Director Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle Of Algiers

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History lays a blueprint for ideological, both implicit and explicit, films. Director Gillo Pontecorvo, in The Battle of Algiers (1966), interprets French colonialism in Algeria via the revolutionary actions of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and French military torture and war crimes; in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007), Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, examines the effects of communism in satellite states and dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Decree 770, a piece of sweeping anti-abortion legislation. After the United States occupation of Iraq, in 2003, the Pentagon screened The Battle of Algiers. The flyer advertising the screening stated, “How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas….The French have a plan. It …show more content…

Ali La Pointe represents the Algerian protagonist, an FLN revolutionary soldier; the French protagonist is Colonel Mathieu, a commander of the occupying forces. Mathieu refuses to contest war crimes against the Algerian citizenry. In a French military maneuver, overseen by Mathieu, La Pointe is executed; therefore, exalted to the status of a martyr. In the 1960s, peaceful protests emerge, and in the accordance to the somber voiceover, “…on July 2, 1962, with its independence, the Algerian nation was …show more content…

M’Hidi, after apprehension by French military authorities, when questioned, at a press conference by a French journalist, about the violent and cowardly tactics of utilizing Algerian women’s baskets for carrying bombs, he responds with a criticism of French involvement in the Vietnam War, “And doesn’t it seem even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? 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.” This reflects the theme of anti-colonialism, because the French colonized and brutalized Vietnam. Through dialogue, Mathieu, infers retaining military presence in Algeria requires the use of war crimes and/or morally ambiguous military actions, “Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer ‘yes,’ then you must accept all the necessary consequences.” Mathieu continues with a defense against criticisms of the French military and continued occupation by invoking the Holocaust, “We aren’t madmen or sadists….Those who call us Fascists today, forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis, don’t know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers and our only duty is to win.” As if French crimes in Algeria become obsolete on the basis of individual soldiers prior status

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