The Battle of Algiers

Book excerpt: Commissioned by Algerians and made by Italians, with dialogue in Arabic and French, The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) is a classic of political cinema, equally influential to art-house and popular cinema. The film's complex consideration of the efficacy of torture and terrorism means it is a key text for thinking about the ethics of conflict, and it is studied not only by scholars of cinema but also by political scientists and historians, not to mention by military and revolutionary groups. If The Battle of Algiers is a 'birth of a nation' film in a melodramatic mode (something regularly disavowed in favour of its supposedly 'documentary' realism), it is also an 'end of empire' film. It ambivalently pictures the failure of a Utopian project imposed by the French colonizer and looks forward in time to circumstances in postcolonial Europe even as it celebrates the achievement of an African nation.