Colonialism and Feminist Studies in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Film Battle of Algiers

In the film, Battagli di Algiers or Battle of Algiers (1966), the two main ideological approaches which emerge are Colonialism and Feminist Studies and this film conforms to the Third Cinema movement prevalent in the 1960s. The Battle of Algiers covers crucial years in Algerian history from the Revolution and leading up to the proclamation of Independence (1954 – 1962). “(The film) is […] a starkly realistic re-enactment of events as they substantially occurred between 1954 and 1957 in the rebellion against the French in the capital of Algeria” (Crowther).

Under colonial control, Algerians are subjected to inhumanities and injustices, without freedom. On the other hand, the French colonizers suffer also through Algerian uprising. However, in this conflict, women rise up and are actively engaged in the Anti-Colonial fight. In this endeavour, the feminist voice is raised as women are allowed more liberty to move in both the private and the public sphere. Algerian women wax militant and show themselves brave along with their male counterparts. They acquire a newfound voice and power hitherto denied them.

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Third Cinema throws light on the plight of third-world countries complete with poverty, propaganda, politics, protests, prisons and prejudice. “Historically, Third Cinema received its impetus from the success of the French New Wave and its use of Italian neorealism for low-cost, location-based, improvisational cinematic practices” (Gazetas 296). “One of the Third Cinema’s more readily noticeable characteristics seems to be the adoption of a historically analytic, yet culturally specific mode of cinematic discourse” (Gazetas 296). “It is the expression of a new culture and of social changes […] (giving) an account of reality and history” (Gazetas 297).

The Battle of Algiers subscribes to all these characteristics of Third Cinema because of its reality content, political messages, historicity, and the use of non-professional actors as exemplified in Italian Neo-Realism and the low-budget production, and iconoclasm in French New Wave.

In this film, women assert themselves as men’s equals in playing a part in Algerian politics. The anti-colonial “political leaders make another leap; (they) remove all restrictions, to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women” (Fanon 51). There is “the politics of femininity in relationship to the anticolonial struggles of the Algerian woman” (Decker 181), so her voice joins with the man claiming Algerian independence and at the same time, her voice is raised for freedom for male restraint for one observes that without that stifling control, the Algerian woman thrives although faced with many cultural, and religious restrictions.

The Muslim principle maintains that Muslim women are subject to male dominance. As tokens of the Algerian woman’s invisibility, one observes her shrouded in long, voluminous, white robes with the face and mouth covered. “The veil means that the woman is present in the men’s world, but invisible; she has no right to be in the street. To play her role within the phallocentric economy, the Algerian woman must be more veiled (and less noticeable) than the Algerian man” (Decker 182). In the patriarchal Muslim world, she has no rights but to tend to her family and children at home. In politics she is silent and passive. In religion, rules and restrictions govern her movements and suppress her liberty to assert herself. In other words, the typical Arabic, Algerian, Muslim woman is powerless. This subjugation of the woman is common, and widely accepted by Muslim society. One must note that Algiers is a nation which espouses Islam as the national religion therefore, the woman is not only controlled by politics, and state but also by the hegemony of religion. Arabic men are very protective of the female body; therefore it comes as no surprise that she cannot be touched at all not even by the colonizers. During the time of revolution, these ostensible disadvantages work to her favour and the revolution’s.

These apparent female civil and religious restrictions however, redound to the woman’s benefit as well as to the benefit of the revolutionary cause. Women rise to the status and calibre of men for they are as efficient and deadly in carrying out subversive activity. They are on par with men for they are as ruthless and destructive, heroic and patriotic. The Algerian revolutionary movement gives rise to a new wave of women liberation, where women gain an opportunity to be involved in a movement larger than themselves. “After some hesitation on the part of the male leaders, a significant innovation is made in the combat strategies of the FLN – women join the public struggle. […] it is the Algerian woman’s presence and action that promote the cause of the revolution” (Decker 191).Women become politically active and become the movers and the shakers in their nation’s history. Because of the Arab woman’s public invisibility and the sanctity of her body, she passes under the unsuspecting colonial eye. The least suspected becomes the most lethal weapon of destruction in the struggle against colonialism, engaged in the fight for independence. In the film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), ammunition are hidden under the folds of her clothing, and embedded in her market baskets. She shelters in her home the revolutionaries when they are on the run from police and in the closing scenes of the movie, she chants slogans and dances in the streets facing the French forces with her men-folk. She is an agent for key gun transfers and also operates as undercover spies for the revolutionary cause. She aids in planting bombs in public places and agitates in the streets in protest against French Colonialism. The veil hides her face therefore shielding her identity from discovery. There is also the general false belief that because of her soft, gentle, passive, feminine nature, the Arab woman is incapable of wreaking such havoc, participating in such murderous, belligerent, and violent activity. Even the FLN members like the protagonist, Ali La Pointe, resort to dressing as Algerian women carrying guns as they move in the public hence one sees that the female figure becomes a utility in the hands of the Anti-colonial force in Algeria.

When Muslim women begin to acquire more and more unwanted attention as targets, the FLN adopt a strategy/ technique where they disguise their female agents as French women. It must be noted that in Algeria, the French woman has much more freedom to move in the public sphere than the Algerian woman without the humiliation of a body search. In addition, she is accorded much more respect by the French soldiers. In one scene, the Muslim women practice the French female habits and mannerism as they emerge as consummate European French women. They adopt the culture’s hairstyle, clothes, make-up and language to be more effective clandestine agents for the FLN moving in the Westernized café’s dancehalls, airport and horse-races. The European disguise is necessary because the locations where they plant bombs are places most frequented by European patrons who are relaxing, socializing and most likely to have their guard down.

In Battle of Algiers (1966), the inhuman(e) practices perpetuated by the French colonizer, sicken the sensitive viewer, and bring tears to the eye. At the beginning of the movie, the spectator observes a starved, haggard man being repeatedly tortured and interrogated. He finally relents and gives Colonel Mathieu critical information leading to the discovery, execution and death of much sought-after Ali La Pointe – key surviving member of the FLN organization. Under physical torture, the French authorities are also able to extract information leading to the whereabouts and arrest of many men and women who are involved in the Algerian Revolution. While in prison, Ali La Pointe witnesses the French authorities executing by decapitation, a rebel who only desires independence for Algeria. In another moving scene, the sadistic French police play card games, jeer, mock and smoke while suspects are afflicted with unbearable cruelty, suffering overwhelming pain.

“Indeed, the film's most harrowing scenes—those of captured rebels undergoing torture at the hands of the military—demand to be shown, to demonstrate the full measure of the inhuman brutality they represent” (Lorenz). During random searches, men and women are dragged out of their homes and then the viewer sees instruments of torture dislocating bones, stretching limbs, electrocuting, and burning suspects under interrogation. The French police forcefully immerse suspects’ heads in the water threatening drowning and judging from lean bodies, starvation is employed as a tactic to compel confessions. The French do drive-by shootings at civilians in the public and these cruel measures attest to their own dehumanization and savagery. When demonstrators are in the streets clamoring for freedom and political independence, the French feel threatened and spray bullets into the crowd and thrash civilians with their batons. Army tanks lunge into the crowd crushing protesters. As violence escalates, paratroopers are deployed and the U.N. also deploys peace-keeping troops. The man who embodies colonial ruthless cruelty is Colonel Mathieu who is unscrupulous in employing torture and inhumanity to achieve his ends.

“(The) colonized people undertake an action against the oppressor, and this oppression is exercised in the form of exacerbated and continuous violence in Algeria” (Fanon 51). The FLN plot and execute many murders against the French authorities and against perceived traitors to the cause. They activate, plant bombs in places frequented by European patrons, and detonate them. The FLN stab and kill many French police officers patrolling the streets. Everyone becomes embroiled in the conflict and innocent lives are lost. Ali La Pointe is assigned to shoot and murder a few police constables in the street which he carries out. The FLN go on a murdering career using strategies similar to modern terrorists: murder – suicide human bombs. The European public sadly becomes the victim of the wrath of the FLN whose aim is to hold the public hostage with fear. The motive of the FLN is to make a political statement by violence against everything related to France, the oppressive colonizer. Time bomb scientists with fatal accuracy set detonators to go off in minutes from activation.

The film, Battalgi di Algiers (1966), is clearly political in nature. There is the undeniable presence and power of propaganda and politics. Messages are conveyed to FLN units through youngsters and women to the male combatants. Colonial public messages blare from loudspeakers asking Algerians to pledge allegiance to mother France. The speakers undermine confidence in FLN by announcing the arrests and executions of several members, discouraging the public morale. On the other hand, Algerian public messages are disseminated by the FLN. The FLN encourages Algerians faithful to the revolutionary cause by negating the allegations of arrests and assures the public of their commitment to independence, love, and determination to gain the victory in the end. The U.N intervenes in the conflict after the FLN stages a lock-in / strike for seven days.

Neo-Colonial oppression and the desire for independence are evident in the movie, Battle of Algiers. In the beginning scenes the FLN announcer declares that,“the time has come to break loose at long last from the bonds of misery in which one hundred and thirty years of colonial oppression has kept us chained. The moment of struggle is near; our goal (is) national independence…the right of our people to self-government” (Daily Script). In the movie the effects of Neo-colonialism and cultural imperialism are plain to the eye since the battle is not only physical but also social. Algerians attempt to hold fast to their culture that is being erased and supplanted by westernization. As a counter-measure the FLN decrees a ban on everything associated with the Western world and Europe/France: Hollywood music, and culture, alcohol, and prostitution. The Algerians purge themselves of French influence by adopting a fundamentalist stance and they assert their identity in the chant, “Long live Algeria!” The intensity of the battle between the neo-colonial and the colonized is reflected in the name of the protagonist, Ali La Pointe. Ali is essentially an Arabic name while La Pointe is French thus, the juxtaposition of both names tells of the both warring entities which confront and oppose one another throughout the movie. Further, the rapid conversational exchange from French to Arabic and vice versa in the movie underlines the combative nature and distinct identity of two cultures which do not get along. “The demonstration scene at the end of the film, with its Algerian-flag waving, ululating protestors, is […] the victory of the people over their imperialistic oppressors – not foreseeing where liberation and independence would lead” (Beary).

Cinema-vérité documentary style of the movie is a cinematic effect that Pontecorvo infuses in this film to depict reality. The movie has the appearance of real news footage. The effect of recorded voices, protests in the street, confrontation between the stone-throwing disgruntled Algerians and the camouflage-clad, armed soldiers with army tanks makes one feel as if one were viewing CNN coverage with featured news in the Middle East (bomb explosions, public interviews/ press conferences with Colonel Mathieu and Ben M’Hadi on allegations of their shady tactics, and the announcement of the deployment of the UN peacekeeping troops. This documentary style the Pontecorvo utilizes enforces the truth and reality of events as they unfold in Algerian history capturing a turbulent time as a new nation is born – prior to the birth of a new nation. “The acting is so natural and convincing that many viewers and even some critics assumed that the movie was a documentary. Only a master director could have taken this raw acting material and (have) gotten such performances out of it” (Beary). Pontecorvo uses non professional actors used in the film and lines are kept to a minimum. The poor and oppressed are the stars of the film and this technique stands in stark contrast to the Hollywood hegemony. “The use of non-professional actors (with the exception of Jean Martin as the French Colonel Mathieu) also contributes to the film's overall impression of events being recorded as they occur” (Lorenz).

To conclude, the film Battagli di Algeri (1966) depicts a nation in transition from Colonialism to independence. Although the battle has forever scarred the Algerian nation’s history, (through the battle) independence was achieved. Another advantage to Colonialism was that in the Revolution effort there was a wave of female empowerment. The Algerian women realizes her potential outside the realm of the home without male oppression/ repression/ restriction. She is given a voice and it is raised against political repression and imperialism. Terrorist or freedom-fighter? It is a matter of perspective. However, in any case, Algerian independence is achieved as the battle is won in the end. Third cinema gives the colonized a voice and stage with the film producer/ production and gives us the perspective of “The Other,” the demonized, the underprivileged and the neglected.