Gillo Pontecorvo
La battaglia di Algeri

The other night I had the house to myself, and since my boyfriend is on Erasmus, a friend of mine offered to keep me company. I recognized the risk of the situation, but to avoid unpleasant repercussions—considering that my friend Simona (nicknamed, not by chance, "Simòn de Boudoir": I hope you get the reference) was unavailable as a buffer—I accepted the kind, albeit not entirely selfless, offer; on the condition that after dinner (takeaway) we would watch a film of my choosing. At this point, given the circumstances, I decided to pick a film that was: a) sufficiently long and heavy; b) not reviewed on Debaser. After scandalously discovering that among over 30,000 reviews (many of which are useless and poorly written) on Debaser n-o-n-e dealt with "The Battle of Algiers" by Gillo Pontecorvo, I ordered that we watch that film. Now let's review it and fill this s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g g-a-p, trying to write something intelligent and not trite, as seems to happen in most cases.

Algiers, late 1950s. The old city, inhabited by the native Arab and Muslim population, is in turmoil; the winds of revolution against the French citizens, all gathered in the modern city, and more generally against the foreign oppressor who has colonized the coasts of Algeria for over a century, are blowing. Some young intellectuals have formed a protest group that decides to take up arms and concrete actions against the foreign ruler. The transformation of the group into a terrorist cell spread throughout Arab society is inevitable, as are the initial protest actions, followed by murderous actions against the civilian and military population. The French Government does not remain inactive, sending, within a few months, a paratrooper command led by Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin, the only professional actor used in the filming), charged with breaking up the terrorist group and restoring order to Algerian society. The French will succeed in their mission, although the peace is far from definitive, radicalizing a conflict destined to explode in the following years until the liberation of the Algerian people from French colonization in the early 1960s.

Pontecorvo directs a work of rare beauty and charm, using an extremely realistic language that permeates the entire work: from the mentioned choice of non-professional actors to the selection of locations, which, thanks to agreements with the Algerian government of the time, coincided with the places where the historical events that serve as the backdrop to the plot actually took place. Added to this is the choice of black-and-white photography, which gives the film an almost documentary dimension. The choice is not only formal but also content-related: if we analyze the subject, script, and plot of the film, it is easy to see how the director and the team opted for an unmediated (that is, "non-mediated") description of history, putting us directly in medias res, in a harrowing present where we grasp all the tension of impending terror.

There is no lead actor, and everything revolves around the affairs of the terrorist group; which certainly has leaders, none of whom, however, are placed at the center of the scene, except for purely dramatic purposes. Above all, the figure of the stolid French colonel stands out, but he himself turns out to be an almost expressionless character, from his first appearance on the scene with eyes veiled by mirrored glasses, almost to conceal the mirror of the soul by hiding all emotion. In this, Pontecorvo’s style seems to me akin to that of the early Rosi, and, tracing back in stylistic attributions and paternity, to that of Rossellini in "Rome, Open City," so much so that this film could in some ways be entitled as "Algiers, Open City," without losing sight of the work’s meaning and aims.

What I've been writing so far—upon rereading—dangerously borders on the banal and adds nothing—if not (I hope) for the expressive style—to what you can easily find online or in some specific publication. Some less trivial insights were offered by a question I asked, halfway through the film and suddenly, to my guest, captivated by the French military epic: "Do you think," I asked, "this film is on the side of the Algerians or the French?" "Well...on the side of the Algerians, of course!" my friend replied. I, too, am sure of this fact. Yet it doesn't completely satisfy me, it doesn't tell the whole story. I was struck, in this regard, by the phrase that the French colonel utters halfway through the film when, putting his hands forward no less than I did in accepting my guest at home, he expressly declares not to be a fascist or an oppressor, also for having participated with his company in the French resistance against the Nazi occupier (I highlighted it in bold because I want you to reflect on it carefully!). The phrase echoed in my head throughout the second part of the film, effectively representing the latent opposition that exists in Pontecorvo’s Algiers between the European soul and the Arab one: the French city is clear, geometric, sharp in its avenues an imitation of St. Germain's boulevards; the Arab city dark, chaotic, concave, similar to Arab cities or the center of Palermo's darkest, in contrast with the wide Savoyard avenues; the French army is organized in no less Cartesian a manner, as Cartesian is the military parade, Cartesian is the map of affiliates to the organization to be dismantled that the colonel marks on the board, Cartesian is the control of spaces, the attempt to separate, sever, discern the old city and the new with its inhabitants, as if good was on one side, evil on the other.

Everything is, less Cartesian, with the Algerians described in this film, whose terrorist strength comes from being a swarm of people united in goals but divided in means and techniques, acting with a fair amount of improvisation and amateurism, strengthened by a determination of those who want to free themselves from the chain of the oppressor, immediately and without mediations. Fierce, unsettling, coming from the depths of the soul and heart is the cry of the population in the film's final scenes that, when many terrorists irrationally and despairingly commited suicide, calls for the final revolt.

In all this, Pontecorvo leaves me with doubts: favorable to the Algerians, justly on the side of the weak and oppressed; but, at the same time, perhaps because of the unconfessed and implicit European matrix of the film (of the very act of "filming" a film, which in the end is to reduce reality to a Cartesian scheme by representing and simplifying it, from the first European and Parisian screenings by the Lumière brothers), inadvertently on the side of European rationality and the ability of the European man to dominate the world, things, by occupying and subdividing spaces, giving it a form that is the "normative mindset" (the ought-to-be) characteristic of the last three hundred years of our history.

I like to think that the director was unaware of this, and I like to think that the idea of European rationality has been disavowed and surpassed by Heisenberg and the uncertainty principle, i.e., by a physicist like Pontecorvo's brother; but speculative to the latter, both for adherence, albeit debated, to Nazism (Pontecorvo was a communist, as well as a Jew), and for the subsequent escape to the United States (Pontecorvo found asylum in Stalin's USSR).

And yet, though surpassed by the facts and disavowed by the Nazism that the same colonel present in Algiers fought against, the normative dimension of European rationality, at times, seems to resurface, and I cannot forget how the expulsion of the French from Algeria, at the beginning of the 1960s, did not prevent equally devastating collective and fratricidal tragedies, as recalls the face of the weeping woman of Benthala who in the mid-1990s represented the drama of Algeria shattered by internal and fratricidal strife.

These are indeterminate times, ours, and only in ourselves and our personal dimension can we find a light that makes us less "fireflies/that dwell in the darkness" (it's a quote from Battiato, but of biblical ancestry!). I must remember to point this out to Simòn de Boudoir too, damn her (let me close with a touch of humor; otherwise, it seems like I take myself too seriously!!!).