As it is, as it was: The Battle of Algiers
As it is, as it was: The Battle of Algiers
By: Jasmine Toorchen
Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers demonstrates mastery of show-not-tell while it recreates events from the Algerian War against the French government. The movie’s genre is consistent with Italian neorealism, filming on location of the actual events and using undiscovered actors. You cannot watch the film without feeling like you are experiencing the conflict, and thus the reality of it. The movie possesses an intensity that’s (ironically) not found in many highly dramatized films today.
The film combines civilian life with war, and not a single demographic group–not children, or woman, or the elderly–is unrepresented in the movement. Relentless drums pound while Algerian women travel through the streets of the casbah into the European quarter, marching to war in skirts, protected and hidden by their femininity. Guns pass from basket to hand and back to basket in markets as the violence of the state is returned to it by civilians. Ben M’hidi puts it best in the film when speaking to a group of reporters who question the morality of the revolution’s tactics: “Doesn’t it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages … of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers and you can have our baskets.”
Beyond the matters of colonization, the film speaks more subtly to issues of Arab identity post-colonization. When the French government sends Colonel Mathieu in to manhandle the issue, he poses a question to his troops and the media: “Should we remain in Algeria?” A question that is relevant for all imperialist states, the country being the only thing that changes amongst them. Mathieu, his tone dripping in self-assurance, responds to himself, “If you answer ‘yes,’ then you must accept all the necessary consequences.” One of these consequences that the film reveals is an inability for the Algerian people to truly return to who they were before French colonization.
While France may end up physically leaving the country, traces of their presence are left behind. This is most notable in the film through the use of language. Listen carefully to when each language is used. Our protagonists know their how to address their audience. The Front de Libération Nationale or FLN uses French to communicate with its members–trying to reach the greatest number of people. Furthermore, even the protagonist’s name, Ali la Pointe, is marked by the French occupation. His name, like Algeria, is mixed with French influence.
Finally, although the film garners sympathy for the FLN’s cause, it must be noted that Pontecorvo’s directing does not labor extensively on their behalf. The objective directing does not try to justify or vilify actions taken by either side–an aspect of the movie that renders it so realistic. The French people are not without humanization. Fixed camera scenes of French life in Algeria point out their normalcy. They don’t even appear to be an enemy until Colonel Mathieu and the army speak for them, and even then the aversion to Colonel Mathieu relies on the audiences empathy rather than forced emotion from the directing. For instance, the scenes of torture are gruesome, yes. Yet, are they gruesome because Pontecorvo has emphasized their violence or because it is nature of the act? Conversely, the FLN has not been “cleaned up” to be the hero of this story. Following an announcement from the FLN, the children harass a drunken man in the casbah, causing him to fall down the stairs. Later, an innocent man, against his choice, took the blame for the death of a policeman.
All in all, the film’s authenticity retains a truth and power that film directed with a slant towards either side may not have.