Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers is set in the 1950’s during the Algerian War in which France seeks to destroy militant cells that are fighting for Algerian independence. Early in the film we watch French troops raid a home wherein a woman, child, and two men are hiding in a wall. The camera slowly pans across the faces of those hiding, lingering on each’s expression, presenting to the viewer the humanity of those being dehumanized by the French occupying forces.
A few scenes later a flashback shows one of the men we met inside the wall, Ali La Pointe, being pursued by the police until he is tripped by a Frenchman. Ali stands and punches the man and the French crowd jumps and begins beating him. In contrast to the aforementioned scene, the camera now quickly shows the faces of the attackers and blends them into a single entity of anger and hate.
Despite the seemingly clear line having been drawn between the French and Algerians as “bad” and “good” respectively, it is soon revealed that things are not quite as simple. After his release from prison, Ali joins the National Liberation Front, a, for all intents and purposes, terrorist organization. When the group plants a bomb in a European café, there are several close-up shots of the French patrons who are presented as innocent victims just going about their daily lives.
The Battle of Algiers is presented as a docudrama; its black and white footage and unprofessional actors evoking the feeling of watching a newsreel. Pontecorvo uses handheld cameras and location shooting to make his film appear as real as the events that it is based upon. The close-ups, however, use the faces in a way far removed from a documentary and cement this film as one truly humanist.
Introduction to World Cinema 