Dave, It really isn’t. Actually after seeing this for the first time I began questioning the world. Its very easy to ignore war when you are on a side. It is much harder to ignore when both sides are wrong and right (but mostly wrong).
No
NEXT!!!!!!!
If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you view it, then view the supplements. If you have the 3 disc Criterion with the pamphlet, watch them all and read the pamphlet. Of course, much more historical information is available from many other sources.
Both sides committed horrible atrocities. Some of the worst atrocities are not depicted in the film. Rather than spoil it for you, again, I suggest you first watch it.
My own cursory opinion of The Battle of Algiers is that it is a great achievement as a film with a landmark documentary style created by master filmmaker, Pontecorvo.
This is a film of great integrity, that shows the terrible results of “terrorist”/freedom-fighter bombings just as it shows torture by the terrorist imperialist occupiers. There is no excuse for countries to occupy others in such circumstances for exploitation, and yes the fault must be laid at the door of the French, but the film does not let the Algerian resistance off as purely noble. It’s a pity such films are wasted on many who have swallowed nationalistic and neo-con propaganda hook line and sinker. Bush + Cheney could have learned some useful lessons, as the film is as relevant as ever
I love the film, however i do think the film has without a doubt an anti-imperialist/ left-wing agenda to it.
When is it ok for countries to occupy other countries? I haven’t seen this film/ almost bought it on Saturday/ sounds like a great film I really want to see it/ I’ll go and get it now…/ But it sounds like reactions to the it are quite polarising/ What other films offer an anti-Imperialist/ left-wing perspective?
It does have an anti-imperialist agenda, shows the resulting violence on both sides but what i don’t understand is why it would need to be defended for that. In a reasonable world it would be the Rabid Right having to explain and defend their imperialist propaganda, but as the media in so many countries is dominated by imperialist ideology such things are taken for granted. It’s films which question colonialism and the mass murder stemming from militarism which stand out.
Yes, the Battle of Algiers does take sides. Very forcefully, in fact. Yes, it shows the violent results of the bombings but it also completely justifies that violence.
No, there is no such thing as a film that doesn’t take sides politically. If you claim a film is politically neutral then that probably means the film is taking your side.
Touché!
what could possibly be offensive about anti-imperialist “fodder”? does a movie about the holocaust need to have a balanced depiction of the nazis, displaying the “positive and negatives of all the parties involved”? this is silly. god forbid we be exposed to a political agenda other than the pro-empire militaristic b.s. hollywood shoves down our throats.
Yes, the film takes sides, but it is far from being a propaganda piece. Gillo Pontecorvo, filming in newly independent Algeria, had to portray the revolutionary period in a positive light in order to get the film made in the first place. According to the supplements on the disc, Yacef Saadi wrote a straightforward, Manichean propaganda piece, which was reworked by Franco Solinas and Pontecorvo into the present incarnation of the film. Saadi’s film would likely be relegated to history’s dustbin, but Pontecorvo’s endures because of its nuanced approach to the subject.
Take, for example, his choice to use non-professional actors for every role except Col. Matthieu (Jean Martin). Matthieu and Ali La Pointe are unquestionably the films main protagonists and both are sympathetic figures. In order for this to work, Pontecorvo needed an actor capable of engaging the audience and being charismatic. In Matthieu we see a veteran of the colonial enterprise who knows the score: it’s a dirty job that has to be done if France is to maintain its status in the world. The scenes in which Matthieu spars with the press corps show him as a complex, even conflicted figure. This prevents us from seeing the French as cartoonish villains.
Although he appears in only a few scenes, El-Harbi Ben-M’hidi’s role is central to understanding the film within its specific historical context. Solinas, who wrote the script, was obviously heavily influenced by Frantz Fanon. When we see the guerilla tactics employed by the FLN bomb network in The Battle of Algiers, they are the tactics described explicitly by Fanon in A Dying Colonialism. Likewise, with Ben-M’hidi’s role, we see the arguments employed by Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, especially regarding “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness.” In his rooftop conversation with Ali La Pointe, the dedicated revolutionary, Ben-M’Hidi warns him: “It’s hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain it, and hardest of all to win it. But it’s only afterwards, once we’ve won, that the real difficulties begin.” While they were filming The Battle of Algiers, Pontecorvo and Solinas saw a revolution in the midst of betraying itself. After a few years of euphoria over the liberation of Algeria, Houari Boumedienne and the military overthrew Ahmed Ben Bella and plunged the country into military rule which has lasted (in different forms) until today.
While Pontecorvo and Solinas threw their support behind the Algerians and rooted for their success, it was not blind support. They knew that the revolution was incomplete in many ways. The film may have a bias, but it is not propaganda by any stretch of the imagination, no matter how it has been used in subsequent years.
What’s interesting about the film to me is that despite its political intentions and its well-deserved reputation as an anti-colonialist masterpiece (probably as close to a film can get in illustrating Fanon), the film has been used by the CIA and other organizations who represent everything that the film opposes in order to instruct people on counter-insurgency strategies (like torture) so when Kenji writes “Bush + Cheney could have learned some useful lessons, as the film is as relevant as ever”, he’s technically wrong (maybe Bush and Cheney themselves didn’t see the film but neo-cons and architects of Bush policy certainly did). People will see what they want to see in a film.
Oops, sorry about the DP but I guess I’ll just add that I don’t mean this to be a criticism of the film. I think it’s just interesting that a film can be used in ways utterly at odds with its creator’s intentions.
Ari, yes people will see what they want to see in a film, but they still could learn other lessons that may often be staring them in the face.
They say travel broadens the mind, but it can also reinforce closed ones, same with films
It leans slightly towards the Algerians but it does show the horrible things that BOTH sides do. So in that sense, it’s balanced.
Kenji, Yes, I agree. But, on the other hand, I think that’s a good thing about film. It’s open ended enough to allow for multiple interpretations even if it can lead to ones utterly at odds with ones’ own. So I guess to answer Dave’s question, yes, it leaves lots of room for the audience to decide. In any case case, films tend to reinforce the worldviews that people already have. I don’t think film is very useful as a political tool beyond reinforcing what people have already decided.
Apparently, when the Pentagon or CIA screened the film, they used it as a cautionary tale about how to lose a counter-insurgency war/war on terror. Obviously, they didn’t learn too much from the screening besides torture techniques.
I agree with Ryan, there is a slight siding towards the Algerians and I think even Roger Ebert revisted it for his review. But anyway, thanks for those who recommended this film on DVD. It was probably one of the best, complete Criterion purchases yet!
It is not biased. It may sympathize with the Algerians, but it is not biased.
Of course it’s biased. But who cares, it’s a stunning film and it’s on the right side.
In the special features section, Mira Nair and Spike Lee are very good.
“No
NEXT!!!!!!!"
ALL films are biased. The only film without any bias is Kodak raw stock.
The film was based on a memoir written by Saadi Yacef, who, as a member of the FLN, certainly would have been biased. Apparently an early draft of Solinas’s screenplay written from the perspective of a French paratrooper, was rejected as too sympathetic to the French, while Yacef own attempt was rejected as too sympathetic to the Algerians. So, the end result was intended (by the financ ial backers, anyway) to be relatively neutral, which I think it is . . . but of course a film’s political content is always subject to debate.
I didn’t know anything about the film before seeing it and also hate clearly politically biased films, and I never got that vibe from it at all. Both sides of the conflict are portrayed in equally unflattering ways, more or less.
Dave
I have been wanting to see The Battle of Algiers based on all the positive reviews and Morricone’s score. However, I do NOT like films that take sides politically…regardless of whose side it is. I can appreciate thought-provoking films that display the positives and negatives of all parties involved, but please, no pandering. If there’s one thing that ruins a film, it is a pompous director who tries to inflict his views upon me. So which is it? Does this film leave room for the audience to decide, or does it try to shove pro-Islamic fundamentalist, anti-imperialist fodder down our throats?