of The Battle of Algiers.  And “Return to Algiers” is a short film where Pontecorvo himself returns to Algiers with his son in 1993 to document the changes in the political, social and economic situation in the country.

This three-disc edition of The Battle of Algiers is available, free, to borrow from the Ottawa Public Library.  I recommend doing so!