Weekly Classics: The battle of Algiers
“We are after all a white European people, with Greek and Latin culture and Christian religion … Have you seen the Muslims with their turbans and jellabas? The Arabs are Arab and the French are French. Do you think that French society could absorb 10 million Muslims who will soon be 20 million? My village would no longer be called Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises [Colombey-two-churches] but Colombey-les-Deux-Mosquees! [Colombey-two-mosques]
-Charles de Gaulle De Gaulle knew, better than most people, what a resistance to foreign occupation was all about. He was after all the most prominent figure of the French resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II. He knew that the Algerians would fight to the bitter end to gain their freedom and throw off the French colonial yolk that had ruled them for 130 years. He also knew that it was inevitable that France and Algeria would have to go their separate ways. Parting may have been sweet sorrow for a number of French nationalists, but for de Gaulle it was a forgone conclusion. A question of when rather than if, Algeria would be free. Algeria had been a French colony since 1830 and was regarded as different from other French ‘possessions’ in their empire. One major difference was that unlike other colonies, Algeria had been administered as a part of France itself. Another difference was that there were over one million European settlers in Algeria, compared to nine million indigenous Arab Muslims. Algérie Française (French Algeria) was what the Europeans and a number of Muslims fervently believed in. Algeria and France were one for them and total integration between the two was what was desired. Though, the European settlers were not too keen on the indigenous people being put on the same level as themselves. The Europeans were known as pieds noirs (black feet) because when they first came to the shores of Algeria, their black boots made them stand out from the locals, who were mostly barefoot. The pied noirs had lived in Algeria for generations and felt they had as much right to live there as the local Arabs. When a group calling itself the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched a series of attacks on the European settlers on November 1 1954, the French government sent in the army to crush the FLN. What followed was a bloody and brutal conflict that lasted for nearly eight years and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Torture, bombings, cold blooded killings and other horrific atrocities continued for years. It electrified other anti-colonialist struggles and shocked the world as well. The Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo was one man who was fascinated by the Algerian freedom struggle. A staunch leftist and veteran of the anti-fascist struggle in Italy, Pontecorvo was also influenced by French Marxist Frantz Fanon, who was also a member of the FLN.
Ali la Pointe on the other hand, feels no sympathy for his opponents. A small petty criminal who reinvents himself as an Algerian nationalist, he is the most zealous and at times the most frightening member of the resistance. His eyes are so full of rage and determination that you sometimes have to wonder whether the actor portraying him knows that he is working on a film.
‘The Battle of Algiers’ is cinema at its most electrifying. The performance of the cast (many of whom lived through and participated in the actual events) along with Ennio Morricone’s haunting theme music and the relentless pace of the film is astonishing. Pontecorvo’s film was as relevant back in the 1960s as it is now. In some cases, the basic premise of fighting an insurgency is not the same, because in this day and age, not all insurgents have legitimate grievances. However, watch this film to see the extent to which insurgents and those that try to counter it will go to achieve their objectives. View Dawn.com’s weekly classics archive here. Raza Ali Sayeed is a journalist at Dawn.com and can be reached at rsayeed1984@gmail.com