Home  •  About  •  Contact  •  Twitter  •  Google+  •  Facebook  •  Tumblr  •  Youtube  •  RSS Feed
The Battle Of Algiers

The Battle Of Algiers

By Ben Cook • February 10th, 2013
Static Mass Rating: 5/5
BATTLE OF ALGIERS (MOVIE)
Rizzoli, Rialto Pictures

Original release: September 8th, 1966
Running time: 120 minutes

Country of origin: Italy, Algeria
Original language: French, Italian, English, Arabic

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Writers: Gillo Pontecorvo, Franco Solinas

Cast: Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef, Tommaso Neri

The Battle Of Algiers

Recently there’s been a lament for the lack of truly political musicians, those who release music that reflects and confronts the politics and causes of modernity. I don’t entirely agree that there’s a lack of these musicians; sure, at the superstar level there is, but in the lower echelons I don’t think it’s a lack of individuals that’s the problem, more the universal fragmentation of media and thought, and simultaneously (and somewhat paradoxically) the homogenising effects of globalisation, that creates a million causes and ideologies but labels and groups them as such to make them all appear the same. It’s a disorientating and tiring thing, and many find it best to ignore it or even better pretend it doesn’t actually exist. How could a singer possibly be heard over this, running the gauntlet on a tiny label or self-releasing, playing a diminishing number of venues that haven’t been consumed by Live Nation or O2, competing with a million more on Facebook or MySpace….no wonder they can’t be heard.

Film is a much louder medium; political films are made, even in Hollywood, but still the noise doesn’t abate. Films about recent political stories or conflicts are rattled off with disturbing immediacy, concerned it seems more with the money making power of being fresh in the public’s mind rather than the measured contemplative effects of reflection and perspective. Remember it took American filmmakers 3 years after the conflict to make any major statement about Vietnam (and no I’m not including Green Berets in this), now we get Zero Dark Thirty two years after the event (from a script rewritten after Osama’s death), a slew of Afghan movies while we can skip channels and watch it in real time and a Wikileaks film while Julian Assange is still washing his socks in the Ecuadorian Embassy’s sink.

The Battle Of Algiers

We’re inundated with the political and those professing to be political, propaganda, blockbuster documentaries, military product placement, conflict fetishism, west is best, left is best, right is right, pity the poor people, snake oil blending seamlessly into the commercial break.

So they are there, in whatever form you wish to attribute to them, but the noise is so much that we don’t, or choose not to notice them. We don’t notice the political because for all the shouting we’re not exactly sure what it is anymore, where does the truth lie when there is so much pushing and pulling?

We are now such cynical creatures (and much of the time justifiably so) that we see agendas rather than clear-headed attempts at portraying the truth. So take for example Gillo Pontecorvo, communist, resistance leader in Fascist Italy, idol of Third World cinema and orbiter of social circles that included Stravinsky, Sartre and Picasso. What would we expect if he took on say La Violencia and FARC or Xanana Gusmão and José Ramos-Horta? Propaganda for the left maybe? A rose-tinted view of Marxist politics?

Well in 1966 took Saadi Yacef’s account of Algeria’s National Liberation Front’s (FLN) struggles against the French, Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger and made The Battle Of AlgiersBattle Of Algiers, and after juggling through title changes, differing protagonists and Paul Newman, he produced a film that had the wisdom to realise when either side is favoured the truth is brought into question.

It’s hard for modern audiences to know how to react to film so balanced, so stubbornly un-judgmental and although its famed style could easily have it mistaken for a newsreel (if not for Morricone’s predictably excellent score) this objective fashion also gives Battle Of Algiers a sense of fable, a warning from history, a caution spread out either way from one of dozens of colonial wars rewritten and rethought, from wars that consume continents to grudges that destroy families. How we repeat mistakes, how we’re doomed to become what we oppose, how violence breeds violence and tragedy more tragedy.

The French deny independence to the Algerians, they retaliate with the assassination of officials, the French turn the Kasbah into a ghetto and terrorise its inhabitants, the FLN bomb restaurants and bars, killing both French and Algerian in a truly chilling sequence, the French bomb back killing children and mothers which precedes a scene of hysteria and mayhem that could’ve been Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo, Pakistan or The Battle Of Algierstragically modern day Algeria; the Algerians riot, the French torture and so on and so on. Patterns emerge that could be applied on varying scales to all conflicts past and present. It’s boring to say there are no winners, but Battle of Algiers at least rescues this remark from sound-bite status and reveals to us why this is.

It’s also telling that the film doesn’t conclude with Algeria’s independence in 1962, but concerns itself with events in the capital between 1954 and 1957. As Battle Of Algiers doesn’t have a conclusion as such, it prophetically illustrates that violence on this scale very rarely has a conclusion, the repercussions and traumas resonate throughout cultural and personnel memory. The vacuum left by colonialism leaves space for warlords and fundamentalism. revolutions lead to power struggles, which in turn lead to tactics learned from the oppressors used on the newly oppressed in the name of a nation once demanded by a now tyrannized people, who now cry for help and welcome the former conquerors back in the name of whatever buzzword so fits the time, who in time tighten their grip on the country, unable to leave due to resources or land or pride, winning battle after battle but blindingly losing the war, radicalising the people who rise up against the colonisers and as they have the greatest weapon of all, time, drive them out, leaving a vacuum to be filled by……..

There are thousands of good films, there are many great ones, but there are very few important ones.

The Battle Of Algiers

Ben Cook

Ben Cook

Ben has been in love with cinema from a young age having been introduced to the classic cinema of Capra and Hitchcock by his father and the ‘other’ classic cinema of Carpenter and Cronenberg by Alex Cox late night on Channel 4.

In 2009 with formal training that equated to watching Mean Streets a lot, he co-founded Anti/Type Films. Since then he has written, produced and directed more than a dozen short films and documentaries, as well as writing and performing several scores. It means he gets to travel, which he likes.

He has his own site www.antitypefilms.co.uk and you can follow him on Twitter @AntiTypeFilms.

© 2022 STATIC MASS EMPORIUM . All Rights Reserved. Powered by METATEMPUS | creative.timeless.personal.   |   DISCLAIMER, TERMS & CONDITIONS

HOME | ABOUT | CONTACT | TWITTER | GOOGLE+ | FACEBOOK | TUMBLR | YOUTUBE | RSS FEED

CINEMA REVIEWS | BLU-RAY & DVD | THE EMPORIUM | DOCUMENTARIES | WORLD CINEMA | CULT MOVIES | INDIAN CINEMA | EARLY CINEMA

MOVIE CLASSICS | DECONSTRUCTING CINEMA | SOUNDTRACKS | INTERVIEWS | THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR | JAPANESE CINEMA