In the early sixties Yacef Saadi, an ex-combattent of the F.L.N. (National Liberation Front) came to Italy to look for a co-producer and director, for a film about Algerian independence. In the sixties, Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas, start work on Parà, dealing with the struggles for Algerian independence. This was to have been a co-production with the U.S.A; but a collaboration with the Americans did not materialise. Pontecorvo and Solinas decided to turn to Antonio Musu of the Igor Film of Rome. He, together with Saadi for the Casbah Film of Algiers, was to become one of the producers of the film.
Much has been written about the chorality of this film and the research carried out by Pontecorvo, to merge hundreds of voices of Algerian people, in the movements and actions of of the young "non - character" La Pointe. La Pointe discovers himself at the same time as he becomes aware of the living conditions of his people.
His being a non-character, a "catalyst", enables Pontecorvo to do without any kind of plot, trusting completely to the march of events and creating an admirable mixture of reportage-inquest-documentary. This may be considered the most distinctive and, if you like, original part of the whole film. Using all the fragmentariness and "imperfection" of journalistic images, Pontecorvo creates a kind of work in progress, representing the streets of the Algerian capital.
He rejects the idea of a harmonious composition, deliberately, on ethical principles. This conscious and rigorous sacrificing of dramatisation compels the spectator continuously to interpret the meaning of the action.
The sequences that show us violence on the streets of Algiers are counterpointed with the
scenes in which Algerian guerillas are tortured by the French military. It is important to stress this, because the Battle of Algiers is also a film about violence. The places that are presented, both the Casbah (market) with narrow alleys or the interiors of French villas in Algiers (see the famous Villa Sesini) are two different scenes of utter ferocity. This relationship violence-place, enables us to better focus also on those who perpetrate these actions; it is a frightening triangle without a vertical which unites the who, the how, and the where.
The "villa" outside the city becomes almost a place name for contemporary violence, not to mention the stories of the terrible Villa Grimaldi at Santiago in Chile. And it would not be difficult to find even today, other similar examples.
Pontecorvo starts the film with torture, the only "arm" able to strike at the roots of the symbolical
human universe. These scenes, which bccome an out and out dissection of colonial violence,
remind us with innuendoes that everything here is born and developed with frightening rationality.
It is important to understand Pontecorvo's rigor there is nothing irrational about torture, the director seems to say, everything is strictly disciplined. Only the use of the music (The St Mathew Passion of Bach) introduces a kind of diversion from the surrounding ambience, a safety anchor for the spectator, nostalgia for the fullness of human values.
The brief press conference that Col.Mathieu holds in the second part of the film, is essentially connected to the opening sequence; France cannot give up Algeria and to this end no holds are barred. The important thing is how the colonel talks about accepting the "necessary consequences".
If we have seen that torture and its negative consequences clearly belong to the military class, (with the visible well-being of the ruling class) the question as to what happens on the streets of Algiers turns out to be something distinctly different and definitely ambiguous.
It may seem terrible but there is something "tremendously human" in the lynching by the French colonials of the local population. Pontecorvo takes us into a realm of torture, of houses designed to humiliate prisoners, but in shooting the different scenes he always manages to capture the significant differences between these two forms of violence. The villa outside the city is the place chosen for military torture and scientifically planned cruelty, a kind of monopoly which helps all colonial powers to prosper. The streets, on the other hand, are the scene of something less programmed and rational. In the lynching carried out by the coloniale we can see all the irrationality and fright created by terrorist acts.
But is not the human irrationality, which leads the French colonials to attack Algerian civilians, another consequence of colonialism?
The difference between what we might call street violence and the reply of torture is traced in terms of methods and intentions.
The disorder and violent re-actions of the colonials cannot be compared to what happens inside Villa Sesini, where rational thought has only one end: to annihilate human beings.
The extraordinary scenes in which Algerian women carry bombs into the premises frequented by the colonials, shows us that colonialism has created an ecosystem of violence. Human beings are pitched against each other, and there is no choice but to fight each other.
This particularised research into human violence is one of the most controversial and fascinating aspects of the film.
The search for truth in this case, leads Gillo Pontecorvo to create a choral film, but not an epic; a film without big heroes but one which manages continually to put man himself at the centre of (a particolar of no small importance!) The evident extemporaneity of this film is the fruit of a rigorous moral direction. Consequently, The Battle of Algiers had numerous problems of distribution, especially in countries like France and England, where the film was banned until 1971.
Gillo Pontecorvo definitely gives us a different vision of Africa. It is significant that in France the
film met with a lot of resistance; This film denounces openly the methods employed by French arms and the decision of the Minister of the Interior Francois Mitterand, to
give a completely free hand to the armed forces. So in our opinion it is a most courageous and important gesture.
The opening scenes show us La Pointe and some of his companions behind a mock wall.
The camera moves slowly, brushing lightly over the faces in the foreground that are shown in a subdued light. The gentle movement of the camera over the faces of these persons, suggests to us with great delicacy the humanity of those who here fought for their liberty.
The director uses this brief space not to restore dignity to those excluded from history (presupposing a marked disequilbrium in relationships) but to create if only briefly a an intense moment of meeting. For Pontecorvo, cinema has a social role and must speak "to the others" and not only "of the others". In this way it may extend the "texture"of the film itself beyond the screen.
Who knows, perhaps those who have just a "walk on part in history" will acquire in the eyes of censors the status of human beings.
The pristine light of cinema will always guard these faces; maybe in the eyes of his detractors, Pontecorvo is guilty just for this.
