In 1950s Algiers, the Algerian National Liberation Front fights an urban guerrilla campaign against French colonial rule. The film records it without taking sides, and it won't put the guilt on either side of a colonial war. Pontecorvo's film looked so real that it had to carry a disclaimer saying no newsreel footage was used.
The Battle of Algiers is a 1966 war, drama and history film directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (3 cinematography and 2 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Schindler's List uses several of the same techniques.
Shooting with a handheld camera so the frame shakes and moves with the action. This documentary-style look, called cinema vérité, puts you uncomfortably close to the character.
How this film uses it
Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti shot with handheld cameras on high-contrast black-and-white film, the kind you usually see in newsreels. The result looked so much like a documentary that distributors had to add a title card saying no archive footage had been used.
Where to see it
The bomb-planting sequences. The camera moves through the Casbah like a documentary crew travelling with the FLN. You can't tell the staged scenes from newsreel.
Casting real people from the community being shown, such as workers and local residents, with no trained actors in those roles. Their looks and behavior feel true in a way acting can't copy.
How this film uses it
Pontecorvo cast FLN member Saadi Yacef as a lightly fictional version of himself. Around him, he cast Algerian civilians in roles close to what they had lived through in real life. I feel like this cast makes the film specific, both ethically and politically, in a way professional actors could not have matched.
Where to see it
The Casbah crowd sequences. The faces belong to Algerian civilians. They carry the weight of the history the film is rebuilding around them.
Telling the story from the side of the person doing the harm, and letting you inside their head. You start to understand them, which is more uncomfortable than simply condemning them.
How this film uses it
Pontecorvo gives the FLN bombers and the French paratroopers equal weight in the story. He shows the reasoning behind each side's violence and endorses neither. The film has no heroes and no villains. You see both the resistance and the colonial state from inside their own justifications, so you have to carry both points of view.
Where to see it
Colonel Mathieu's press conference. Pressed about torture, he answers frankly and ties the army's results to its methods. He asks whether France means to stay in Algeria, and if so, to accept what that takes. This is the colonial state seen from the inside.
Staging a conflict as a long fight over a physical place, such as an assault on a fortress. Walls, streets, darkness and weather all become part of the drama.
How this film uses it
Most of the drama happens in the Casbah, a maze of winding streets. The French can't control it well because its layout is too tangled for their military methods. The FLN defends it because the layout itself helps them resist. Controlling the Casbah is the real goal of the battle.
Where to see it
The French cordon-and-search operations. The army forces a military grid onto the Casbah's tangled streets. You can read the fight over space as a fight over politics.
Showing an institution as the source of power in the story, through its walls, corridors, watchful sightlines and procedures. The system itself confines people more than any single villain.
How this film uses it
The film shows French colonial rule as one connected system, made up of press conferences, military briefings, legal procedures and torture chambers. It can't be fixed from the inside because the violence is part of its normal routine. The paratroopers are employees doing a job. The villain is the system they work for.
Where to see it
The sequence of press conferences and military briefings. You see how colonial violence is organized. The system explains and defends itself, and the film adds no comment.
Questions
The Battle of Algiers: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does The Battle of Algiers use?
CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in The Battle of Algiers (1966): Handheld Cinema Vérité, Non-Professional Cast Authenticity, Perpetrator Perspective, Siege Cinema and Institutional Architecture.
Who directed The Battle of Algiers?
Gillo Pontecorvo directed The Battle of Algiers, released in 1966.
What films are similar to The Battle of Algiers?
Films that share techniques with The Battle of Algiers include Schindler's List (1993), 12 Years a Slave (2013), The 400 Blows (1959), Nomadland (2020).
