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The problem: the function of two shots After some French police officers are killed by members of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), French police officers and a civilian plant a bomb under the house of a suspected member of the FLN, which results in the death of a score of innocent civilians. When a spontaneous anti-French riot breaks out and a crowd of enraged Algerian men and women storm the streets, their demonstration is stopped by orders from the local FLN leader, Kader (Yacef Saadi), who promises to the angry crowd: "Leave this to us". The ensuing, lengthy scene follows three Algerian women while they disguise themselves in order to assume a French-like look and then leave time-bombs in public places crowded with French civilians. Before the explosions, the viewer is compelled to look - through the eyes of the Algerian women - at the faces of the soon-to-be victims of the bomb. Of all the faces which we see on the screen, the hardest to forget belongs to a 4-5 year-old child eating his ice-cream, who is briefly shown right before the woman hides the bomb and then, again, a few seconds before the bomb goes off:  This long, tense scene almost forces the viewer to take a stance about the right of the oppressed to use violence in their struggle against their oppressors. Interestingly, The Battle of Algiers (1965) was understood by left-wing militants in the late '60s as a clear endorsement or even glorification of political violence, [1] while several viewers declare today their appreciation of the film precisely because it prompts the viewer to reflect on the evils of political violence. [2] The intent of this paper is to understand what this scene originally meant to the director and how the same scene can take on different meanings for different viewers, with special focus on the function of the child eating his ice-cream. Pontecorvo's view of political violence The film is explicit on the role of violence and terrorism: Ben M'Hidi, the political leader of the National Liberation Font (FLN) in Algiers, explains to the young and impatient Ali la Point that
Moreover, the struggle of the Algerian people against their oppresssors also represented for Pontecorvo an opportunity for defending, indirectly, partisan guerrilla warfare during the Italian Resistance. When Ben M'Hidi is asked by a French journalist if it was not "a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people", he replies:
To an Italian viewer in the '60s, such words sounded like a defence of analogous actions carried out by Italian partisans in 1943-45, such as the bomb - hidden in a waste bin - which killed 33 German soldiers in via Rasella in 1944 in Rome and led to the killing of 335 Italians prisoners in retaliation. But, if it is true that Pontecorvo sides with the Algerian people, why does the camera linger on a heroine of the Algerian resistance while she places a bomb which, as she and the viewer are forced to see, is likely to kill many civilians, among them a child? Pontecorvo's constraints and freedom in making the film[3] In other words, Pontecorvo had full control over the film, but the Algerian FLN had asked him to make the film also because they wanted to work with someone who was politically on the same wavelength, and Pontecorvo's background as a partisan in the Resistance and as a left-wing militant gave him impeccable credentials. Pontecorvo declares now that he only felt committed to make a truthful film, and indeed he devoted a considerable effort to obtaining first-hand accounts of the historical events. At the same time, Pontecorvo wanted the film to be appreciated by the Algerians. According to Pontecorvo, the only request from the Algerian side to make changes in the film for political reasons involved the presence of the child in the cafeteria: the Algerians repeatedly tried, "from the time they read the first draft of the screenplay until the day before the premiere at the Venice film festival", to get the images of the child expunged, because the former freedom fighters "did not want to appear like criminals". [4] But Pontecorvo was adamant that the child had to stay: otherwise, as he points out today, the scene would have lost its truth and tragedy (id.). Different views about the film and about the scene
In more general terms, Comolli accuses the film of reducing the historical events of the battle of Algiers to an escalating competition between terrorism and anti-terrorism, thereby reducing the FLN militants to "machines" and missing the possibility for a more mature political understanding of the conflict. * In the same dossier of the Cahiers devoted to The Battle of Algiers, Tunisian writer and poet Abdelwahab Meddeb maintains, with reference to terrorism, that "we live in an environment, in a state of mind which Pontecorvo's film has contributed to construct" and underlines - on the basis of his own experience in discussions with Islamic extremists - how The Battle of Algiers "historically has taken part in the process, especially in Algeria, through which terrorism has been glorified, written in an epic dimension, appropriated as a heroic act". [6] However, he does not accuse the film itself, which in his words "has many qualities" (id.). Meddeb, who was once on Sartre's side and against Camus in their controversial debate about terrorism, now believes that "nothing can justify terrorism and the sacrificial element which terrorism implies" and explains: [7] The scenes of The Battle of Algiers which have become the more relevant for me are those in which the camera lingers on places and people at the sites where the bomb attacks are going to take place. The images of people who are alive, but destined to die, are horrible. These images are enough to reinforce my certitude that terrorism is unjustifiable. [8] * In the same interview, philosopher and writer Marie-José Mondzain objects to Meddeb: These camera movement on the faces, aren't they meant to make us understand how much a terrorist must overcome his own compassion, in order to actually perform his terror act? [9] * As for Pontecorvo, he maintains now that The Battle of Algiers "does not teach how to make war, but how to make cinema". [10] This statement is consistent with another declaration in which a highly reputed author of political films maintains that he "really knows nothing about politics." [11] * All these explanations do make sense, since the same images can trigger different sensations in viewers with different backgrounds, dispositions and motivations. I will try in the following sections to look for the cinematic elements that can support such radically different interpretations of the scene. Elements inducing the viewer to side with the terrorists  Are they "machines", as suggested by Comolli? For one of the women, the older Zohra, sympathy has been built long before she leaves a bomb under a sofa at an Air France agency; although she shows the fiercest determination - she even takes her own son with her through the French security control - her whole appearance is incongruous with the idea of an act of terrorism.  The viewer is induced to believe that, under normal circumstances, a woman like this would never have dreamt of placing a bomb and killing other people. Indeed we see two of her victims, a rich young couple who are almost certainly travelling for pleasure, but the camera does not linger on them nearly as long as it does on the future victims in the two cafés. In the brief moments in which the three sit on the same sofa, even their posture betrays their belonging to different worlds.  On the contrary, the two other young women (below) have been more successful in their disguise and they look disturbingly similar to their victims.  The expressions on their faces throughout the scene leave ample room for interpretation: they must not betray their feelings, neither to the customers in the cafés nor to the viewer. There are however small signs that can help the viewer to form her or his own opinion. The woman in the figure above-left quickly averts her eyes when she spots the child; after a moment in which we can only imagine her thoughts, she checks the clock and then pushes the basket with the bomb under the bar with her foot. We see the second woman (above right) from the moment she has just hidden the bomb until the moment she leaves. The other customers are dancing and do not even notice her; she is free to look at the people she is about to kill. Her gaze may betray her fear of being caught, but there is more in it: when the camera rests a few moments on a fat boy leaning on the juke-box and moving in time with the music, she casts a last, unnecessary glance at him before moving on (below: the still image cannot render the barely perceptible movement of the woman's head).  Although other interpretations are possible, my strong impression is that both women - non-professional actresses, as all the Algerian characters in the film - felt guilty about the lives they were about to take; this is at least what one would expect from decent people killing fellow-human beings because they (believe they) have to, [12] and Pontecorvo's images convey well this kind of feeling. Their being women helps make their act both more disturbing (history has forced them), but maybe also less despicable than if it had been carried out by a man: these women have nothing to gain and are not enjoying what they are doing. They are 'involuntary heroines'. THE CUSTOMERS  A few other faces (below) would probably trigger different reactions according to the context in which they are seen and according to the viewer's expectations:  On the whole, most of the faces seem to have been chosen to suggest the picture of a parasitic and careless French society. After the first bomb goes off in the first café, the young people in the other one hear the explosion and soon resume dancing. If the two shots with the child were edited out of the scene, not many viewers would feel too sorry for the victims of the bombs (which would not be in contrast with dislike for the act of killing other people in cold blood). Elements inducing the viewer to side with the victims In comparing the script with the images, one might suspect that Pontecorvo did accept at least in part the FLN worries and downplayed the role of the child, while placing a lot of ugly faces around him. We cannot even rule out that Pontecorvo pretended, when discussing the scene with Yacef Saadi, that he had reduced the importance of the child in the economy of the scene in order to please his Algerian friends, although he could not go so far as to remove the child altogether. But it seems the FLN people were not persuaded and - in my view - they were in part right. The image of the child remains in the mind of the viewer: there is no need to explain that he has caring parents and not even to show him as an especially cute child. The child in the picture is just a normal, defenceless child, and almost any viewer will feel sorry for his fate just by catching a short glimpse of him. To accept or not to accept to kill that specific child for the sake of a political cause is, as already mentioned, a matter of personal disposition and background. THE DEAD CUSTOMERS The scene in the Casbah is longer and there is a more lingering image alluding to Christ taken down from the cross (below left), but this visual element is also recognisable when the victims are French (below right). One shot - which may have replaced the one with the dead child - shows for long moments an especially handsome French victim (below center).  Conclusions According to Michael Ignatieff (2004), [15] the film "is a masterpiece, at once a justification for acts of terror and an unsparing account of terror's cost, including to the cause it serves" (my italics). I share his general view, but not the idea that Pontecorvo was then aware of the cost of terror for the cause it serves. Actually, Pontecorvo was to remain faithful to the idea that violence may be necessary at least until Ogro (1980), a film focused on four Basque militants organising the killing of General Franco's right hand man, Carrero Blanco. As much as The Battle of Algiers leaves room for viewers to draw their own conclusions, Ogro is almost didactic when it explains the difference between a legitimate use of violence on the side of history - Carrero Blanco's death probably eased the return of Spain to democracy - and gratuitous violence outside any shared, progressive political project, such as in the Basque terrorism after the return of Spain to democracy. The wave of left-wing political violence in Italy in the '70s may have diminished Pontecorvo's confidence in the political sensitivity of his audience. | ||
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