The Battle of Algiers

Late in The Battle of Algiers, the French arrange a press conference with the captured leader of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). A journalist asks, “Don’t you think it’s a bit cowardly to use women’s baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?” The revolutionary replies by calling out France’s napalm attacks on defenseless villages and the thousands of needless casualties. “Of course, if we had your airplanes, it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.” In Gillo Pontecorvo’s breakthrough film, one of the greatest and most influential examples of midcentury anticolonial filmmaking, the Italian director considers both perspectives. The French call the FLN terrorists; the rebel group describes its members as freedom fighters. Although it’s a film about the Algerian struggle for independence, its broader purpose is to explore people’s innate right to freedom. Colonialism denies that, instilling an inherent conflict in which both sides commit terrible acts to achieve victory. The Battle of Algiers anatomizes this struggle with an entrenched verisimilitude and political vitality, becoming one of the first and most significant anticolonial films by a European filmmaker.

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