If you want to better understand our recent military follies in the Middle East, you could do worse than see The Battle of Algiers. It is at heart a procedural that details the inception of the FLN, a resistance organization dedicated to the ouster of the French colonialists in Algiers. It follows its rise to the status of threat to the occupiers, and its subsequent destruction by slow, methodical police work. It is wholly engrossing and terribly relevant to our present situation. As I watched, I caught constant echoes of the present reality of the United States as occupying a Muslim land.
It opens on a scene of torture: a FLN member has been interrogated, has given up the hideout of the organization’s top leaders, and is preparing to lead the French to where they are. As he does, he is forced to don the garb of a French soldier, and though it isn’t particularly subtle, it is effective. Tears stream down the man’s face as he exchanges his Arab dentity for that of the hated French.
The rest of the film is in flash-back from that opening scene, as the FLN gains a foothold among the Muslim population of Algiers. Along the way, we see the FLN’s attempts to stamp out whoring and drinking in the Casbah, enforcing a rigid form of Islam more amenable to control. We see the French fencing off the Casbah, searching suspicious locals as they go out into the city for their jobs. We see the tactics of the freedom-fighters evolve, and the French counter-measures change to meet them.
At first, the French — under orders from Paris — respond by stepping up security around the city. This doesn’t sit well with a police captain (Ugo PalettI), who sneaks into the Casbah one night and plants an enormous bomb. The FLN retaliates with three bombs, shown in a particularly tense sequence where three Muslim women are “Westernized” so they can get through security and plant the devices.
This theme of identity is carried throughout the film; the indigenous population looks different than the ruling Europeans. The locals who are successful are those who have given up their cultural identities and become like the dominant society. The torture of the informer only ends when he dons French garb; the women can only be successful at their task by donning European drag; the Arab professionals in the city must become like their conquerors to succeed.
The police captain’s gambit of increasing the conflict works, and Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) and his paratroopers are called in to end the revolution. As he is marching into town, the narrator describes his particulars: Frenchman born in Bordeaux, veteran of the French defeat in Indochine, and leader in the French resistance during World War II. It is this last identity that suits him for the present job; it is of course a major source of irony, as he is now cast in the role he once fought against.
Jean Martin as Col. Mathieu
But it is Mathieu’s identity as a French citizen, his allegiance to his home country, that drives his dismantling of the FLN, and we see him go about it with cold-blooded precision. And along the way, we get a primer in resistance movement organization and the tactics used to defeat them. These include interrogation tactics that Mathieu admits go against French and local law, but that he justifies as the only way to take down the FLN. It is particularly chilling to hear him say blandly to the press that the word “torture” is never used in the interrogation orders. It reminds me of similar statements by the Bush administration, as if just by saying we don’t torture magically makes it true.
It’s all there: the dislike by the army of “policing,” and their poor performance at the job; the attempt by both sides to control the press, and thus public opinion; the house-to-house, hide-and-seek warfare. All captured in gritty black-and-white cinematography by director Gillo Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti. They shot in the streets of the Casbah itself, in the very locations where it all took place. The resulting film sets the standard for the verite reproduction of urban conflict. It is clear that both Fernando Meirelles and Paul Greengrass, for example, have seen The Battle of Algiers. Thankfully, though Algiers has a hand-held look, it doesn’t approach the queasy-making shaky cam of The Bourne Ultimatum.
The acting is fine by a cast of made up primarily of local non-professionals; an exception is stage star Martin, who is coldly efficient as Mathieu, and yet not unsympathetic. He is a man doing his job, and doing it well. There is a chilly logic to everything he does; it all makes sense in the light of the French colonial world view.
The Battle of Algiers was commissioned by the Algerian government, and based on Souvenirs de la Bataille d’Alger, a memoir by FLN leader Saadi Yacef. In fact, Yacef co-produced the film with Pontecorvo, and even starred as a character based his own experiences in the battle. Together with Pontecorvo, he helped make The Battle of Algiers the stunningly realistic film that it is.
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This is a brilliant film, so seamlessly blending life on the streets with characters in the movie that it’s hard to believe at times that it is not a documentary. And it is, to put it mildy, virtually impossible not to see parallels when watching the film between what was happening then and what is happening now. When I excerpted the water torture scene for Frames of Reference I was taken aback once again by what I was watching and couldn’t help watching it all over again. For me at least, it leaves a knot in the stomach, something even the best war movies rarely do.
An anonymous comment on the Criterion page for this movie says, “As NPR reported in the early phases of the Iraq war last year, the US military studied this film, as suggested by Rand Corporation and other ITs and think tanks, as part of the preperation for fighting an urban warfare in a medina al-Bali. What NPR failed to mention was how the French fought this battle: torture, including washboarding.”
Your deja vu all over again feeling was not misplaced.
This is a great, great film.
Jonathan: I was shocked at how relevant this was, and like you the water torture scene really hit home. After I wrote the piece, I looked at a review by Bosley Crowther when it first opened in the states. He had a hard time believing that it wasn’t a documentary as well.
Marilyn, it is indeed a fabulous film.
I ran into a couple of articles that opined that the film was evenhanded, ecause it intercut between the French bombing and torture and the FLN’s bombing and attacks. After watching the film, I can’t believe anybody would think that — Pontecorvo definitely favors the FLN. No wonder with Yacef as a source and co-producer.
Well that didn’t take much convincing – I need to see this ASAP.
It’s a lot more obvious, but I caught the echoes you speak of while seeing The Fog of War again last year.
Daniel – I’m glad you were convinced to see it . . . and I saw the same in the Fog of War when I saw it recently. It seems that some things stay the same, no matter who the powers-that-be are. I was particularly reminded, though I didn’t write about it in the piece, that things are cyclical — the oppressors (in this case, the French) can be the oppressed, and they often don’t see that their policies are exactly like those of those they fought against. In our country, though we aren’t officially a colonial power, our economic colonialism, carried out through our corporations and backed by the military, amounts to the same thing.
This is truly one of the GREATEST films in the history of the cinema, and one I have admired and have been in awe of for many years. I was fortunately enough to see this at the Film Forum in a restored print a few years ago, but I had seen the film and was going for visual enhancement. Once again, both Rick Olson and Coosa Creek Cinema have done the world a great service by highlighting a film that stands alone in it’s genre, As you rightly state, it’s a “procedural” and a pertinent remainder of what is going on today. Of course the film literally puts you in the very places where these abominable events occur. The realism is staggering, and as you say the hand-held camera did not make you dizzy as recent films like “Bourne” have. ALGIERS is a frightening, omnipotent and uncompromised film that endlessly disturbs and mesmerizes. It is rightly proclaimed as a masterpiece of world cinema and that superlative multi-disc Criterion package WAS and REMAINS a godsend.
Your work continues to impress greatly.
Oh, and Daniel, your deep passion and knowledge of documentary filmmaking, would, methinks, insure that you will be overwhelmed by the experience of seeing this film. I honestly think you would be numbed for days after seeing it. It’s that kind of an enveloping experience. It’s viseral. It’s disturbing. It’s impact is immeasurable.
Have I oversold this Rick?
No, Sam, I don’t think you’ve oversold it. On my TV it was totally engrossing (I admit its a big TV), so I would love to see it someday on the big screen. Thanks for the complement, as well.
Thanks for the doubly convincing recommendation. I’ve heard about it for years but this is as good a push as any to actually see it.
True to my word, albeit it months later. This finally came up in the Netflix queue and I was blown away. Hoping to get some of my own thoughts up soon, but it is so strikingly similar to the situation in Baghdad that I was literally gobsmacked. The quality of the technical production of the film (stunts, cinematography) was nearly as shocking.
Daniel, I’m pleased you liked it. The more I think back on this flick the more parallels I see. There is nothing new under the sun, and what goes around comes around. Or is that comes around, goes around? (Ah, merlot … you destroy brain cells without regard to race, creed or color.)
You, sir just got yourself a spot in my bookmarks