Respond to the screening in 1-2 paragraphs. You may include what interested you, impacted you, or how your perspective on ME politics changed after watching the film.
13 thoughts on “Battle of Algiers”
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I had never before seen the Battle of Algiers but between the imagery and the weird music, I could tell it wasn’t American-made. That being said, I got along just fine reading the subtitles. The very first thing I noticed about the movie was the difference in treatment of the Arabs and the Pied Noir people by the French military. I can’t quite remember how much more pronounced the military presence became after the assassination attacks on the French police by the rebels began, but the native Algerians were certainly treated as second class citizens in French Algieria. It was certainly clear that the Pied Noir completely controlled the affairs of the city and the country. The way many of the Pied Noir were portrayed as affluent, well to do citizens compared to the native Algerians was also interesting. it is amazing that colonialism such as it was in Algeria lasted so far into the 20th century. We often think of imperialism as a historical occurrence of the distant past but all of us were born in a century in which it still existed in many parts of the world. interestingly, many people around the world would argue that imperialism still exists today in different and various forms.
Along with the different characterizations fo the native Algerians and the Pied Noir, the film presented each side very honestly and it did not seem that the producer was on any one particular side. In other words, the film portrayed the Battle of Algiers in a very objective manner, which I think is important in understanding what and how this happened. getting an objective view on the events allows us to study this event and analyze it based on facts rather than an inaccurate or biased recount of the events that took place.
This was my first time watching The Battle of Algiers, and I was very disturbed by many of the events, and by the way the characters reacted to those events. I prefer to avoid such dark movies; therefore, this film left me feeling almost defeated. The scene that most affected me was immediately after the bomb went off in the middle of the neighborhood and the man carries the little boy who had been crushed by the stone of the wall. Another thing that struck me was the way the movie portrayed the emotions of the people placing the bombs for each side. When the captain of the French settlers placed the bomb in front of the door, the scene was relatively short. He placed the bomb and immediately left the scene of the crime. In contrast, when the Alger women were placing their bombs, the movie showed the women looking around the room, contemplating their actions, and really understanding the weight of their duties. The way in which the movie was shot made the Alger women seem much more humane and regretful for their actions. I don’t know if this is a completely accurate portrayal of Alger and French attitudes in Algiers, or if the movie is just shot from an Alger perspective.
This movie also made me think about the difference between imperialism through colonization, and imperialism through occupation. Although I have not watched a movie about imperialism through occupation, like the British used in Libya and Iraq, I believe that imperialism through colonization is the most destructive policy. In this type of strategy, the victims are completely demoralized having lost control of their resources, their government, their homes, and their lives. This movie accurately displayed the emotions of Algiers at the time of their occupation.
The last thing that I will mention regarding what I found interesting was the way that Ali became interested in the independence movement. Originally, he was just a troubled youth who did not have two thoughts about emancipating Algiers. However, after he was in jail he discovered this new nationalism and it changed him.
Two aspects of this film really stood out to me. The first was the portrayal of the two distinct cultures. Even though the native Algerians and the pied noirs were living side by side, there was very little to no assimilation between the two groups. Furthermore, there was no attempt by either group to see the humanity in the other. At first I was furious at the pied noirs because they were so cruel to the natives and killed them with no remorse. The movie showed innocent people being treated foully for no good reason. Then the Algerians bombed the pied noirs, and my emotions reversed. The French were just normal people enjoying their afternoon; we saw flirtatious youths and mothers and children get blown up. This made me angry at the natives. I think this portrayal was intentional by the director of the film. As an outside spectator, what I saw was a lack of understanding between two groups, and escalating hatred prompted by violence. The unity of each side reflected what Gelvin emphasized in his history of the Middle East; when there is a distinct other, a strong sense of identity and purpose will unite a group to work together and fight for their rights.
The second thing that stood out to me was the role of women in the film. At first the Algerian women appeared to be emotionless white figures just walking around the city. After the first assassination, however, it became apparent that the women played a much bigger role in the revolt and that their clothes did not just hide their bodies but also their motives. I thought it was interesting that the only thing that differentiated Arab women from French was their dress. When the Arab women dressed up as French to plant their bombs, they not only got through checkpoints, but were actively flirted with. This speaks to the artificial differences that became so important in Algeria. In the end we’re all human, but because one group decides to repress another, everyone lives in fear and hatred.
The Battles of Algiers depicted the racial tension, hatred and resentment that is the Franco-Algerian relations. As the movie swaps back from French to Arabic, we see how dichotomized these two groups of people were, even though they had been living together for many years, and many of the arabic speakers spoke french. In fact, I do not recall seeing a single French person speaking arabic. I did not notice this at the time but now that I reflect back, that is an interesting point. The French had claimed a “neo-europe” and did not attempt to intertwine their lives with those of native Algerians. Rather, they wanted another home land, much like France, with everything that would have been available to them.
In war, sometimes the most obvious disregards to human life are so apparent that we tend to forget what goes on behind the front line. I thought the film did a great job at showing how there is more than the obvious death, the torture, the racism, the loss for those who are left behind. There is always a cost for freedom, or for land, and the Battle of Algiers showed how far one will go for these commodities.
Furthermore, the film showed how desperately the Algerians wanted freedom. Hind site is always 20/20, but it amazes me how one could possibly try to impose themselves so steadfastly on another country. So many Algerians lost their lives and family and put themselves at risk for, what at the time would seem unforeseeable, independence.
For some reason, no matter how many times I see this film, I am struck by the same three or four things. Above all, I am always blown away by the incredible way that Pontecorvo, the director, captures the masses of people caught up in the resistance. There are several memorable characters in the film, but my favorite scenes involve wide shots of huge numbers of people passing through checkpoints, marching down the Casbah, or waving flags in protest. You really get a sense of an entire community, repressed and on edge, united against the colonizers. Pontecorvo does the same thing on the other side of the city, portraying the individual French citizens as largely innocent, caught up in something far bigger than themselves and their very ordinary lives in Algiers. It is these huge groups of people and the power of their collective commitment, simmering just under the surface and erupting once in awhile in terrible violence, that made me think of countries (or non-countries) like Egypt and the Western Sahara even before the recent revolutions began. This is what happens, Pontecorvo seems to say, when a populace decides that it has had enough. The only difference between the unflinching, documentary-style footage of soldiers gunning down civilians and bodies dragged away from the front lines in The Battle of Algiers and the real YouTube footage smuggled out of Syria and Yemen every day now is that one is in Black and White and the other is filmed in color.
This was a powerful film. I was struck throughout by how effectively subtle camera movements and breakaways could generate a reaction from me. That, I think, means the film was effective in portraying the human side of a city at war. The cruelty of war was shown on all sides, beginning with the execution by guillotine and the subsequent cuts to the austere prison walls. This scene was nearly immediately contrasted by the bloody guerrilla warfare carried out by the FLN in the streets, killing French soldiers without warning or mercy.
The film raised significant questions about the morality of a fight for independence, and what the bounds each side must operate within to be considered fighting for a moral cause. The French’s control over hospitals and requiring reporting before gunshot wounds can be treated raised one such moral quandary, as it left doctors unable to care for victims of the violence.
The point of most contention for me came after the first bombing of the Arab quarter by French Algerians, after which native Algerians took to the streets in fury. All the while, the radio broadcast, “the FLN will avenge you.” At that point, those outraged by the bombing were inundated with the message that they should work through the FLN to effect change, which could have been a mischanneling of that outrage. It would seems that the sheer number of people so motivated to make demands after the bombing could have made gains with the French without funneling their anger through the FLN and allowing the organization to represent them. The FLN usurped the power of the masses and used it to justify their controversial approach to protesting.
Some other notable points for me included how well the filmmakers portrayed the hesitation of the women bombers, panning around to show how their bombings would affect youth out entertaining themselves and other women like themselves, the use of the train-track like sound to create tension and build suspense, and the panning to the faces of French soldiers after the French general announces that “Humane considerations can only lead to despair.” Those faces showed surprise and even disagreement with that statement and was an impressive tactic by the filmmakers to show the controversial nature of the declaration.
This was my first time seeing this movie. I thought it did a very good job of showing the difficulty of running a revolution. I thought the quote about how it was difficult to start a revolution, harder to sustain it, and hardest to finish it, was particularly telling. I think the film also did a good job of portraying the prejudiced and judgemental attitude of the pieds noirs and the French in general. I thought the scene where the FLN women, dressed as European women, so easily passed through the checkpoints where many others were waiting in line.
I also thought it was quite interesting when Col. Mathieu was speaking with the press. He said that the journalists would have an impact on the outcome of the war, because to succeed he needed the support of the politicians behind him in France. I agree with this, because as soon as there is a part of the government that starts to believe that it will crumble, it eventually will. At the start of the various recent revolutions, the various governments were steadfast in their beliefs that they would continue. Yet, as soon there was a government minister who came out in support of the protests, or as soon as a section of the army decided to turn, the protests gained momentum. As soon as one government official doubted that the government would remain, the problems multiplied. The main exception is Syria, where the military and the government have stayed resolute, in the face of international pressure.
I think that for Mathieu, this was also a case of “the ends justify the means.” To accomplish what needed to be accomplished, he accepted that he would have to play dirty. For him, the ends would have justified the means. It’s ruthless, but it’s the only thing that will do in a struggle of absolutes like the one in Algeria, as portrayed in the movie.
I have a few observations, and they aren’t necessarily connected, but here goes:
1. This might seem like a trivial thing to be struck by, but I was immediately struck by the interchanging of French and Arabic throughout the film. People would switch back and forth between them very easily. Also, both groups of people, the French, and the native Algerian rebels, looked completely natural in the setting, like they both felt completely at home. I think this is the interesting difference between wars that involve colonization and wars that do not, which I never really considered before. Often, when people think of modern wars, like the one taking place in Iraq, they think of one group of people (the Americans) forcefully invading a country and fighting against the native inhabitants, with whom they have nothing in common. True the French colonists were not originally from Algeria, and many of them did commit a multitude of atrocities against the native Algerians. Also, many of the soldiers were brought in to fight against the Algerians and quell the revolts. However, by the time of this movie, there were French people who had been born in Algeria and lived there all their lives. They had a life there just like the people against whom they were fighting.
2. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes, in my opinion, is the one in which the old Algerian man gets falsely blamed and arrested for the assassination of a French policeman. We, as the audience, are aware that he did not commit the act because we just saw the teenage boy do it a few moments earlier. Nevertheless, he is chased down and yelled at by racist French people. All I could think was that here this man is, in his native land, and these foreign people, who are essentially guests in his land, have come in and are treating him like dirt. Not that it is ever okay to treat another human being the way he is treated, but it seems especially bad in a situation like this. This scene, in combination with the constant checkpoints and racial profiling does make me think about the situation in Israel between Jews and Arabs. I did live in Haifa, Israel for a year, and I did not actually witness racial profiling of this degree. However, I know that Haifa is one of the exceptional cities in which the Jewish and Arab populations live relatively peacefully together. If I went to the West Bank, I’m sure I would see a very different situation. Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe in the necessity of a Jewish State, but this does not mean that I support everything that Israel does or that I am in any way anti-Palestinian. Both things have done things that I do not approve of, and neither has been willing enough to compromise on important issues. Regardless of who is fault though, it is indisputable that there are Palestinians who must deal with hardships like the Algerians in the movie face every day, and I find this extremely disheartening.
3. This movie also illustrates the difficulties of fighting against guerilla warfare. The Vietnam War is often taught as being one of the first incidents of broad guerilla warfare, but we see here, and through other Middle Eastern examples, that such insurgency existed before that. There is one scene in the movie in which a French army officer is explaining to his soldiers the difficulty of taking down the Algerian rebels. Because of their organization, nobody ever knew everyone else in the organization or who the head was. Also, it is impossible to accurately determine the rebels from the civilians. At one point, a fully-veiled woman gets through a checkpoint by yelling at a man for touching her, and since this is probably the reaction that any religious woman would have to being touched by a male, the soldiers can’t assume that she is carrying a weapon. Also, innocent Algerians may be harassed on the street because people assume they are rebels, but on the flip side, rebels might also walk down the street without being harassed since it was impossible to tell them apart. All of these difficulties mean that even if the French army could quell an individual revolt or win in a specific battle (such as The Battle of Algiers), they still had trouble eradicating the source of the “problem” and ending the greater war, though they certainly tried for a long time, using brutal and ruthless tactics.
All in all, I thought the film was very well done and gave me a far better understanding of Algeria’s history in a humanizing and compelling way. This film very much helped me to understand the influence of European colonialism on lives in the Middle East, and having background information from this class was incredibly helpful in deepening my understanding of the film.
I was very impressed by the dedication of the FLN fighters. I cannot imagine how desperate I would feel if I was forced to fight against an army with such vastly superior manpower. Even as the FLN fighters found themselves increasingly cornered by the French methods, they held out until the very last of their leaders had been hunted down and killed. And even once the French army had accomplished that, the people of Algeria continued to push on for their independence. Incredible. I also must admit that I found myself sympathizing with the women who carried out the basket-bomb attacks, even as I saw carefree youth being killed in cafes. In a way, I was disturbed with myself for this—but I also realize the filmmakers did an effective job of making the Algerian cause compelling.
Still, I walked out of the screening of the Battle of Algiers, feeling fairly discouraged. I found the torture scenes in the film to be deeply upsetting, especially since we know that America too used torture during the War on Terror. Although these scenes did not surprise me, I was horrified anew by what humans are willing to inflict on one another. In light of the recent Arab Spring, I was also struck by the comment of one of the FLN leaders, “It’s hard to start a revolution. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it. But, it’s only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin. In short, Ali, there’s still much to do.” I can only begin to imagine how true that statement will be for those countries that were a part of the Arab Spring.
I found the most poignant moment of the film to be when Colonel Mathieu says to the press, “Should France stay in Algeria? If the answer is yes then you should accept all of the consequences.” Mathieu says this in regard to torture that he uses against the FLN and it speaks to the way Algeria was perceived to be needed France. So needed, Mathieu implies, that any consequence is worth it.
It is rare in life, at least in my own, that there are things worth any cost (like Algeria was). It seems however that war and violence are often conceived as so necessary that they are worth anything. In my summer work interviewing American’s about the current US wars, an idea I heard repeatedly was, “War is awful, horrendous, but right now it is needed for the US.” How can one weigh the human costs of bombs, torture, and terrorism with the cost of France losing Algeria as a colony or with the cost of potential insecurity?
I think that some things cannot be considered in a cost analysis. In a conversation last year about Middlebury readopting ROTC and how that would violate the college’s nondiscrimination policy, a student offered that the discrimination of a few students might be outweighed by the benefit to many students. It seems to me that discrimination, and torture too, are things that society can’t justify by citing the related benefits.
To conclude this rant, this moment in the film imprinted in me a new understanding of how easily much horror can be justified by the perceived necessity of war.
Like Alison and Ginny, this was also my second time viewing this film. I agree with Ginny that there was a definite benefit to viewing it a second time with a greater sense of the history behind the conflict. My first viewing was in a high school French class, so it was more of an exercise in language comprehension than a lesson in history. This time I was able to better contextualize the events of the film, and like any second viewing, it was easier to follow what was happening on screen.
One part of the movie that struck me was Colonel Mathieu’s interactions with the press, particularly his comments on the importance of political will. It seems that this point is a fundamental truth of colonial insurgencies, where the aim is to cause so much destruction as to break the political will of the populace in the colonizing nation and thereby force their withdrawal. This logic might extend further to insurgencies pitted against any type of external occupier, with the current war in Afghanistan as one example. It brings to mind the question of whether insurgencies might adopt terror tactics with a greater hope for success against occupying democracies as opposed to occupying autocracies, where political will would be less a matter of public opinion. The Soviet experience in Afghanistan might put this in doubt, but I would be interested to know what conclusions would be reached from a wider accounting of Third World insurgencies.
This is the second time I have seen this movie at Middlebury. I first watched it for Ethics & War, and was focused on guerilla tactics, the uses of terrorism, and the legitimacy of “war crimes”. The scene that still sticks out most to me is when the three women are using their purses to smuggle bombs into waterfront café’s.
Following the Arab Spring, and watching it right after attending the Clifford symposium, I found that I focused on different aspects of the film. I paid close attention to the organization, the violence, and the length of time that was involved in the FLN’s uprising and I immediately began comparing them to the revolutions this past year. I was struck by the relatively ad hoc nature of the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. I was also struck by the relatively peaceful manner in which they were approached and how quickly many of the revolutions from Arab Spring achieved their goals.
Sparking off of that, one of the most interesting, and most pertinent moments I noticed was when Ben M’Hidi, the leader of the FLN, was speaking to Ali La Pointe about the difficulty of revolution. He said something like- it’s hard to start a revolution, harder to keep it going, and even harder to end it. But it is only after win that the real difficulties begin. This is a perfect insightful into the nature of revolution that applies to the Arab Spring. Many people think that Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have already made it through their most difficult times and that Bahrain, Yemen and Syria are still embroiled in the height of their struggles. In reality though, it is the successful revolutions that now have to work harder than ever to turn their aspirations into codified reality.
This was my second time screening “The Battle of Algiers.” After watching it this time I was surprised at how differently I perceived the film. The first time I watched “Algiers” was for an English class on colonization as a Freshman. In that class we were focused on how the events in Algeria would influence the culture that would emerge. This time around I was more interested in how previous events shaped the acts of the film and about how the film was showing a piece of history- not just a reason for influence. It seemed to give the film more depth this time around.
The other thing that really stuck out to me was how I could understand each side’s arguments. The filmmakers did a great job making each side seem real- in both good and bad ways by treating us to scenes before, during, and after violent attacks. By showing the escalation of the fighting the film allows for the viewer to sympathize with each side. Or at the very least understand the thoughts behind the actions each side decides to take. I think that my experience getting to observe the film from different critical perspectives has allowed me to appreciate it more artistically.