Battle of Algiers Film Difficulty Ranking: 3
Battle of Algiers is brilliant. If you want to feel like you’re part of the revolution against colonialism, this is the closest you can get. Shot on location in Algiers and using non-actors, it’s one of the first and best examples of cinéma vérité – a film that feels like a real documentary. So dive in and experience both sides of this war – the French colonizers and the Algerian freedom fighters. You’ll come out a more enlightened revolutionary.
From: Algeria, Africa
Watch: Trailer, Rent on Amazon, Buy on Amazon, Kanopy
Next: Che, Z, Elite Squad
Why Watch The Battle of Algiers?
- Be a part of the war against colonialism.
- Get the point of view of the Algerians fighting for independence and not just the French colonizers.
- If you like your films real – this one features non-actors and is all shot on location in Algiers.
- Question if violence is necessary or not for a successful revolution.
The Breakdown
The Battle of Algiers starts in a French interrogation room. After a long torture session, one Algerian has just given up the location of Ali La Pointe – the last leader of the FLN (the freedom fighters of Algeria fighting against French occupation). He’s dressed up in French military uniform and sadly shows them the way to Ali La Pointe’s hide out. It looks like it’s all over for Algerian independence. The French torture tactics have worked.
Or have they? From the spoiler filled opening, the film jumps back to the birth of Ali La Pointe as a revolutionary. We first see him selling contraband cigarettes to a few Frenchmen in the French quarter of Algiers. He takes off as soon as he hears police sirens and as he runs away a French man drinking outside a bar trips him up for fun. Ali La Pointe punches him, starting a fight that the police catch up to and break up. It’s a quick and obvious depiction of French prejudice against the native Algerians.
As he’s caught, Ali ends up in prison which becomes the birth place of Ali’s revolutionary consciousness. In prison, he sees a FLN freedom fighter being executed by a guillotine after screaming ‘Long live Algeria’ a few times along the way to the cheers of the Algerians in prison. As Ali watches the guillotine drop, the camera quickly zooms to a close up of his face. It’s this moment that his revolutionary consciousness is born – a symbol of the awakening of Algeria and the native Algerians.
Starting a revolutionary movement
When Ali finally gets out of prison, he is recruited by El-hadi Jafar, a veteran FLN commander. Jafar guides him through his plan for achieving Algerian Independence, giving us an inside look at the movement.
The first part of the project is to educate the Algerian people and eliminate vice in society. These are both necessary to set the foundations of an Algerian state post-independence. If they can improve their own community, they can prove to themselves and the world that they should be able to control their own state. (Their plans for a post-revolutionary state are the first signs of the inevitability of the French withdrawal).
The second part of the project is violent action. Not chaotic violence, but targeted violence against the symbols of their oppression – French policemen. It causes the French rulers to take note of the Algerian Independence movement.
The escalation of violence
Unfortunately for the Algerian people, the targeted attacks on the French police by the FLN triggers French terrorism. The French allow a group of drunk Frenchmen to enter the Algerian Casbah and detonate a bomb in a neighborhood of sleeping innocent people. Their terrorist act forces another terrorist response from the FLN to answer the anger of the Algerian people. This sparks an escalation of violence which ends up in a full revolutionary war between the French and the Algerians.
However, whilst the violence escalates, the director, Gillo Pontecorvo never condones violence. He gives faces to the innocent Algerian and French and accompanies the mourning of both terrorist events with the same musical leitmotif. This gives us time to contemplate and condemn the violence committed by both sides in this war.
Pontecorvo also depicts the failure of torture to achieve a French victory. As whilst the torture leads them to capture the leaders of the FLN, the end of the FLN is a Pyrrhic victory for the French as the end of the film reveals. Their violent methods ultimately prove unsuccessful in winning support for French rule. As a result, it’s not too surprising that the Pentagon screened this film as the U.S. declared war on Iraq – to perhaps make them aware that torture and occupation were not the ways to victory.
What to Watch Next
If you enjoyed following the revolution in The Battle of Algiers you’ll love joining Che Guevara fighting for change in Cuba in Soderbergh’s Che. You could also check out some more great cinéma vérité films such as Costa-Gravas’ Z or State of Siege.
Otherwise if you want to see more films featuring segregated cities, check out Ajami, set along the Israel/Palestinian border, and Wings of Desire, set in separated Berlin.
There’s also Elite Squad from Brazil. Instead of revolutionaries vs. the colonizers, there’s gangs vs. the police. Featuring lots of torture, violence, and entertaining action.
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