Question:
It is often easy to think of innocence and guilt as clear opposites, as
different as day and night. However, many of the texts and films we have
studied raise questions about this opposition, suggesting that their
differences may not be quite so stark. In your paper, discuss how a particular
work complicates conventional ideas of innocence. You might consider the role
of women or children in combat, or the differences between civilians and
soldiers. Or, you might consider the ways in which individuals are held
responsible for the actions of their nations and governments, or for the
actions of those they hold dear (family members, lovers, etc.). Remember to pay
attention to elements beyond plot and character, such as textual structure,
textual repetition and tension, camera angle, light, and sound.
Answer:
The Battle of Algiers is a great film
with deep social and psychological effects it bears on the audience. With its
powerful direction and technical strengths, such as camera, light, and sound,
the film mainly focuses on the ways by which guilt and innocence become blurred
in the path of achieving a necessary purpose: Freedom. The world has long sung
songs for innocence to be an ideal state for peace. Women and children have historically
found a central place in this narrative. However, by critiquing The Battle of Algiers, it could be argued
that when faced with a significant purpose like freedom, innocence of people (men,
women, and children) becomes blurred with guilt. This argument would be
supported by discussing many a technique Pontecorvo has used to problematize
this conflict by focusing on technical areas of the film, light, sound, camera
work, and by highlighting the deep psychological effects different scenes bear
on the audience asking them to follow Pontecorvo’s lead.
The effective construction of the
central thesis of this essay, whether the
film complicates the conventional ideas of innocence and guilt can be
achieved by focusing particularly on the roles of women and children in the
film and the strategies Pontecorvo has
used to convey this conflicting mortality to us. In this connection, throughout,
the film convinces me that the ideals of innocence and guilt are so much mixed
up together that it is very difficult
to say who is innocent and who is guilty. The film problematizes this aspect,
in particular, given the fact that women played a vital role in Algiers’
struggle for independence. For example, in the very first scene in which La Casbah is panoramically framed, the
FLN charter of demand runs in the background and a lot of children are shown
sitting, moving, and running. One much younger child is shown running and the
camera remains on him for quite a few seconds. At the same time, the charter of
demand by FLN reads: “Algerians, it is
your duty to save your country and restore its liberty” [07:43]. The
director successfully portrays that these children are an integral part of the
struggle, and we see that they are present in at least all the major scenes in
the film either supporting the FLN gorillas or playing their aid.
Further critical analysis suggests
that this short but abrupt start depicts multifarious layers of feelings and
relays subtle messages for the viewer to create their own meaning out of what
they see. The camera movement is slow, avoids close-ups, and mixes this scene
with that of a documentary like haphazardness to offer us a mixture of feeling
that what we see is not a film but probably a depiction of some real life
events and the little children shown in tattered clothes, though so innocent,
would be affected by the horrible reality of life: The struggle of freedom
would ask them to discard their innocence. Similarly, the long,
documentary-like lenses to capture the Algiers physical setting (streets,
alleys, stairs, houses, the French quarters, etc.) are combined with a very
similar focus on a number of fighting, shooting, and raiding scenes to produce
an effect of a documentary made by someone present there in all the mayhem. Quite
a few scenes of this seemingly documentary-like film show women and children
taking active part in the struggle for independence. They help the rebels by
being informers, vocalists, spies, and practical fighters losing their
innocence in the process.
For example, when Ali is approached
by a teenage child to relay the first FLN message, there are many younger
children (of different ages) focused and sharply contrasted with this boy. The
message is quite clear: As soon as the children start to think and act sanely,
they will become part of this resistance thus leaving aside the most important
aspect of their life, innocence.
More
importantly, the light in the film uses high contrasts. Being a black and white
film, this sharp contrasting between black and white is helpful for Pontecorvo
to add the psychological dimensions of a situation (a gorilla attack or a
reaction by the French paratroopers), and, oftentimes, complicated scenes take
place in the dark to arouse the deeply striking psychological feel of the film.
For example, the scene almost at the middle of the film, in which Ben M’Hidi
explains the aims and phases of their struggles to Ali, is captured is stark
darkness that takes the viewer to sway with the intensity of the struggles and
the extreme sensitivity it holds for the two leaders and the people of Algiers
in common. This is quite surprising to note that female freedom fighters are
almost exclusively shown in the white light as opposed to their male
counterparts mostly captured in dark shades, and children often in miserable
conditions, torn clothes, but tied to the cause. Maybe, we are told that the
two parts of life are put together to achieve a purpose.
The
most complicated scene in which Pontecorvo has undoubtedly asked the same
question (whether women and children are innocent or guilty or whether they pay
the price for something done by others related to them) is intensely visible
when the three FLN member women disguise as French citizens and move into the
French quarters with bombs in their baskets. Though the entry of Algerian
laborers is barricaded and a search is diligently done by the guarding
soldiers, these three women bypass the body and document search simply because
they are disguised as French women. More lenience is shown toward the woman with
a child.
Here the role of the sounds in the
film must be commented as it seems to go parallel with the basic focus on
highlighting the psychological effects of what is going on out there as
innocence is shaded with guilt. To depict this, sounds are added from slow,
fast, to hysterical beats in which different instruments from drums to human
chanting add to a particular scene’s feeling on the viewer. Thus, in this scene,
fast, feverish drumming sound remains throughout this scene as the three
females prepare to play their part in the struggle up to the bombings that
eventually occur. This certainly keeps the viewer jaw-struck thinking they
might be captured: The viewer hypnotically follows the entire scene with
complete submission to the director. Likewise, sounds explain the scenes to the
audience. When there is no sound it has its own significance as it arouses deep
suspense in the viewer.
One of the three women has a child to
protect her identity. More importantly, Pontecorvo cleverly focuses on the
innocent women and children on both sides. For example, the Algerian woman who
plants the first bomb in the café shows us through her eyes the innocence of
the common French citizens and particularly a little child on whom Pontecorvo
places the camera for a while relays significant messages for us to compare the
innocence and/or guilt on both sides. Since the scene moved me so much, I
couldn’t help but present the screen captures of that child in the film here:
Now, we must revisit the first
bombing in the film that was carried out by some French police officials to
kill a suspected member of FLN. This explosion leaves a number of innocent
civilians dead including men, women, and children of all ages. Their bodies in
crippled forms are still in our memory as we compare this cute child being
killed just in a matter of seconds. Certainly Pontecorvo is asking of all of us
what we, as human beings, done to innocence. We also ask if the explosions by
FLN activists would have taken place at all had it not been the first attempt
from the French camp. The juxtaposition of civilians from both sides is
artistically done to show us how complicated this relations between innocence
and guilt is.
Similarly, when the last of the three
explosion hits the race course, the French people running wild around capture
the young Algerian boy selling candies in the race course. We are convinced
that the crowd would beat him to death because their pain of losing their
children and loved ones is so intense that the binaries of nationalism are
forcing them to avenge their blood. Their instinct fails to see (as Pontecorvo
again shows us) the other as innocent or guilty; it only wants revenge, blood
for blood.
Overall, by drawing these strikingly
painful comparisons of the acts of violence by both the sides, Pontecorvo
invites us to debate the part violence has historically played in the struggle
of oppression and freedom. Pontecorvo shows us that the side effects include innocent
blood on both sides whether or not women and children take part in the struggle
to kills each other. I personally believe that though we have moved into a time
beyond postmodernism, I do not think such debates of sensitivity to innocent
blood has done any good because a number of critics today ask the same
questions of the deaths taking place at this moment in regions like Iraq and
Afghanistan in the aftermath of the lives we lost on 9/11.
Pontecorvo tried to justify the
element of violence through the words of Ben M’Hidi who says to Ali that terror
attacks can serve for useful starting points but at the end the importance is
of organizing the populations to order:
...wars cannot be won with terror attacks. Neither
wars, nor revolutions. Terrorism is useful for starting a process, but
afterwards the whole population has to act.
[1:07:30-43].
This point may be of great importance, but personally
my interpretation of the role of women and children in this film is that
innocence remains at its place when other environmental forces go in balance.
Once the balance is out, the boundaries between innocence and guilt can very
easily blur on both sides. Since the same attitude has continued into our
modern time, it is worth asking if we have done anything intangible to address
the great loss innocence has suffered at the hands of humans around the world.
