Guerrillas In Our Midst: The Battle Of Algiers

Gillo Pontecorvo changed cinema forever with his Academy Award-nominated docu-drama. But the Italian filmmaker also shaped the future in ways he couldn't possibly have predicted...

From illuminating the human condition to raking in millions of dollars, films can do many things. But can cinema actually change the world we live in?

For the most part, the answer would seem to be 'no'. Okay, when Oliver Stone's JFK came out, it caused such a palaver that Congress rushed released certain documents pertaining to the assassination. But as the paperwork in question revealed little of interest, so it would be another 25 years before the bulk of the Kennedy files would be made available to the public. And while Braveheart might have given the Scottish independence movement fresh impetus, it was Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon rather than Mel Gibson and William Wallace who were responsible for leading to the push for a referendum.

The bottom line is, while movies might be a useful vehicle for raising issues and awareness, they don't shape the world we live in. That is, with a notable exception. For there is, to my mind at least, one motion picture that it still influencing the most chaotic aspects of 21st century living. The picture in question is The Battle Of Algiers and its director is Pisa's Gillo Pontecorvo.

Shot in 1966, The Battle Of Algiers sought to capture the horror of the Algerian War of Independence that had ended only four short years before. Through the use of documentary film techniques, Pontecorvo - a hugely experience non-fiction filmmaker - so realistically brought to life the struggle between the occupying French forces and the Algerian Independence Movement (aka the FLN) that the film began with a disclaimer pointing out that the picture didn't contain so much as a foot of newsreel footage. Even when The Battle Of Algiers is seen today, the abundance of handheld camerawork together with the almost entirely amateur cast mean the film feels more like a historical document than a work of fiction.

'The French Colonel... who was forced even to torture! One of the many women... who stopped at nothing to win! The Algerian Street Boy... who became a rebel hero!' - with a tagline befitting a modern action spectacular, it's little wonder Pontecorvo's film was a big hit in his native Italy. Whatever money The Battle Of Algiers made, it's true success is artistic. The decision to shoot in Algeria with locals playing virtually ever role was a masterstroke on Pontecorvo's part. So too was his use of what American filmmaker William Friedkin has described as 'induced documentary' - that's to say, scenes play out in such a manner that it appears the camera has just chanced upon what's taking place in the manner of a news reporter.

Handing the pivotal role of Colonel Mathieu to French actor Jean Martin also works wonders for the piece. A professional surrounded by amateurs, Martin is every bit as much an outsider as his character. He's also a sufficiently generous actor to coax great work from those around him. Brahim Hadjadj, Saadi Yacef, Mohamed Ben Kassen - each acquits themselves incredibly well. That they and their cast-mates would rarely act again seems a shame given how naturalistic and compelling they are here. That said, if you are only to have one film to your name, it may as well be a picture as widely revered as The Battle Of Algiers.

You don't have to be a big movie buff to spy the influence Pontecorvo's picture has had upon other filmmakers. The aforementioned Oliver Stone made particularly good use of the director's techniques when he came to shoot his own insurgency thriller, Salvador. Steven Soderbergh was also quick to acknowledge the debt his Oscar-winning drug drama Traffic owed to Pontecorvo. Heck, you can even hear dialogue from The Battle Of Algiers in Quentin Tarantino's gloriously off-the-wall World War 2 movie Inglourious Basterds.

But what of the picture's wider impact? Well, for one thing, the film didn't go down at all well the French. Lambasted by government officials and Cahiers Du Cinema critics alike, The Battle Of Algiers was banned in France until 1971, four full years after it had been nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. To this day, the picture rarely plays across the Channel, Pontecorvo's alleged FLN bias being sighted as the main reason for keeping it out of cinemas.

That the film might paint a kinder picture of the occupied than the occupiers is something Oliver Stone and Spike Lee - another admirer - have countenanced. Certainly the scenes of the French military torturing insurgents create sympathy for the latter and enmity towards the former. But when, in a bravura sequence, a female FLN supporter plants a bomb in a club, the shots of the innocent patrons from her point of view leave the viewer in no doubt as to the extent of her crimes.

An incredibly tense affair, the aforementioned sequence didn't only excite the casual viewer; it also captured the imagination of an entire generation of radicals who'd style their own bids for freedom after The Battle Of Algiers. When journalist Jimmy Breslin saw the movie in 1968, he described it as a "training film for urban guerrilla," and sure enough the picture was screened to IRA cells and Black Panther factions. It's also worth noting that The Battle Of Algiers was the favourite film of Ulrike Meinhof's squeeze, Andreas Baader.

This, then, is the unfortunate legacy of one of the finest Italian films of the post-war era. But while the likes of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front were lifting tactics directly from the picture, so those on the other side of the fence were looking to see what they could glean from Pontercorvo's peerless docudrama. In Argentina in the late 1960s, the film was shown to the military to ready them for a new era of warfare, one in which the enemy didn't wear a uniform and where the field of battle included cafes and bars. More infamously still, The Battle Of Algiers was screened at the Pentagon in 2003 to demonstrate how easy it is "to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas". Subsequent events in Iraq would suggest that little was learnt from the exercise.

Over 40 years on from its release, Gillo Pontecorvo's seminal picture remains depressingly relevant. Speaking of the director, in 1992 he made a TV documentary entitled Return To Algeria. The picture showed a country very different to the one he'd depicted in 1966. But then the world itself was a very different place in 1992 as it is today. And, to a certain degree, those differences stem from a motion picture. The irony is that Gillo Pontecorvo only directed four works of fiction during his 22-film career. But as he learned to his cost, if a motion picture feels real enough, it can leave the world reeling.