I remember learning, a number of years ago, that to this day the French have some sort of feeling of propriety over their former African colonies. Apparently, it is not out of the question for the French military to show up whenever there is sufficient instability to help prop up the existing government or something along those lines. It actually meant that, at a point during the Obama Administration, while American military forces were involved in four countries at one moment–Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya I believe–the French were at that moment engaged in military action in five different places, and while there were some in common with the U.S., they obviously weren’t all the same. I just think that, as an American, it can be easy to not realize how much French colonial efforts were every bit as widespread around the world as the English.
With that in mind, here’s my thoughts on an Italian/Algerian co-production about the Algerian War for independence from France.
OK, before I go too far, I probably should put something here along the lines of a disclaimer. As an American, I am well aware that anything I say about French colonialism could be construed as hypocritical given the treatment of American Indians at the hands of my own nation’s government and people. Any American that speaks up on the subject of colonialism by Western powers against other nations should be at least somewhat aware of our own nation’s history. However, in discussing The Battle of Algiers, it would be nearly impossible not to say something in this short essay that I am producing for the Stacker Challenge about colonialism in this film. After all, there’s a reason this film was not produced by the French, and indeed, according to Wikipedia, didn’t even air in France for five years after its release. I am not sure this film, as it exists, could have possibly been made by any French director or producer that soon after the Algerian War, a war that did lead to not only Algerian independence but appears to have rocked the French government to its core as well, resulting in the fall of the Fourth Republic and the creation of the Fifth. Then again, I am only skimming a Wikipedia article to get that much. As important as the history is, I would rather look at how the film handles it.
The Battle of Algiers tells the story of the conflict between the French military and the National Liberation Front, AKA the FLN. Despite the title, this is not the story of a single pitched combat between opposing sides during a war. Instead, this is about the unrest that happened over a period of just over three years in the Algerian capital as the FLN began its guerilla-style operations to force the French out of their country. Director Gillo Pontecorvo shot the film to look like a newsreel, and he likewise made some interesting choices in how the film turned out, starting with the cast: aside from French actor Jean Martin as Colonel Philippe Mathieu, the commanding officer of the French paratroopers, the entire cast is made up of nonprofessional actors chosen based on their looks. Many of them also later had their dialogue dubbed, and two–Saadi Yacef and Samia Kerbash–were both former FLN members whose experiences also shaped how the film turned out.
For another, Pontecorvo was uninterested in romanticizing the fighting. Despite the fact much of the film was based on Yacef’s own memoir, neither the FLN nor the French come across as completely “good”. Arguably, the FLN’s fight for independence, to say nothing of the fact that this is an Algerian co-production, could make them the more sympathetic force, but the end result is still that both sides commit actions that are cruel and all-too-common in war, particularly one fought in this manner where the French may be wearing military uniforms but the FLN is made up of ordinary Algerians, men, women and children who all just want the French to leave.
It’s not hard to see why either. One of the first shots of Algiers shows two sections of the city: the “European quarter” that looks rather clean and opulent, and the Casbah just up the hill that appears more crowded and poor. Given my association of “Casbah” as sounding like a romantic place that Pepe Le Pew often suggested he could take that unwilling female cat to, seeing the actual Casbah was a bit of a surprise. Regardless, it isn’t hard to see why the Algerians might have issues with the French’s running of their country. The FLN’s leadership, embodied by Yacef’s El-Hadi Jafar, believes and not without evidence that the French really don’t care about impoverishing the Algerians or allowing common Algerians to ruin their lives with drugs, alcohol, or whoring.
But then comes how the FLN fights, and it isn’t hard to see how Pontecorvo can keep from romanticizing them. There’s no real central protagonist to the film: there are arguably multiple potential main characters, and as I said, neither side is completely innocent here. Before the FLN can even take their fight to the French, they opt to “clean up” Algiers themselves first because the French don’t seem interested in doing so. That means outlawing alcohol, drugs, and prostitution, and that sequence of the film starts with a mob of children beating on a drunk in the street. The FLN apparently decided the thing to do is to use very harsh punishments against people with honest-to-God addictions, and the film doesn’t even attempt to show this in a light that suggests it’s OK to, you know, have a drunk beaten to death in the street rather than try and find the man some kind of treatment program. One prominent member of the FLN, Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag), even guns down a former friend of his who apparently was a pimp. And this comes after delivering multiple blunt warnings to the man’s face.
From there, the FLN takes their war to the French, starting with murdering French police officers in the street (or in their offices when they come to register complaints with a precinct captain or something along those lines), and then on to having female members, people who won’t be searched at French checkpoints, smuggle bombs into soft targets like airports and dance clubs to blow up civilians. Even if the audience might be primed to want to see the Algerians gain independence, these aren’t the sorts of actions that will gain the FLN much in the way of sympathy.
And then the French military shows up, and while they may be hampered by rules of engagement, aren’t above mass arrests, blowing people up, or even firing into a crowd of protesters at the end of the film. Martin’s Colonel Mathieu may be a composite character based on multiple real life French military officers, but he seems to come across as a cool professional, and whatever his thoughts on the FLN and its demands, he knows the French citizens living in Algiers’s European Quarter want him there to clean up the mess. What little we see of French civilians shows them basically living at a higher standard of living than the native Algerians, but surely French teenagers didn’t decide to live there, and if they feel it is their home, doesn’t that lead to more conflict?
The film ends with a feeling that Algerian independence is on its way. Mathieu may be a professional soldier who did manage to take out or apprehend many of the FLN’s leadership within the city, but that is his job, and as he notes, even if he got Algiers quiet, that just means he has the rest of the country to deal with next. And while the FLN may not represent all of Algiers–no one elected them to start murdering addicts in the streets since they just decided to do that on their own–it is clear the people are watching, judging, and in the end, demanding their own independent nation.
Yeah, I think I know why this film wasn’t available in France for five years.
NEXT: Looks like I have another film up about the poor fighting back against their wealthier oppressors, but not quite as violently. Be back soon for 1940’s film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath.
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