This original 1967 United Artists release of the soundtrack to “Battle of Algiers” was co-written by the film’s director, Gillo Pontecorvo (“Burn” – also scored by Morricone), with orchestra direction by frequent Morricone collaborator (and distinguished composer in his own right) Bruno Nicolai (“The Red Queen Kills 7 Times“).
Album review from main titles.net:
“La Battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers) is a film made in 1966 by Gillo Pontecorvo, with whom Morricone also teamed up for Queimada and Ogro. The political film depicts the beginning of the actions from the National Liberation Front in Algiers against the French colonists, which would eventually lead to their aimed independence in 1962. Above all, it’s a honest piece of cinema, that does not choose sides and which is made in the Italian neo-realism tradition with gorgeous black and white cinematography. It’s an important Morricone film, made in a period which is generally accepted as the most creative period of the composer. Yet, both the film and score never gained so much praises as the more popular projects and that truly hurts.
The most evocative musical idea for the score is the theme for Ali. Pontecorvo was finding it difficult to establish the musical themes for the score and recorded some on his own and presented them to Morricone. The maestro did not want to use them. During the creative process the director unconsciously whistled the themes in the presence of the composer, which had triggered Morricone. Some time later Morricone presented those same themes to the director, pretending not to remember their origins. This is the reason the music is credited as ‘music by Ennio Morricone and Gillo Pontecorvo’. The classic theme of Ali is based on a simple 4 note motif that is performed by a solo flute and accompanied by the orchestra, as can be heard on the 3 minute treatment Tema di Ali. There are also renditions for the orchestra alone, which lack the subtlety and fragility of the solo flute, but are equally strong. Its simplicity proves incredibly powerful, especially in the beginning of the film as Ali is arrested by the French. The intense black and white close-up of Ali is supported by the fragile notes of the motif, which creates one of the most iconic and most beautiful scenes in the history of cinema.
Another element of the score mainly reflects the French from a musical point of view, which is atypical Morricone martial music, mostly in the form of a march. The aggressive rhythm and harsh percussion, piano and brass elements brilliantly depict the military undertakings of the French to overthrow the Algerian resistance. Algeri: 1 Novembre 1954 is a march that Morricone has often included in his concert programs. Some of the actions of the French, who torture, are countered by the the Algerians who detonating bombs; both featurestark rhythmic musical pieces that appear to have been written from a musical neutral zone, while there are certainly hints of both musical worlds. These moments are dictated by the typical frenetic tension building that only Morricone could write.
Occasionally Morricone comments on the aftermath of a retaliation by using an organ. It are these kind of small moments that are equally beautiful to the theme of Ali. Other noteworthy moments are the moving intimacy of the woodwinds in the track Matrimonio clandestinoe and subtle melancholy on Gennaio 1957: Accerchiamento della Casbah.
Clearly, Morricone score is perfect for the film, but I did have problems with the use of music some years ago. The fact that the neo-realism approach generally avoids any kind of dramatic manipulation made it rather difficult to accept that the score often became a bit obtrusive. By now I have somehow accepted this wholly and like the directness of the music.
This release by Quartet records is essentially the same as the cd GDM released in 2005, but all of the music is remastered and now includes liner notes. You can clearly hear it sounds better than ever before, which can be a good reason to purchase this release of a classic work. The 2005 release is becoming a rare item and often does not come very cheap on the second-hand market. I can honestly say I would rather want a reissue of a good score with better sound quality, than a Morricone release that only offers a few uninteresting alternative cues.”
Additional Releases:
As he has done in “Kill Bill” (vols 1 and 2), and other pictures, Quentin Tarantino repurposed Morricone’s “Battle of Algiers” score in 2009’s “Inglourious Basterds,” in the scene where the Basterds rescue Hugo Stiglitz from a German prison:
The Film:
Roger Ebert’s review of “Battle of Algiers” from rogerebert.com:
“At the height of the street fighting in Algiers, the French stage a press conference for a captured FLN leader. “Tell me, general,” a Parisian journalist asks the revolutionary, “do you not consider it cowardly to send your women carrying bombs in their handbags, to blow up civilians?” The rebel replies in a flat tone of voice: “And do you not think it cowardly to bomb our people with napalm?” A pause. “Give us your airplanes and we will give you our women and their handbags.”
“The Battle of Algiers,” a great film by the young Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, exists at this level of bitter reality. It may be a deeper film experience than many audiences can withstand: too cynical, too true, too cruel and too heartbreaking. It is about the Algerian war, but those not interested in Algeria may substitute another war; “The Battle of Algiers” has a universal frame of reference.
Pontecorvo announces at the outset that there is “not one foot” of documentary or newsreel footage in his two hours of film. The announcement is necessary, because the film looks, feels and tastes as real as Peter Watkins’ “The War Game.” Pontecorvo used available light, newsreel film stock and actual locations to reconstruct the events in Algiers. He is after actuality, the feeling that you are there, and he succeeds magnificently; the film won the Venice Film Festival and nine other festivals, and was chosen to open the New York Film Festival last November.
Some mental quirk reminded me of “The Lost Command,” Mark Robson’s dreadful 1965 film in which George Segal was the Algerian rebel and Anthony Quinn somehow won for the French. Compared to “The Battle of Algiers,” that film and all Hollywood “war movies” are empty, gaudy balloons.
Pontecorvo has taken his stance somewhere between the FLN and the French, although his sympathies are on the side of the Nationalists. He is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality.
His protagonists are a French colonel (Jean Martin), who respects his opponents but believes (correctly, no doubt) that ruthless methods are necessary, and Ali (Brahim Haggiag), a petty criminal who becomes an FLN leader. But there are other characters: an old man beaten by soldiers; a small Arab boy attacked by French civilians who have narrowly escaped bombing; a cool young Arab girl who plants a bomb in a cafe and then looks compassionately at her victims, and many more.
The strength of the film, I think, comes because it is both passionate and neutral, concerned with both sides. The French colonel (himself a veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance), learns that Sartre supports the FLN. “Why are the liberals always on the other side?” he asks. “Why don’t they believe France belongs in Algeria?” But there was a time when he did not need to ask himself why the Nazis did not belong in France.
The Director:
Gilberto Pontecorvo Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (Italian: [ˈdʒillo ponteˈkɔrvo]; 19 November 1919 – 12 October 2006) was an Italian filmmaker associated with the political cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for directing the landmark war docudrama The Battle of Algiers (1966). It won the Golden Lion at the 27th Venice Film Festival, and earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
His other films include Kapò (1960), a Holocaust drama; Burn! (1969), a period film about a fictional slave revolt in the Lesser Antilles; and Ogro (1979), a dramatization of the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists. He also directed several documentaries and short films.
In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival. The same year, he was ascended as a Knight’s Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Early life
Pontecorvo, born in Pisa, was the son of a wealthy secular Italian Jewish family. His father was a businessman. Gillo’s siblings included brothers Bruno Pontecorvo, later an internationally acclaimed nuclear physicist and one of the so-called Via Panisperna boys, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950; Guido Pontecorvo, a geneticist; Polì [Paul] Pontecorvo, an engineer who worked on radar after World War II; and David Maraoni. Their sisters were Giuliana (m. Talbet); Laura (m. Coppa); and Anna (m. Newton).
Pontecorvo studied chemistry at the University of Pisa, but dropped out after passing just two exams. There he first became aware of opposition political forces, and first encountered leftist students and professors. In 1938, faced with growing antisemitism in Italy with the rise of Fascists, he followed his elder brother Bruno to Paris, where he found work in journalism and as a tennis instructor.
In Paris, Pontecorvo became involved in the film world, and began by making a few short documentaries. He became an assistant to Joris Ivens, a Dutch documentary filmmaker and well-known Marxist, whose films include Regen and The Bridge. He also assisted Yves Allégret, a French director known for his work in the film noir genre, whose films include Une si jolie petite plage and Les Orgueilleux. In addition to these influences, Pontecorvo began meeting people who broadened his perspectives, among them artist Pablo Picasso, composer Igor Stravinsky and political thinker Jean-Paul Sartre. During this time Pontecorvo developed his political ideals. He was moved when many of his friends in Paris packed up to go and fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
In 1941, Pontecorvo joined the Italian Communist Party. He traveled to northern Italy to help organize Anti-Fascist partisans. Going by the pseudonym Barnaba, he became a leader of the Resistance in Milan from 1943 until 1945.
After the war, he coedited the weekly communist magazine, Pattuglia, with Dario Volari between 1948 and 1950.[1] Pontecorvo broke ties with the Communist party in 1956 after the Soviet intervention to suppress the Hungarian uprising.[citation needed] He did not, however, renounce his dedication to Marxism.[citation needed]
In a 1983 interview with The Guardian, Pontecorvo said, “I am not an out-and-out revolutionary. I am merely a man of the Left, like a lot of Italian Jews.”[2]
Film career
Early films
After the Second World War and his return to Italy, Pontecorvo decided to leave journalism for filmmaking, a shift that appears to have been developing for some time. The catalyst was his seeing Roberto Rossellini‘s Paisà (1946). He bought a 16mm camera and shot several documentaries, mostly self-funded, beginning with Missione Timiriazev in 1953. He directed Giovanna, which was one episode of La rosa dei venti (1957), a film made of episodes by several directors.
In 1957, he directed his first full-length film, La grande strada azzurra (The Wide Blue Road), which foreshadowed his mature style of later films. It explores the life of a fisherman and his family on a small island in the Adriatic Sea. Because of the scarcity of fish in nearby waters, the fisherman, Squarciò, has to sail out to the open sea, where he fishes illegally with bombs. The film won a prize at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Pontecorvo spent months, and sometimes years, researching the material for his films in order to accurately represent the social situations he explored.
In the next two years, Pontecorvo directed Kapò (1960), a drama set in a Nazi death camp. The plot of the film is about an escape attempt from a concentration camp by a young Jewish girl. In 1961 it was the Italian candidate for the United States’ Academy Awards, and it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film.[3] In this same year, the film won two awards: the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists awarded Didi Perego a Silver Ribbon for best supporting actress, and the Mar del Plata Film Festival awarded Susan Strasberg for best actress.
The Battle of Algiers
Main article: The Battle of Algiers (film)
Pontecorvo is best known for his 1966 masterpiece The Battle of Algiers (released in Italian as La battaglia di Algeri). It is widely viewed as one of the finest films of its genre: a neorealistic film. Its portrayal of the Algerian resistance during the Algerian War uses the neorealist style pioneered by fellow Italian film directors de Santis and Rossellini. He used newsreel-style footage and non-professional actors.
He focused primarily on the native Algerians, a disenfranchised population who were seldom featured in the general media. Though very much Italian neorealist in style, Pontecorvo co-produced with an Algerian film company. The script was written with intention that Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) leaders would act in it.[clarification needed] (For example, the character Djafar was played by an FLN leader, Yacef Saadi.) Pontecorvo’s theme was clearly anti-imperialist. He later described the film as a “hymn … in homage to the people who must struggle for their independence, not only in Algeria, but everywhere in the third world” and said, “the birth of a nation happens with pain on both sides, although one side has cause and the other not.”
The Battle of Algiers achieved great success and influence. It was widely screened in the United States, where Pontecorvo received a number of awards. He was nominated for two Academy Awards for direction and screenplay (a collaboration). The film has been used as a training video by revolutionary groups, as well as by military dictatorships dealing with guerrilla resistance (especially in the 1970s during Operation Condor). It has been and remains extremely popular in Algeria, providing a popular memory of the struggle for independence from France.
The semi-documentary style and use of an almost entirely non-professional cast (only one trained actor appears in the film) was a great influence on a number of future filmmakers and films. Its influence can be seen in the few surviving works of West German filmmaker Teod Richter, made from the late 1960s up to his disappearance, and presumed death, in 1986. In addition, more recent commercial American films, such as the Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and others draw from these techniques for less lofty purposes.
Late career
Pontecorvo’s next major work, Queimada! (Burn!, 1969), deals with a fictional slave revolt, set in the Lesser Antilles. This film (starring Marlon Brando) depicts an attempted revolution in a fictional Portuguese colony.
Pontecorvo continued his series of highly political films with Ogro (1979), which addresses the occurrence of Basque terrorism at the end of Francisco Franco‘s dwindling dictatorship in Spain. He continued making short films into the early 1990s. He also directed a follow-up documentary to The Battle of Algiers, entitled Ritorno ad Algeri (Return to Algiers, 1992).
In 1992, Pontecorvo was selected to replace Guglielmo Biraghi as the director of the Venice Film Festival; he was responsible for the festivals of 1992, 1993 and 1994. In 1991, he was a member of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival.[4]
In an interview that Pontecorvo gave in 1991, when asked why he had directed so few feature films, his response was that he could only make one with which he is totally in love. He also said that he had rejected many other film concepts for lack of interest.[citation needed]
Death
In 2006, Pontecorvo died from congestive heart failure in Rome at age 86.[5]
Pontecorvo’s Filmography:
Feature films
| Title | Year | Functioned as | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Writer | Composer | |||
| The Wide Blue Road (La grande strada azzurra) | 1957 | Yes | Yes | No | Nominated – Crystal Globe (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival) |
| Kapo (Kapò) | 1960 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Nominated – Great Jury Prize (Mar del Plata International Film Festival) |
| The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri) | 1966 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival) Nastro d’Argento for Best Director Nominated – Academy Award for Best Director Nominated – Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay Nominated – Nastro d’Argento for Best Score |
| Burn! (Queimada) | 1969 | Yes | Story | No | David di Donatello for Best Director |
| Ogro (Operación Ogro) | 1979 | Yes | Yes | No | |
Documentary films
| Title | Year | Functioned as | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Director | Writer | Composer | |||
| Missione Timiriazev[6] | 1953 | Yes | No | No | |
| Porta Portese | 1954 | Yes | No | No | |
| Festa a Castelluccio | 1954 | Yes | No | No | |
| Uomini del marmo | 1955 | Yes | No | No | |
| Cani dietro le sbarre | 1955 | Yes | No | No | |
| Pane e zolfo | 1959 | Yes | No | No | |
| Gli uomini del lago | 1959 | Yes | No | No | |
| Paras | 1963 | Yes | No | No | |
| Addio a Enrico Berliguer | 1984 | Yes | No | No | |
| Un altro mondo è possibile | 2001 | Yes | No | No | |
| Firenze, il nostro domani | 2003 | Yes | No | No | |
Short films
- Giovanna (1957, segment of Die Windrose)
- Udine (1984, segment of 12 registi per 12 città)
- Gillo Pontecorvo’s Return to Algiers (1992)
- Danza della fata confetto (1996)
- Nostalgia di protezione (1997)
Further reading:
- Bignardi, Irene (1999). Memorie estorte a uno smemorato. Vita di Gillo Pontecorvo. Feltrinelli.
- Celli, Carlo (2005). Gillo Pontecorvo: From Resistance to Terrorism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
- Ebert, Roger. Pontecorvo: ‘We Trust the Face of Brando’ Chicago Sun-Times. (April 13, 1969)
- Fanon, Frantz (2001). Pour la revolution africaine: Essais politiques. Paris: La Decouverte.
- Mellen, Joan; Pontecorvo, Gillo (Autumn 1972). “An Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo”. Film Quarterly. 26 (1): 2–10. doi:10.1525/fq.1972.26.1.04a00030 (inactive 1 November 2024).
- Mellen, Joan (1973). Filmguide to ‘The Battle of Algiers’. Indiana University Publications.
- Said, Edward W. (2000). “The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo”. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 282–292. ISBN 9780674003026.
- Solinas, Franco (1973). Gillo Pontecorvo’s ‘The Battle of Algiers’. New York: Scribner’s.
External links
- Gillo Pontecorvo at IMDb
- Interview with Gillo Pontecorvo at the World Socialist Web Site
- (in French) Edition de « De l’abjection » (1961) par Jacques Rivette, critique du film Kapo (1959) de Pontecorvo, sur le site d’analyse L’oBservatoire (simple appareil).
- (in French) Présentation de La Bataille d’Alger de Gillo Pontecorvo, sur le site d’analyse L’oBservatoire (simple appareil).
Posters:
Links:
Listen to Morricone’s complete “Battle of Algiers” score here:
Ennio Morricone – La battaglia di Algeri OST
Watch “The Battle of Algiers” (and a slew of bonus materials including featurette “Morricone on Morricone“) on The Criterion Channel here:
Find a vinyl copy at Discogs here:
Watch the trailer for “The Battle of Algiers” here:
Purchase a physical copy of “The Battle of Algiers” blu-ray/dvd from The Criterion Collection here:
If you’re in the Toronto area, say hi to my Filmography podcast co-host, Bjorn, and order a copy to buy or to rent from “Toronto’s last great video store,” Bay Street Video in store (or online, if outside of Toronto):
Watch the film for free on YouTube here:
Watch Criterion’s bonus featurette “Spike Lee, Mira Nair, and Steven Soderbergh on The Battle of Algiers” here:
Read The Guardian’s obituary for Gillo Pontecorvo here:
