Summary
Gillo Pontecorvo’s film (1965–1966), one of the two greatest political films ever made in Edward Said’s opinion, treated at length in his interview essay “The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo” in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.276-277).
Details
- Released a scant three years after Algeria won its independence from France in 1962, the film did not play in France until 1971; it was put up for two Academy Awards and won the top prizes for itself and for Pontecorvo at the Venice and Acapulco festivals (PDF p.277).
- In the film, as Said presents it, the FLN rebels are defeated, but the Algerian people rise again three years after the French destroy the Casbah rebels in 1958, recorded in a crowd scene rivaling Eisenstein; the French paratrooper colonel, Mathieu, is an attractive and serious man, and Yacef Saadi, the actual Casbah leader, plays himself among nonprofessional Algerians reliving all-too-recent events (PDF p.277; the film’s representation, not stated as historical fact).
- Pontecorvo told Said the film represented a collective subject — “personnage choral” — in which the logic of colonialism came up against the logic of nationalism, and that a rooftop sequence between the FLN leader Ben M’Hidi and Ali La Pointe should have been struck: “It’s much too preachy and didactic” (PDF p.278-279).
- In the film, perhaps following Fanon, Pontecorvo took no account of liberals or of the national bourgeoisie: there were only Algerian militants fighting French occupation, knowledge of the struggle contained wholly in the polarity of the radical antagonists (PDF p.283).
- Many third world directors, from Algeria to India to Latin America and the Middle East, trace much in their cinematography to this film and to Burn! (PDF p.278). Said put the Palestinian intifada to Pontecorvo as the film’s logical contemporary extension, a day-in-Gaza account by Makram Makhoul reminding him of it (PDF p.282).
Related pages
Gillo Pontecorvo, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Frantz Fanon