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I've been in a meeting all day and then at the cinema - I heard the football score, but did the world end?
Sometimes the Carbuncle seems to be programming just for me and this week is one such case; two Top 100 Movies. Sans Soleil on Friday and today:
CVI: La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
After an opening scene in the late 1950s in which someone has just been tortured, and acting on the information that was thus obtained, the story goes back to the mid-1950s and the recruiting of Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) by the FLN to their cause against the French occupiers of Algeria. Policemen are shot and the French crack down, putting checkpoints at the exits from the Arab quarter of Algiers. Action escalates, with explosion of several bombs in the European quarter, and Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) looks for an excuse to use torture to expose the cell-structure of the FLN.
Not quite an example of Third Cinema, but equally with strong hint of Italian Neo-realism and the documentary. It's in glorious black and white, with many amateur actors, and some times the camera is right in the middle of the action. I suppose there are even echoes of - which is it? Strike? but without the dialectical montage. I'm not sure whether this 1999/2004 cut restores the fifteen minutes lost from first release. The soundtrack is by the director Gillo Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone - my guess is Pontecorvo does the noisy bits.
The consensus is that the film is even-handed, politically speaking, but I'm not convinced. Even-handed is accepting that torture is justified (see the debate about 24 and the Gulf War) - but equally I guess the other characters shoot some people and blow others up. And the French colonialists are all pretty nasty. I still think you root for Ali. Whilst you are given the information that France has has Algeria as a colony for 130 years, there is no contextualising of the events at the start of the film - and France behaved pretty badly in 1830 as well. Of course, the events were current affairs in 1966. The irony of France being an occupying power a decade after the Second World War is noted by the film itself, but in the mid-1960s Vietnam (here, Indochina) would also have been a touchstone. These days, of course, that's the ghost of Abu Ghraib and the US occupation of Iraq invoked by the film. Apparently the film was shown in the Pentagon in 2003. I don't think lessons were learnt.
This is not an easy film to watch, for all kinds of reasons - but it demands to be seen.
Totals: 106 (Cinema: 42; DVD: 59; TV: 5)
Sometimes the Carbuncle seems to be programming just for me and this week is one such case; two Top 100 Movies. Sans Soleil on Friday and today:
CVI: La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
After an opening scene in the late 1950s in which someone has just been tortured, and acting on the information that was thus obtained, the story goes back to the mid-1950s and the recruiting of Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) by the FLN to their cause against the French occupiers of Algeria. Policemen are shot and the French crack down, putting checkpoints at the exits from the Arab quarter of Algiers. Action escalates, with explosion of several bombs in the European quarter, and Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) looks for an excuse to use torture to expose the cell-structure of the FLN.
Not quite an example of Third Cinema, but equally with strong hint of Italian Neo-realism and the documentary. It's in glorious black and white, with many amateur actors, and some times the camera is right in the middle of the action. I suppose there are even echoes of - which is it? Strike? but without the dialectical montage. I'm not sure whether this 1999/2004 cut restores the fifteen minutes lost from first release. The soundtrack is by the director Gillo Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone - my guess is Pontecorvo does the noisy bits.
The consensus is that the film is even-handed, politically speaking, but I'm not convinced. Even-handed is accepting that torture is justified (see the debate about 24 and the Gulf War) - but equally I guess the other characters shoot some people and blow others up. And the French colonialists are all pretty nasty. I still think you root for Ali. Whilst you are given the information that France has has Algeria as a colony for 130 years, there is no contextualising of the events at the start of the film - and France behaved pretty badly in 1830 as well. Of course, the events were current affairs in 1966. The irony of France being an occupying power a decade after the Second World War is noted by the film itself, but in the mid-1960s Vietnam (here, Indochina) would also have been a touchstone. These days, of course, that's the ghost of Abu Ghraib and the US occupation of Iraq invoked by the film. Apparently the film was shown in the Pentagon in 2003. I don't think lessons were learnt.
This is not an easy film to watch, for all kinds of reasons - but it demands to be seen.
Totals: 106 (Cinema: 42; DVD: 59; TV: 5)
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Absolutely. We saw this many years ago - it left a lasting impression. Is it still banned in France?
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My grandmother came round to tell us the world had been due to end on Wednesday. She would have come earlier, only she was washing her curtains.