Gillo Pontecorvo’s reconstruction of the Algerian revolt is gripping, lucid and hard to bear. Its documentary style makes the violence feel close, though the concentration on the campaign sometimes leaves too little time with the people caught in it.
Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is a war film we would recommend even to people who usually avoid war films, provided they can face its cruelty. Its account of the Algerian revolt against French rule makes the fighting comprehensible without allowing familiarity to dull the horror. Pontecorvo wants us to follow how an urban struggle works: the organisation, the attacks, the retaliation. He gives that work the pace of a thriller, and refuses to make the suffering incidental.
Marcello Gatti’s black-and-white photography gives the reconstruction the apparent immediacy of news footage. That resemblance matters because it discourages us from settling down to admire a neatly arranged historical drama; the people seem to have more pressing things to do than be photographed. The images retain enough detail to keep individuals visible within the larger struggle. Gatti makes the scale legible, but our attention keeps returning to faces.
Editors Mario Morra and Mario Serandrei make the guerrilla campaign unusually easy to follow. The suspense comes from understanding what is being attempted and what it might cost. Sergio Canevari’s production design sustains the impression of a city where people have to keep living through all this. The urban setting never becomes a convenient collection of targets. This is large-scale reconstruction with an eye for ordinary life, and that attention makes the danger more distressing.
Brahim Hadjadj, as Ali La Pointe, gives the film a watchful, resistant human presence amid the explanations of tactics. Jean Martin’s Colonel Philippe Mathieu is credible enough to make the military reasoning uncomfortable to hear. Yacef Saâdi’s El-Hadi Jaffar belongs to the same restrained performance style. The acting fits the documentary manner, though the concentration on the collective struggle has a cost. We sometimes want longer with a person before the campaign requires our attention elsewhere.
We were horrified by the torture; understanding the conflict did nothing to make the suffering easier to watch. Pontecorvo is clear about the violence committed by both sides, and political sympathy never excuses the damage to human beings. The film’s sympathies lie with the independence struggle, which makes its blunt account of resistance violence more demanding. The attention to civilian suffering prevents the tactics from becoming an entertaining puzzle.
The music by Ennio Morricone and Pontecorvo supplies a mournful accompaniment to the account of tactics. It gives us time to register the suffering as something more than the result of a military decision. Occasionally it presses a feeling that the photography has already earned, and we notice the persuasion. More often, its sadness is necessary: without it, we might become too interested in how the fighting works and pay too little attention to whom it hurts.
Some of the praise emphasises the film’s neutrality. We do not think that describes a drama so plainly sympathetic to independence, or so attentive to suffering. Its achievement as a political war film is to let that sympathy survive an honest account of what armed resistance involves. We recommend it, with a firm warning about the torture and civilian suffering.
