Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo.
Starring Brahim Hagiag and Jean Martin.
Starring Brahim Hagiag and Jean Martin.
In a Nutshell: A recreation of the revolutionary battle within the Algerian War.
In 1954, native Algerians began to strike back against French colonists through urban guerilla warfare. French counter insurgency assassinated or captured the leaders of the National Liberation Front (FLN), sometimes acquiring crucial information through torture. While this culminated in a victory for the French in the city of Algiers, the countrywide uprising would help the French lose the Algerian War. Now we come to Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, a frank account of the struggle on both sides of the opposition. Pontecorvo idealizes the FLN, but the French are allowed sympathy, portrayed as dutiful men tasked with an invisible threat. Still a starkly political film, it renders its ideas without sensation thanks to its unvarnished documentary-style of filmmaking.
In 1954, native Algerians began to strike back against French colonists through urban guerilla warfare. French counter insurgency assassinated or captured the leaders of the National Liberation Front (FLN), sometimes acquiring crucial information through torture. While this culminated in a victory for the French in the city of Algiers, the countrywide uprising would help the French lose the Algerian War. Now we come to Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, a frank account of the struggle on both sides of the opposition. Pontecorvo idealizes the FLN, but the French are allowed sympathy, portrayed as dutiful men tasked with an invisible threat. Still a starkly political film, it renders its ideas without sensation thanks to its unvarnished documentary-style of filmmaking.
The film does not weigh on the struggles on any one person, but does obtain the perspectives of two peripheral characters. One is Ali la Pointe (Braham Haggiag) a petty criminal who rides the revolution wave to become one of the FLN’s most prominent figures. The second is fictional French commander Mathieu (Jean Martin) who accepts his job with taciturn resourcefulness. Ali contrasts with his callow and radical ways, ready to give plenty of malevolence to the French. Both have the necessary pathos to extend to their troops waging their own horror. Pontecorvo’s impartiality leads to extremities in Algerians’ depiction. Close-ups of innocent café patrons are shown seconds before an Algerian woman’s bomb blows them up. However, when the French detonate a terrorist’s house, the soundtrack mourns the bodies being pulled from the wreckage.
With its use of actual Algerian streets and untrained cast members, Pontecorvo is plainly looking for aesthetic realism to support its political honesty. It works, even partisan viewers can value the film’s deconstruction of the French’s strategic errors. Since its release it has been screened before military experts (including a publicized 2003 Pentagon screening) to question the efficiency of brute force and torture. Alternatively, revolutionary parties have used the film as a blueprint. Either appropriation circles back to its historical honesty, offering new answers for the next generation at war.
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