The Battle of Algiers
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Written by Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas
With Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin & Saadi Yacef
Now showing at tMelbourne's Lumiere and Sydney's Valhalla and Chauvel cinemas.
REVIEWED BY VANNESSA HEARMAN
The Battle of Algiers is a cinematic classic originally released in 1965 to accolades, except in France, where it was banned for five years for its no-holds-barred depiction of French colonialism. The film won 11 international awards, including the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1965.
In August last year, the Pentagon held a screening in an attempt to understand what went wrong in France's strategy. A flyer advertising the Pentagon screening proclaimed: "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"
The version released in Australia in June is a new print and features new subtitling. An Algerian-Italian collaboration, the film seeks to document episodes from a revolutionary war to achieve national liberation. It shows that no amount of violence and torture by colonial powers can stem the tide of history.
The Algerian war of independence lasted for eight years, from 1954 when National Front for Liberation (FLN) guerrillas began to launch attacks throughout Algeria against military and police bases, warehouses and communications facilities, until the Evian Accords, which heralded the end of French colonialism. The FLN estimates that 300,000 Algerians died during the war.
The film covers the period when the FLN decided to expand its activities into the urban areas and to call for a general strike in 1956. The strike was highly successful, but the Arab population also paid dearly for it.
The character of Ali Kader Jaffar, an FLN leader, was based on Saadi Yacef, one of the film's producers, who was imprisoned for five years by the French. Following his release in 1962, he sought out a progressive director who would tell the story of the battle of Algiers. He met Pontecorvo, a communist Italian director, who in turn collaborated with Franco Solinas, a Marxist novelist and screenwriter, to bring the story to the big screen.
Jean Martin, who plays Colonel Mathieu, is the only professional actor in the film. Originally a stage actor in France, he was blacklisted as a result of signing a statement against the French occupation of Algeria.
Pontecorvo's approach is not to hero-worship the main protagonists, but to show the struggle of human beings in a historical context. The film is well worth watching.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 18, 2004.
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