The 1967 Film The Battle Of The Algiers

Before we pat them on the back, I must say I was scared for this film from the beginning. It started with the casting call for women. Separating the fair-skinned from the dark-skinned black girls, requiring

The film Camp de Thiaroye shows the cruelty and injustice the African soldiers confront after fighting for France, the motherland, during World War II. The colonies required the allegiance of the African males to go fight along French soldiers, which

The idea that the young people of the world are the future is one that motivates many of our actions today. We look to preserve the economy and ecology in the hopes that it will sustain our children. We place a focus on education with the notion that we will be lead in the future by the children of today. This makes for an interesting dynamic, a social dynamic that is well-explored in Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. The revolutionary setting allows Pontecorvo to play with the role of children as it relates to progress and the future. By analyzing stills from the film, we are able to see how children play both the role of the innocent and the militant, combining to show just how impactful the search for self-determination can be.

1. What are the main themes, politically and socially, that are portrayed in the film?

The film sets a certain viewpoint on gender. It labels men and woman a certain way. Women in the film are set to be delicate and sex-driven. Men are set to be tough, brutal, workers. Marla was played by a thin, attractive, petite actress. Her clothes were always feminine. Tyler was played by a fit, muscled man that fit society's definition of attractive. The movie made it clear that men are masculine, and women are feminine. Basow said, “Gender is constructed by every socializing agent and force in society: parents, teachers, the media,

can relate to as a women and also can relate to the characters from the film.

Not only is race is shown, also sexual orientation. This wasn’t accidental, the directors want it to be this diverse, to show that race wasn’t the issue, no race got any preference when it came to decision time. But gender played a role during the decision making. I think that the directors, producers and writers wanted to showcase the rationalization of life and death, when the power is put in the ones hands.

5. This story has as its background a specific political situation - the French Algerian crisis in the years following World War II. How does Daru reflect France's plight? Is the story's meaning limited to this situation? What does the story tell us about good and evil and the nature of moral choice?

In the movie they was definitely has a pull and push with femininity and masculinity in the reading the Representing women they state that “gender ideology constructs femininity as inferior to masculinity.”(p.96) in the film you see the male characters acting like they were much smarter than the black characters. There was scene where Jim Parsons character was visibly upset that Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson) was hire to double check his work. He believe that she was inferior to him because she was black and a

The film appeals to its target audience by many different features. For men there

The film represents violence of destruction as associated with masculinity, and it shows this as a negative attitude, and

I think that the movie keeps the gender role stereotyping unchanged. It reflects certain conservative trends of the decade during which it was made, the influence of feminist ideology as well as some commonly recognized American values, for example, individualism and self-reliance. Even if this movie is produced by male filmmakers in the conservative Reagan era the profound influence of feminist ideology can be traced in most of the following issues.

As the movie continues and the characters begin to break down their walls and get to know each other, both them and those watching see that they really are not all that different, despite their very different stereotypes.

The end of World War II and the start of the Algerian War of Independence defined France during the mid 1900s. Many black intellectuals, including poet Léopold Sédar Senghor and writer William Gardner Smith grappled with the war, colonialism and racism that permeated French culture, whether overtly or subtly. Despite the similar imagery within their prose, the authors showcase two distinct points of view. Both authors describe ugly, inhuman visages, but in Senghor’s work, these twisted faces are merely masks, as removable as the humanly-constructed horror of the era, whereas Smith sees the twistedness as fully ingrained in the human countenance.

Women drove events in the novel because with the exception of the first fight between the workmen and the soldiers, primarily all physical revolts by the Senegalese were the work of the women. There were three reasons for this. First, whereas a man physically revolting would simply be killed, it was highly distasteful to the French to kill a woman or child. Second, this was the most effective manner for the women to aid the strike, since they were largely ignored and could not participate in the union meetings. Third, the women tired of scavenging food without success and watching each other waste away. Working actively to benefit the strike gave meaning to their lives. Also the French, who viewed the African women as ignorant whores whose primary worth was for sexual pleasure, also consistently acted to provoke them. Arresting Ramatoulaye, assaulting Ad'jibid'ji and her