Summary
Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers (1966) opens with a scene set in Algiers, the capital city of Algeria, in 1957. French paratroopers have finished their interrogation of a National Liberation Front member. The Algerian man sits in his underwear, emaciated and staring at the floor. The officers talk about how he has finally spoken. An older officer enters and hands the man a camouflage uniform and cap to dress in, saying they won’t recognize him in the Casbah. The man looks at the uniform in disbelief. Once dressed, the man screams no. He is slapped and threatened with further interrogation unless he cooperates.
The scene cuts to a group of French paratroopers moving in formation through the streets of the Casbah. They shoot the lock of a door and enter a residential building, where they proceed to round up Algerian civilians. The prisoners are pushed with their hands up to the center of a courtyard. The captured man from the first scene brings the French inside a room and shows them where several FLN members are hiding behind a tiled section of wall. A French soldier speaks through the wall to Ali La Pointe, an FLN leader, telling him if that he surrenders, he will have a fair trial.
The film cuts back to Algiers in 1954. There is newsreel-style footage of Algerians in the Casbah. A voiceover speaks the words of a communication distributed by the National Liberation Front (shortened to FLN in French), which calls on Algerians to fight against French colonial rule. They aim to restore an independent Algeria based on “Muslim precepts and respect for human rights regardless of race or religion.”
Several Algerian people are gambling on the street when a police officer sounds his whistle. Ali, who has the cards and is taking bets, runs and is tripped by a white Frenchman or “pied noir.” He gets up and punches the smug Frenchman in the mouth. The Frenchman’s friends pile on Ali, punching and kicking until the cop takes Ali into custody.
The voiceover comments that Ali La Pointe is an illiterate laborer and boxer with a history of run-ins with the law that have occurred since his youth. The scene cuts to Ali in prison, where he shares a room with a group of other inmates. An Algerian man is walked through the prison: he shouts "Long Live Algeria!" and "Allahu akbar!" Other Algerians shout back the same in response, their voices echoing. From an opening in the wall of his group cell, Ali watches as wardens put the Algerian prisoner under the guillotine and decapitate him.
Five months later, Ali is free from prison and back in the Casbah. A child—Petit Omar—brings him a message that Ali makes him read. It details instructions for Ali to kill a policeman who makes a regular stop at a café. There is a plan in place for a veiled woman who will also be at the scene to provide Ali with the gun. Everything goes to plan; however, there are no bullets in the gun when Ali takes the shots.
Ali fights off the cop and chases the woman who gave him the gun. He demands to know who set him up to fail. They hide together and Ali changes his outfit. She then takes him to meet Djafar, an FLN member who explains they had to make sure Ali wasn’t a spy. They had to know if he would take the shot; he says the French wouldn’t allow a spy to kill one of their cops. Ali asks why they wouldn’t just let him kill the cop. L says they’re not ready yet; they must first have a place to work from and hide out in. L explains that the Casbah isn’t a safe enough place for the FLN because too many people are willing to sell them out.
In another missive from 1956, the FLN declares that all vices, like alcohol and sex work, are forbidden. The FLN declares itself responsible for clearing the immoral people out of their community and movement. The scene shows a group of Algerian children being sent to attack a publicly drunk man. The children kick him and drag him down stairs.
The scene cuts to Ali smacking the cigarette out of a man’s mouth. He walks through the narrow streets of the Casbah and runs into Hassan, a man from his past who is “condemned to death.” Ali says he has been warned twice: he can either die or join the FLN. When Hassan lunges toward Ali, Ali fires a machine gun at him, killing him, and sends Hassan’s accomplices away with a warning that no one can do as they want in the Casbah anymore.
Analysis
The opening scene of The Battle of Algiers presents an image that serves as a symbol of the oppression Algerians face in their struggle for independence. Surrounded by a group of French soldiers brought in to quash the anti-colonial uprising, an Algerian man sits in his underpants. Rather than show the torture that precipitated the man breaking his silence and giving away FLN leader Ali La Pointe’s hiding spot, Gillo Pontecorvo emphasizes the man’s quaking and physical emaciation as soldiers smugly comment on how they have broken him. With this image, Pontecorvo emphasizes the power imbalance between the well-resourced French military and the Algerian freedom fighters who have to use cunning to overcome the colonial power.
As a final humiliation, the soldiers dress the man in one of their uniforms, claiming that no one in the Casbah will recognize him as he leads them to the last holdout of the FLN’s leadership. The opening scene ends on the image of Ali and other FLN members hiding behind a section of wall and refusing to negotiate with the French. It is notable that Ali hides alongside an older man, a woman, and a boy—a diverse array of faces that represent the cross-section of Algerian society the FLN comprises. Pontecorvo leaves this opening scene, set in 1957, on the open question of what Ali will do now that he has been caught.
Going back in time three years, Pontecorvo shows what brought Ali to become one of the most influential members of the National Liberation Front (FLN), an Algerian rebel group that engaged in guerrilla warfare during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). Arrested for petty criminal activity, Ali witnesses the execution of an Algerian prisoner while in jail. The fact the man shouts the phrase “long live Algeria” suggests he is a member of the FLN and that the French are executing him as a warning to other prisoners. Pontecorvo focuses on Ali’s face as he contemplates the man’s solemn dignity as French guards load him into the guillotine and the blade cuts through his neck.
Through editing, Pontecorvo suggests that the prisoner’s execution serves not to dissuade Ali from political activities but to radicalize him against the colonial occupation of his country. Upon release from prison, Ali is eager to assassinate a French police officer as an initiation into the FLN. However, when the gun has no bullets, Ali believes he has been double-crossed. It turns out that Djafar, an FLN leader, first needed to determine whether Ali was a spy in cahoots with the French.
Knowing he would have taken the shot if the gun had been loaded, Djafar makes Ali an FLN member, explaining that they must first make the Casbah a secure place to work out of before they can launch their attacks against representatives of the colonial state. This scene establishes how the FLN knows that staging a long-term and ongoing revolution involves careful strategy. Rather than go out and get their members killed or arrested for assassinations of colonial police, the FLN eliminate opponents within the Casbah—the traditional Islamic quarter of Algiers. Although the film is sympathetic toward the FLN’s struggle for independence, Pontecorvo does not shy away from depicting the FLN’s violent crackdown on unsavory people within their community, such as alcoholics and gangsters. By killing people who might give them away to the French authorities, the FLN establish the Casbah as an informal base of operations.
