The Battle of Algiers (film)
Encyclopedia
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 war film
based on occurrences during the Algerian War (1954–62) against French colonial occupation
in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers
. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
. The film has been critically celebrated and often taken, by insurgent groups and states alike, as an important commentary on urban guerilla warfare. It occupies the 120th place on Empire Magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
Algeria was eventually liberated from the French, but Pontecorvo relegates that to an epilogue. He concentrates instead on the years between 1954 and 1957 when the freedom fighters regrouped and expanded into the casbah, only to face a systematic attempt by French paratroopers to wipe them out. His highly dramatic film is about the organisation of a guerrilla movement and the methods used to annihilate it by the colonial power.
between November 1954 and December 1960, during the Algerian War of Independence
. The narrative begins with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah
. Then civil war between native Algeria
ns and European settlers (pied-noirs) in which the sides exchange acts of increasing violence, leading to the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt the National Liberation Front
(FLN). The paratroopers are depicted as winning the battle by neutralizing the whole of the FLN leadership either through assassination or through capture. However, the film ends with a coda
depicting demonstrations and rioting for independence by native Algerians, suggesting that although France won the Battle of Algiers, she lost the Algerian War.
The tactics of the FLN guerrilla insurgency
and the French counter insurgency
, and the uglier incidents of the war, are shown. Colonizer and colonized commit atrocities against civilians. The FLN commandeer the Casbah via summary execution
of native Algerian criminals and other (considered) traitors, and applied terrorism
to harass the civilian French colonials. The French colonialists resort to lynch mobs and indiscriminate, racist violence against the natives to hand. Paratroops routinely torture
, intimidate, and murder in combating the FLN insurgents. Pontecorvo and Solinas have several protagonists, based on historical war figures. The story begins and ends from the perspective of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Hagiag), a petty criminal who is politically radicalized while in prison, and is then recruited to the FLN, by the (fictional) military commander El-hadi Jafar (Saadi Yacef, playing a character based on himself).
Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu, the paratroop commander, is the principal French character. Other characters are the boy Petit Omar, a street urchin who is an FLN messenger; Larbi Ben M'hidi
, a top FLN leader, is the film’s political rationale for the insurgency; Djamila
, Zohra
, and Hassiba
, three FLN women urban guerrillas who effect a revenge-attack. Moreover, The Battle of Algiers features thousands of Algerian extras; director Pontecorvo’s intended effect was the “Casbah-as-chorus
”, communicating with chanting, wailing, and physical effect.
for militants. After independence, Yacef was released and became part of the new government. The Algerian government backed a film of Yacef’s memoir; exiled FLN man Salash Baazi approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo
and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project.
Solinas’s first draft screenplay, titled Parà, is the story told from the perspective of a disenchanted French paratrooper. The filmmakers initially developed their project with Paul Newman in mind. Baazi rejected that idea, because it relegates Algerian suffering to the backdrop. Moreover, Yacef wrote his own screenplay, which the Italian producers rejected as too-biased towards the Algerians. Although sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, the Italian businessmen insisted on dealing with events from a neutral perspective. The final screenplay of Battle of Algiers has an Algerian protagonist, and depicts the cruelty and suffering of French and Algerians.
Despite its basis in true events, The Battle of Algiers uses composite characters, and changes the names of certain persons, e.g. “Colonel Mathieu” is a composite of several French counterinsurgency officers, especially Jacques Massu
. Saadi Yacef has stated that Mathieu was actually more based on Marcel Bigeard
, although the character is also reminiscent of Roger Trinquier
. Accused of portraying him as too elegant and noble, screenplay writer Solinas denied that this was his intention; the Colonel is “elegant and cultured, because Western civilization is neither inelegant nor uncultured”. Actor Jean Martin later explained the character had been conceived from the start as a decent man doing his job, and that he himself had done his best to make him as sympathetic as possible.
who played Col. Mathieu; Martin was a French actor who had worked primarily in theatre. Pontecorvo wanted a professional actor, but one whom audiences wouldn't be too familiar with, which could have interfered with the film's intended realism. Martin had been fired several years earlier from the Théâtre National Populaire
for signing the manifesto of the 121
against the Algerian War. Martin had also served in a paratroop regiment during the Indochina War as well as the French Resistance
, thus giving his character an autobiographical element. The working relationship between Martin and Pontecorvo was not always easy, as the director, unsure that Martin's professional acting style wouldn't contrast too much with that of the non-professionals, kept arguing with his acting choices.
, wailing and chanting symbolize the Algerian approach.
at the Venice Film Festival
and was nominated for three Academy Awards
including Best Screenplay (Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas), Best Director (Gillo Pontecorvo) and Best Foreign Language Film. Other awards include The City of Venice Cinema Prize (1966); the International Critics Award (1966); the City of Imola Prize (1966); the Italian Silver Ribbon Prize (director, photography, producer); Ajace Prize of the Cinema d'Essai (1967); the Italian Golden Asphodel (1966); Diosa de Plata at the Acapulco Film Festival (1966); the Golden Grolla (1966); the Riccione Prize (1966); voted "Best Film of 1967" by Cuban critics in a poll sponsored by Cuban magazine Cine, and the United Churches of America Prize for 1967. In 2010, the film was ranked #6 in Empire
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema".
for five years. The sympathetic treatment of the FLN in The Battle of Algiers often dismayed former French colonists of Algiers (the pieds-noirs) and French army troops.
period and national liberation wars, as well as a rising tide of left-wing radicalism in Western nations in which a large minority showed interest in armed struggle. Beginning in the late 1960s, The Battle of Algiers gained a reputation for inspiring political violence; in particular the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorism
in the film were supposedly copied by the Black Panthers, Provisional Irish Republican Army
and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. The Battle of Algiers was apparently also Andreas Baader
's favourite movie.
(Radical Civic Union
, UCR) the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism"). By 1963, cadets at the (then infamously well-known) Navy Mechanics School
(ESMA) started receiving counter-insurgency classes. In one of their courses, they were shown the film The Battle of Algiers. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it. Anibal Acosta, one of the ESMA cadet interviewed 35 years later by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin
described the session:
in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the First Intifada
and aroused considerable interest and public attention. In general, Left-wing commentators used the film to bolster their argument that attempts to subdue the Palestinians by brute force were futile and that Israel had to end its occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip
, while right-wingers asserted that Israel's situation vis-a-vis these territories, forming a territorial continuity with pre-1967 Israel, was not comparable to France and Algeria which are separated by the Mediterranean. The comparison of Israel's situation with the Algerian War continued to crop up in the Israeli political debate also after the film ceased to be shown, and remains a recurrent topic up to the present.
offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:
According to the Defense Department official (Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict) in charge of the screening, "Showing the film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French."
" VHS
and DVD
versions of the film were available in the United States and elsewhere, but the image quality was degraded. An Italian film restoration had been done in 1999. The restored print allowed Rialto Pictures to acquire the distribution rights for a December 1, 2003 theatrical re-release in the United Kingdom, a January 9, 2004 theatrical re-release in the United States and May 19, 2004 in France. The film was shown in the Espace Accattone
rue Cujas in Paris from 15 November 2006 to 6 March 2007.
released the film, transferred from a restored print, in a 3-disc DVD set. The extras include former United States counter-terrorism advisors Richard A. Clarke
and Michael A. Sheehan
discussing The Battle of Algierss depiction of terrorism and guerrilla warfare and directors Spike Lee
, Mira Nair
, Julian Schnabel
, Steven Soderbergh
and Oliver Stone
discussing its influence on film. Another documentary includes interviews with FLN members Saadi Yacef and Zohra Drif
.
War film
War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...
based on occurrences during the Algerian War (1954–62) against French colonial occupation
French rule in Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
in North Africa, the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers
Battle of Algiers (1957)
The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
. It was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo was an Italian filmmaker. He worked as a film director for more than a decade before his best known film La battaglia di Algeri was released...
. The film has been critically celebrated and often taken, by insurgent groups and states alike, as an important commentary on urban guerilla warfare. It occupies the 120th place on Empire Magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
Algeria was eventually liberated from the French, but Pontecorvo relegates that to an epilogue. He concentrates instead on the years between 1954 and 1957 when the freedom fighters regrouped and expanded into the casbah, only to face a systematic attempt by French paratroopers to wipe them out. His highly dramatic film is about the organisation of a guerrilla movement and the methods used to annihilate it by the colonial power.
Subject
The Battle of Algiers reconstructs the events that occurred in the capital city of French AlgeriaFrench Algeria
French Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. From 1848 until independence, the whole Mediterranean region of Algeria was administered as an integral part of France, much like Corsica and Réunion are to this day. The vast arid interior of Algeria, like the rest...
between November 1954 and December 1960, during the Algerian War of Independence
Algerian War of Independence
The Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France...
. The narrative begins with the organization of revolutionary cells in the Casbah
Casbah
The Casbah ) is specifically the citadel of Algiers in Algeria and the traditional quarter clustered around it. More generally, a kasbah is the walled citadel of many North African cities and towns...
. Then civil war between native Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
ns and European settlers (pied-noirs) in which the sides exchange acts of increasing violence, leading to the introduction of French army paratroopers to hunt the National Liberation Front
National Liberation Front (Algeria)
The National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was set up on November 1, 1954 as a merger of other smaller groups, to obtain independence for Algeria from France.- Anticolonial struggle :...
(FLN). The paratroopers are depicted as winning the battle by neutralizing the whole of the FLN leadership either through assassination or through capture. However, the film ends with a coda
Coda (music)
Coda is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece to an end. Technically, it is an expanded cadence...
depicting demonstrations and rioting for independence by native Algerians, suggesting that although France won the Battle of Algiers, she lost the Algerian War.
The tactics of the FLN guerrilla insurgency
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
and the French counter insurgency
Counter insurgency
A counter-insurgency or counterinsurgency involves actions taken by the recognized government of a nation to contain or quell an insurgency taken up against it...
, and the uglier incidents of the war, are shown. Colonizer and colonized commit atrocities against civilians. The FLN commandeer the Casbah via summary execution
Summary execution
A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...
of native Algerian criminals and other (considered) traitors, and applied terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
to harass the civilian French colonials. The French colonialists resort to lynch mobs and indiscriminate, racist violence against the natives to hand. Paratroops routinely torture
Torture during the Algerian War
Elements of the French Armed Forces as well as of the opposing Algerian National Liberation Front made use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence , creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet estimates that there were "possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of...
, intimidate, and murder in combating the FLN insurgents. Pontecorvo and Solinas have several protagonists, based on historical war figures. The story begins and ends from the perspective of Ali la Pointe (Brahim Hagiag), a petty criminal who is politically radicalized while in prison, and is then recruited to the FLN, by the (fictional) military commander El-hadi Jafar (Saadi Yacef, playing a character based on himself).
Lieutenant-Colonel Mathieu, the paratroop commander, is the principal French character. Other characters are the boy Petit Omar, a street urchin who is an FLN messenger; Larbi Ben M'hidi
Larbi Ben M'hidi
Mohammed Larbi Ben M'hidi ), commonly known as Larbi Ben M'hidi or simply as Ben M'hidi, was a prominent Algerian leader during the war of independence. He was captured by French paratroopers in February 1957 , while supervising the guerilla actions of the FLN in the Battle of Algiers...
, a top FLN leader, is the film’s political rationale for the insurgency; Djamila
Djamila Bouhired
Djamila Bouhired is an Algerian revolutionary.Bouhired is a nationalist who opposed French colonial rule of Algeria. Djamila Bouhired was raised in a middle-class family, she went to a French school and joined the Algerian National Liberation Front while a student activist. Later, she worked as a...
, Zohra
Zohra Drif
Zohra Drif Bitat is a retired lawyer and the vice-president of the of the Council of the Nation, the upper house of the Algerian Parliament...
, and Hassiba
Hassiba Benbouali
Hassiba Ben Bouali was a female hero of the Algerian independence war .She was born in Chlef, Algeria. Her parents installed themselves in Algiers in 1947, where she followed her studies in the Lycée Delacroix . She adhered to the Scout Movement and discovered the Algerian people's misery by...
, three FLN women urban guerrillas who effect a revenge-attack. Moreover, The Battle of Algiers features thousands of Algerian extras; director Pontecorvo’s intended effect was the “Casbah-as-chorus
Greek chorus
A Greek chorus is a homogenous, non-individualised group of performers in the plays of classical Greece, who comment with a collective voice on the dramatic action....
”, communicating with chanting, wailing, and physical effect.
Screenplay
The Battle of Algiers was inspired by Souvenirs de la Bataille d'Alger, by Saadi Yacef, the campaign account of an FLN military commander. The book, written by Yacef, while a prisoner of the French, was FLN morale-boosting propagandaPropaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
for militants. After independence, Yacef was released and became part of the new government. The Algerian government backed a film of Yacef’s memoir; exiled FLN man Salash Baazi approached the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo
Gillo Pontecorvo was an Italian filmmaker. He worked as a film director for more than a decade before his best known film La battaglia di Algeri was released...
and screenwriter Franco Solinas with the project.
Solinas’s first draft screenplay, titled Parà, is the story told from the perspective of a disenchanted French paratrooper. The filmmakers initially developed their project with Paul Newman in mind. Baazi rejected that idea, because it relegates Algerian suffering to the backdrop. Moreover, Yacef wrote his own screenplay, which the Italian producers rejected as too-biased towards the Algerians. Although sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, the Italian businessmen insisted on dealing with events from a neutral perspective. The final screenplay of Battle of Algiers has an Algerian protagonist, and depicts the cruelty and suffering of French and Algerians.
Jacques Massu
Jacques Émile Massu was a French general who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War, the Algerian War and the Suez crisis.-Early life:Jacques Massu was born in Châlons-sur-Marne to a family of military officers; his father was an artillery officer...
. Saadi Yacef has stated that Mathieu was actually more based on Marcel Bigeard
Marcel Bigeard
Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards...
, although the character is also reminiscent of Roger Trinquier
Roger Trinquier
Roger Trinquier was a French Army officer during World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War, serving mainly in airborne and Special forces units...
. Accused of portraying him as too elegant and noble, screenplay writer Solinas denied that this was his intention; the Colonel is “elegant and cultured, because Western civilization is neither inelegant nor uncultured”. Actor Jean Martin later explained the character had been conceived from the start as a decent man doing his job, and that he himself had done his best to make him as sympathetic as possible.
Visual style
For Battle of Algiers, Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti filmed in black and white and experimented with various techniques to give the film the look of newsreel and documentary film. The effect was convincing enough that American releases carried a disclaimer that "not one foot" of newsreel was used. Although "Battle of Algiers" is considered to be realistic in style, one might consider the film to not completely follow traditional documentary aesthetics. The film is quite heavily processed in some sequences, with image contrast being brought up for key dramatic moments, such as assassination sequences. The film is also mostly shot with a locked-off camera, meaning no dolly movements or complicated set-ups, but also no hand-held shots which would in today's visual language more appeal to a typical documentary look.Cast
Pontecorvo chose to cast from non-professional Algerians he met, picking them mainly on appearance and emotional effect (as a consequence, many of their lines were dubbed). The sole professional actor in the film was Jean MartinJean Martin
Jean Martin was a French actor of stage and screen. Martin served in the French Resistance during World War II and later fought with the French paratroopers in Indochina. Theatrically, he is perhaps best-known for originating two roles in Samuel Beckett's most famous plays: Lucky in Waiting for...
who played Col. Mathieu; Martin was a French actor who had worked primarily in theatre. Pontecorvo wanted a professional actor, but one whom audiences wouldn't be too familiar with, which could have interfered with the film's intended realism. Martin had been fired several years earlier from the Théâtre National Populaire
Théâtre National Populaire
The Théâtre National Populaire is a theatre now at Villeurbanne, France. It was founded in 1920 by Firmin Gémier in Paris. The theater's policy is to deliver quality entertainment accessible to the general public....
for signing the manifesto of the 121
Manifesto of the 121
The Manifesto of the 121 was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine Vérité-Liberté. It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for...
against the Algerian War. Martin had also served in a paratroop regiment during the Indochina War as well as the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
, thus giving his character an autobiographical element. The working relationship between Martin and Pontecorvo was not always easy, as the director, unsure that Martin's professional acting style wouldn't contrast too much with that of the non-professionals, kept arguing with his acting choices.
Sound and music
Sound—both music and effects—performs important functions in the film. Indigenous Algerian drumming, rather than dialogue, is heard during a scene in which female FLN militants prepare for a bombing. In addition, Pontecorvo used the sounds of gunfire, helicopters and truck engines to symbolize the French approach to the battle, while bomb blasts, ululationUlulation
A is a long, wavering, high-pitched vocal sound resembling a howl with a trilling quality. It is produced by emitting a high pitched loud voice accompanied with a rapid movement of the tongue and the uvula. The term ululation is an onomatopoeic word derived from Latin...
, wailing and chanting symbolize the Algerian approach.
Critical acclaim
Pontecorvo resisted any temptation to romanticise the protagonists. The atrocities committed by the French and the terrorist strikes of the FLN are both portrayed. The film's essential fair-mindedness is perhaps its most striking and skillful feature. It won the Golden LionGolden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
and was nominated for three Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
including Best Screenplay (Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas), Best Director (Gillo Pontecorvo) and Best Foreign Language Film. Other awards include The City of Venice Cinema Prize (1966); the International Critics Award (1966); the City of Imola Prize (1966); the Italian Silver Ribbon Prize (director, photography, producer); Ajace Prize of the Cinema d'Essai (1967); the Italian Golden Asphodel (1966); Diosa de Plata at the Acapulco Film Festival (1966); the Golden Grolla (1966); the Riccione Prize (1966); voted "Best Film of 1967" by Cuban critics in a poll sponsored by Cuban magazine Cine, and the United Churches of America Prize for 1967. In 2010, the film was ranked #6 in Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema".
Political controversies in the 1960s
The film produced considerable political controversy in France and was banned thereCensorship in France
France has a long history of governmental censorship, particularly in the 16th to 18th centuries, but today freedom of press is guaranteed by the French Constitution and instances of governmental censorship are relatively limited and isolated....
for five years. The sympathetic treatment of the FLN in The Battle of Algiers often dismayed former French colonists of Algiers (the pieds-noirs) and French army troops.
The Battle of Algiers and guerilla movements
The release of The Battle of Algiers coincided with the decolonizationDecolonization
Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the unequal relation of polities whereby one people or nation establishes and maintains dependent Territory over another...
period and national liberation wars, as well as a rising tide of left-wing radicalism in Western nations in which a large minority showed interest in armed struggle. Beginning in the late 1960s, The Battle of Algiers gained a reputation for inspiring political violence; in particular the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorism
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
in the film were supposedly copied by the Black Panthers, Provisional Irish Republican Army
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front. The Battle of Algiers was apparently also Andreas Baader
Andreas Baader
Andreas Bernd Baader was one of the first leaders of the German left-wing militant organization Red Army Faction, also commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.- Life :...
's favourite movie.
1960s screening in Argentina
Antonio Caggiano, archbishop of Buenos Aires from 1959 to 1975, inaugurated with President Arturo FrondiziArturo Frondizi
Arturo Frondizi Ercoli was the President of Argentina between May 1, 1958, and March 29, 1962, for the Intransigent Radical Civic Union.-Early life:Frondizi was born in Paso de los Libres, Corrientes Province...
(Radical Civic Union
Radical Civic Union
The Radical Civic Union is a political party in Argentina. The party's positions on issues range from liberal to social democratic. The UCR is a member of the Socialist International. Founded in 1891 by radical liberals, it is the oldest political party active in Argentina...
, UCR) the first course on counter-revolutionary warfare in the Higher Military College (Frondizi was eventually overthrown for being "tolerant of Communism"). By 1963, cadets at the (then infamously well-known) Navy Mechanics School
ESMA
The Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics , commonly referred to by its abbreviation ESMA, is a facility of the Argentine Navy that was employed as an illegal detention center during the dictatorial rule of the National Reorganization Process...
(ESMA) started receiving counter-insurgency classes. In one of their courses, they were shown the film The Battle of Algiers. Caggiano, the military chaplain at the time, introduced the film approvingly and added a religiously oriented commentary to it. Anibal Acosta, one of the ESMA cadet interviewed 35 years later by French journalist Marie-Monique Robin
Marie-Monique Robin
Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist. She received the Albert Londres Prize in 1995 for Voleurs d'yeux, an expose about organ theft...
described the session:
They showed us that film to prepare us for a kind of war very different from the regular war we had entered the Navy School for. They were preparing us for police missions against the civilian population, who became our new enemy.
Israeli screening during the First Intifada
The film was banned in Israel for many years. It was shown for several months at the Tel Aviv CinemathequeCinematheque
A cinémathèque is a French word used to refer to a film archive with small cinemas that screens particularly classic and art-house films.- History :...
in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the First Intifada
First Intifada
The First Intifada was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem....
and aroused considerable interest and public attention. In general, Left-wing commentators used the film to bolster their argument that attempts to subdue the Palestinians by brute force were futile and that Israel had to end its occupation of the West Bank
West Bank
The West Bank ) of the Jordan River is the landlocked geographical eastern part of the Palestinian territories located in Western Asia. To the west, north, and south, the West Bank shares borders with the state of Israel. To the east, across the Jordan River, lies the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan...
and Gaza Strip
Gaza Strip
thumb|Gaza city skylineThe Gaza Strip lies on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Strip borders Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the south, east and north. It is about long, and between 6 and 12 kilometres wide, with a total area of...
, while right-wingers asserted that Israel's situation vis-a-vis these territories, forming a territorial continuity with pre-1967 Israel, was not comparable to France and Algeria which are separated by the Mediterranean. The comparison of Israel's situation with the Algerian War continued to crop up in the Israeli political debate also after the film ceased to be shown, and remains a recurrent topic up to the present.
2003 Pentagon screening
In 2003, the film again made the news after the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The PentagonThe Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:
- "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."
According to the Defense Department official (Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict) in charge of the screening, "Showing the film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French."
2003-2004 theatrical re-release
At the time of the 2003 Pentagon screening, legal and "pirateCopyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
" VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
versions of the film were available in the United States and elsewhere, but the image quality was degraded. An Italian film restoration had been done in 1999. The restored print allowed Rialto Pictures to acquire the distribution rights for a December 1, 2003 theatrical re-release in the United Kingdom, a January 9, 2004 theatrical re-release in the United States and May 19, 2004 in France. The film was shown in the Espace Accattone
Accattone
Accattone is a 1961 Italian drama film written and directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Despite being filmed from an original screenplay, academics perceive Accattone as a cinematic rendition of Pasolini's earlier novels, particularly Boys of Life and A Violent Life...
rue Cujas in Paris from 15 November 2006 to 6 March 2007.
2004 Criterion edition
On October 12, 2004, The Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
released the film, transferred from a restored print, in a 3-disc DVD set. The extras include former United States counter-terrorism advisors Richard A. Clarke
Richard A. Clarke
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
and Michael A. Sheehan
Michael A. Sheehan
Michael A. Sheehan is a United States author and former government official and military officer.-Education:Sheehan graduated from Christian Brothers Academy in New Jersey in 1973 and the United States Military Academy in 1977...
discussing The Battle of Algierss depiction of terrorism and guerrilla warfare and directors Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....
, Mira Nair
Mira Nair
Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...
, Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
and Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Stone became well known in the late 1980s and the early 1990s for directing a series of films about the Vietnam War, for which he had previously participated as an infantry soldier. His work frequently focuses on...
discussing its influence on film. Another documentary includes interviews with FLN members Saadi Yacef and Zohra Drif
Zohra Drif
Zohra Drif Bitat is a retired lawyer and the vice-president of the of the Council of the Nation, the upper house of the Algerian Parliament...
.
See also
- Battle of Algiers (1957)Battle of Algiers (1957)The Battle of Algiers was a campaign of guerrilla warfare carried out by the National Liberation Front against the French Algerian authorities from late 1956 to late 1957. The conflict began as a series of hit-and-run attacks by the FLN against the French Police in Algiers. Violence escalated...
- Torture during the Algerian WarTorture during the Algerian WarElements of the French Armed Forces as well as of the opposing Algerian National Liberation Front made use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence , creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet estimates that there were "possibly hundreds of thousands of instances of...
- List of submissions to the 39th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
- List of Italian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Further reading
- Aussaresses, General Paul. The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957. (New York, Enigma Books, 2010) ISBN 978-1-929631-30-8.