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Interview with the Italian film director gillo
pontecorvo, Rome, Italy, 1 July 2003
Published online: 18 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: (2005) Interview with the Italian film director gillo pontecorvo, Rome, Italy,
1 July 2003, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 7:1, 107-117, DOI:
10.1080/1369801052000330388
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I N T E R V I E W W I T H T H E I TA L I A N F I L M
DIRECTOR GILLO PONTECORVO, ROME,
I TA LY, 1 J U LY 2 0 0 3
Why did you make The Battle of Algiers in 1966, such a long time after
Algerian independence? Why not in 1962?
One should keep in mind that an idea for a film comes by chance. In Italy at
the time there was a very strong attention to politics. The country was much
more attentive than it is now. One of the things that most interested young
people, but also us young Italians, were the liberation struggles in general,
against the remnants of colonialism, especially France, which was for
obvious reasons very close / almost related / to our own country. The idea
for the film came to us just like that, because thats how ideas happen in the
movies. It would probably have been better if wed had the idea three years
earlier, but never mind.
Why were you particularly interested in the Algerian independence struggle
as opposed to other struggles?
I just said why, because of [Italys] link with France. Moreover, in that time
/ I remember this wistfully / our country, like many other European
countries, was much more attentive to politics in general than today.
Nowadays, after all, there is a pernicious lack of attention.
So throughout Italy there was quite a widespread involvement in the
Algerian liberation struggle?
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interventions Vol. 7(1) 107 /117 (ISSN 1369-801X print/1469-929X online)
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Yes, of course, there was a very widespread involvement. In some student
circles, they even cheered for the Algerian victories, but not for antipathy
towards France, only for the part of France that was colonialist. It was a
homage to a struggle that was emblematic of all the liberation struggles
taking place in the world.
And this of course was based on a political belief, obviously? The methods of
this struggle were anyway those of a leftist, marxist struggle; the interest in
the Algerian liberation movement was an interest in revolution, a total class
revolution, it was not only a rebellion against France, I would imagine.
I think one can say that this was definitely one of its components, especially
among the more leftist fringes. But, in general, colonialism, in that fiercely
politicized era, was considered a negative thing one had to fight against, and
one had to cheer every time it was defeated.
Did the idea to make the film come to you shortly after Algerian
independence took place?
Yes, but, I repeat, the ideas for a film come to one just like that; who knows
why they come to you at that moment. Probably the interest in this
[Algerian] struggle was much stronger three years earlier, but the idea for a
film is something separate, its linked to the mental planning of a director
who thinks about certain themes, certain images, a certain style of film. It
depends on a thousand different factors, that arent only political.
How did the collaboration between you and Saadi Yacef, the head of Casbah
Films, come about?
Franco Solinas and I wanted to make a film against colonialism, and we had
prepared a film called Para`, namely paratroopers, which was a story about
Indochina, France and Indochina. They had talked about our project on
television. So the Algerians, who knew our interests lay in this direction, and
in particular Yacef Saadi who was the head of Casbah [Films], but was also a
commander of the resistance fighters, came to Italy to propose a story about
their liberation struggle. It was a small treatment, not longer than forty
pages; he proposed it to [Francesco] Rosi, [Luchino] Visconti, and myself.
The first two were shooting or preparing a film. They gave it to me, I read
the thing and it was so hagiographic, so full of self-praise, that I said, Look,
I wouldnt dream of making this film, but if you give us a free hand, if you
give us the green light, Solinas and I [will do it], even at our own risk,
without being paid. We told him we could try, even at the risk that he
wouldnt like it, to write what we would do to tell this story. We wrote a
INTERVIEW WI TH PONTECO RVO
Neelam Srivastava
109
........................
treatment of about fifty pages, they fully approved of it, and it took off, so to
speak . . . . So then we started our own preparations, in the sense that we took
eight months and went to Algeria, to the casbah, but also to Paris, to talk
with the ex-military men, the para commanders, etc., so as to have a really
complete picture. After that we wrote the script, which [Casbah Films] liked.
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And the military commanders consented to speak with you? Were they
willing to talk?
Yes. They didnt have a clear idea [of what we were doing], in the sense that
we told them that we were making a film about their struggle in Algeria, and
they would tell us . . . and well, paras are certainly not lacking in narcissism.
And they didnt imagine that you would make such a film?
They didnt know, I had told them I was making a historical film on that
period.
Did you meet people from the FLN [Front National de Liberation] in Paris
and Rome?
Certainly, but I really cant remember any names. Did I meet them! I
pestered them to death since both Franco Solinas and I, before beginning any
film, take seven or eight months to gather information, because we have a
passion for historical truth. The BBC, speaking of my films, said it was a sort
of dictatorship of truth. One can see what they mean, no? Everything, even
the effects that worked well on film, if they moved away from this scent of
truth, were immediately discarded, first in the script-writing and then during
shooting.
1 Presumably
Pontecorvo is
referring to The
Wretched of the
Earth , the book by
Fanon which was
best known at the
time. For all
references, see the
reference list
following the
preceding article
Anti-colonial
violence. . .
You said that you read Fanon; but did you also read him to gather
information for The Battle of Algiers?
No, I read Fanon because there was an interest, as I said before, an enviable
interest / compared to the lack of interest and misinformation nowadays /
interest and curiosity in political facts in general, and thus clearly for Fanon.
Moreover, Fanon was very famous in those years?
Many of us had read him, both within and outside the university it was a
very highly regarded book.1
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 1
.........................
110
Do you think you unconsciously used his writing, somehow, in making The
Battle of Algiers?
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Certainly, when you read something like that, full of interpretations that are
so clearly interesting, accurate, to the point, and deep, of course you are not
really copying from it, but its useful to know this approach.
2 Contained in
Studies in a Dying
Colonialism (Fanon
1965: 35 /67).
3 Pontecorvos reply
contradicts Saids
statement that
Pontecorvos major
influences for The
Battle of Algiers and
Queimada were
Fanons The
Wretched of the
Earth and Studies in
a Dying Colonialism
(Said 2002: 285).
Said does not explain
how he reached this
conclusion.
For example, theres that essay by Fanon, Algeria unveiled, where he talks
about the function of the veil in a very similar way to how it is treated in the
film. 2
But I havent read Algeria unveiled.3
Its interesting, because it talks about the same themes, the veil and the
Algerian woman. When the veil is needed to demonstrate a cultural distance
from the colonizer, it is used as a sign of cultural difference. Then it is
discarded when the women have to blend into the European part of Algiers
to carry [bombs], like in your film.
We understood this not through the book, but by talking with the local
women and men. It was a rather amusing sign, quote unquote, of their
position; it was a curious thing.
The fact that they used the veil instrumentally?
Also instrumentally.
So the female ex-combatants told you about it, then?
No, women of every . . . when you prepare a film, at least Franco Solinas and
I, you talk with everyone, both with the enemies, those who have opposite
ideas from yourself, and with the friends, otherwise you dont get the full
picture. So we spoke to anyone we could. We spent weeks in the casbah, we
even ate there, because in the end the people got to know us and they would
invite us to eat couscous with them. In other words, we became friends. And
they were glad because they saw we were honest, we werent French, we
were Italians, who had often supported their struggle and so they welcomed
us with extraordinary generosity.
So there was no link with the essay then . . . this is very interesting, I read this
essay and I immediately thought of the film, because it was really . . . .
But I didnt read it.
INTERVIEW WI TH PONTECO RVO
Neelam Srivastava
111
........................
Certainly, but its interesting anyway [that the the film and the essay share
this common element].
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This probably means that the essay, since it was interesting and useful,
reflected reality. We were in direct contact with reality during weeks of
conversations.
Certainly. Its also true that this essay is often re-published with images from
your film.
I havent seen it. I will go and buy it.
Its in Studies in a Dying Colonialism. A question linked to the previous one
may sound strange: were there pressures from Saadi to make a film which
was even more Manichaean?
I dont consider it Manichaean.
No, sorry I didnt mean to say that, I was just discussing it with someone, I
myself dont find it Manichaean. But . . . .
He [Yacef] liked what we had done, because it was done with honesty, with
this obsession for truth that characterizes the work of Franco Solinas and
myself. There was only one thing they insisted on until the very end, until the
evening before the screening at the Venice Film Festival. At a certain point
[in the film], before the explosion of a bomb that had been placed by the
Algerians in a cafe, there is a close-up of a child / clearly a future victim /
eating ice-cream. They begged me to take it out, they pleaded with me, and I
said, Im not taking it out, because it will give the impression of a quest for
truth, and not of Manichaeism. The night before the screening they told me,
Cut the scene out, and I said, Im sorry but Im not cutting it. Youll see
that youll be satisfied. Indeed, since reviews from all over the world said it
was an objective film, I say that thanks are also due to the ice-cream scene.
And also the scene of the child who is saved by the gendarme.
Yes, that as well, they hadnt discussed that scene, they had accepted it.
Whereas the child with the ice-cream seemed a piece of nastiness against
them, they said; but [I said,] After all, since the film reflects the truth, and
since you are on the right side, it must be in your favour. Not in a flattering
sense, but precisely because it reflects the truth that you were on the right
side.
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 1
.........................
112
Of course, to make such a film nowadays . . . . I spoke to several people who
saw this movie again after September 11, and were strongly struck by it .
Why?
Perhaps no one would have the courage to make such a film nowadays .
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But why not?
I dont think [anyone would make a film] that represents terrorist acts in
such a way .
People would stop and think because perhaps, by celebrating terrorist acts,
they would unwittingly do the terrorists work for them, in that sense I agree.
But yours isnt exactly a celebration of terrorism . . . .
After all, people agree when the [Algerians] win.
Of course .
4 1979.
For example, theres a film I never made, for this reason. But it would take
too long to tell. In a film I made afterwards about a terrorist act, Operation
Ogro ,4 you can feel my fear of making something that would do the
terrorists work for them, and this weighs down the film. Ogro recounts an
attack against the [Spanish] Prime Minister, who was nicknamed Ogro,
during the Franchist regime. So it was a completely different situation in
terms of moral judgement. While making it, I was very careful to be
balanced, so as not to endorse . . . .
But you didnt have this worry with The Battle of Algiers? Perhaps it was a
different era?
Not only was it a different era, we wanted to endorse terrorism.
Was there a previous model [for The Battle of Algiers]? Did it belong more
to the World War II resistance genre or to the anti-colonial genre? Your
earlier film was Kapo`. This is linked to the question about the relationship
between your experience as a partigiano [resistance fighter] during the
Second World War and The Battle of Algiers.
These are two separate questions. The model came directly from the inquiry
we had conducted [talking to people] in the casbah for weeks and weeks and,
INTERVIEW WI TH PONTECO RVO
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Neelam Srivastava
113
........................
I repeat, from the commanders of the paras. So it came out of our quasiknowledge of this reality through words and infinite sessions of informationgathering. I dont remember if there were any other films at the time, and
anyway I didnt see them. [The film] was so strongly dictated by that reality
full of stimuli, that to go and look for a previous model . . . . I dont know if
there was one, but perhaps we didnt care to look for one. Documenting that
reality, visiting those localities, those places was so much stronger; in the
casbah they would show us around, Here is where they hid, here they came
down this stair. [A previous model] would have been really superfluous.
This happened shortly after 1962, when you went to Algiers?
I dont remember the date.
Because anyway the memory was very fresh?
You need much more than memory to make a film. I repeat, you need to go
and smell things, the stairs, etc. Here we escaped, here we came out. Its one
thing to know a struggle by reading the newspaper, its another thing to go
and speak with the protagonists.
And what about the decision to make the film in two languages, in Arabic
and French [the version released in the UK]?
We shot the film with the bad habit of Italian cinema, not caring what
language it was in, thinking it would be dubbed afterwards anyway. The
Italians spoke Italian, the extras spoke French, and then during the
dubbing . . . . The Italians are the heirs of this lie and this skill: since they
are also past masters at dubbing, everything is dubbed.
The film I saw in England is in French and Arabic, with English subtitles.
Perhaps because / I dont remember now, its almost forty years ago /
perhaps the English told us that they would rather have subtitles and the
original language and we made it for them. It was easy to do because in the
live filming we had both Arabic, French and Italian, so with some
manoeuvring it wasnt too hard to reach this solution.
So making it in two languages wasnt deliberate?
No, they asked us and it was their idea; and we liked it, so much so that we
accepted, otherwise we would have said no.
i n t e r v e n t i o n s 7: 1
.........................
/
114
Surely it increased the realism effect?
Yes, we accepted because we liked it.
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Is there a parallel between a resistance film such as Kapo` and The Battle of
Algiers? There were no previous models of anti-colonial film, but perhaps
there was a series of films in that time on the resistance during the Second
World War? Could this have influenced you?
In what way? In how I shot it?
Not so much that, more the idea of representing a popular resistance, a
struggle for liberation.
Look, the idea is so attractive in itself that I frankly dont see why I
should resort [to previous models]. For example, Kapo` is a film that I
made, and it interested me because / though this may sound pompous /
mankind interests me, the difficulty of the human condition, the affection
for mankind as a function of the hard human condition. This is why I like
to narrate mans struggle to escape from the difficulties in which he is
often forced to live. In this context, its clear that Kapo` , the universe
of the concentration camp, is something one wants to narrate, one feels
that it is right and necessary to narrate this. But it was the same for
colonialism; it is right to tell a story against it, with the idea that it is part
of mans painful struggle to escape certain hard situations of the human
condition.
And this was basically what generated your interest in the anti-colonial
struggles?
Not only that, also because both the anti-colonial struggles and any struggle
to reduce the power of groups of men over other groups of men, is part of the
reason why I fought the war of resistance as a young man.
So you could say that this is the relationship between your experience as a
partigiano [partisan, resistance fighter] and [the inspiration behind The
Battle of Algiers]?
Not only that, there is also a practical relationship: the methods of
concealment of an underground movement in Rome, as in Paris, as in
Algiers, are very similar, so I remembered many things that we ourselves had
done when we were an armed underground movement.
INTERVIEW WI TH PONTECO RVO
Neelam Srivastava
115
........................
Did you use part of those experiences, of those . . . tactical memories?
Thats what Im telling you, yes, some of it ended up in the film, but sort of
automatically.
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Were you ever personally involved in any anti-colonial struggle?
5 Said, however,
says that Pontecorvo
worked for the FLN
during the late 1950s
(Said 2002: 286).
No. Italy didnt have this problem; we cheered and we took sides, but we
didnt participate. Only in the sense that we happened to write articles, or in
interviews we always spoke out violently against colonialism. Both Franco
Solinas and I did this every time we could, but we never took part directly,
this didnt happen.5
Which anti-colonial struggle did you follow specifically, of course the
Algerian one, but were there others?
The Algerian one, obviously, but we also had news of other struggles, clearly
the French one was the leading one, because we were neighbours, etc.
Lets talk about Burn [Queimada]. How did the story come about?
6 Pontecorvo made
the colonizers in the
film Portuguese, so
the title was changed
from the Spanish
word for burnt
(quemada ) to the
Portuguese
equivalent
(queimada ).
7 The OAS,
Organisation Armee
Secre`te , was a French
right-wing terrorist
group that acted in
the name of French
Algeria, carrying out
bomb attacks in both
Algeria and France.
They were also
behind the military
coup against General
de Gaulle in 1962
(Macey 2000: 457).
In the strange way in which films often come about. The producer Grimaldi
had said, Why dont we make a film that will appeal to a mass audience? Its
good for you too, youve had enough cultural successes, now you should
make a commercial film. I immediately said no, then he said, Why not? Try
at least, perhaps we can reach an understanding. First he wanted to do a
story about a mercenary soldier, then I spoke with Franco Solinas and I said,
Why should we do something we dont like? Lets make an adventure story,
like he wants it, lets get a great star, lets make it in colour, in the style of the
nineteenth-century novel and so on, but lets add our own ideas, which were
always anti-colonial.
I know the producers didnt want the colonizers in the film to be Spanish.
Yes, because the Spanish nationalists didnt want the film to give a negative
image of Spain. So we changed the title from Quemada to Queimada .6
And was there a similar reaction in France when The Battle of Algiers was
released?
No, the boycotting lasted only three months, partly because the OAS said
they would put bombs in the cinemas.7
i n t e r v e n t i o n s / 7: 1
.........................
116
We were interested in knowing about the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial
circles in Rome, the people who publicly sided with the Algerian struggle.
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Unfortunately, I dont remember, but everyone took sides; we can only
dream about such a thing nowadays. Almost every man of culture took sides.
I remember these things with regret, because nowadays people dont care
about anything; perhaps I exaggerate, but now people are infinitely more
lukewarm.
Which political movements in particular were closest to the Algerian
struggle?
Clearly the Italian Communist Party, then also the socialists, there were also
some liberals, but only the fringes, and some other parties. But the hard core
was the Communist Party, and part of the socialists.
Because there was a delegation of the FLN in Rome, I think they had some
contacts with the Communist Party.
Yes, but that is not what determines ones orientation, and naturally there
were contacts between them I cannot possibly remember.
Did you meet these delegates of the FLN in Rome?
No, I met them in Algiers and in Paris; in Rome, perhaps one or two of them,
but I no longer remember who they were.
8 Giovanni Pirelli is
the co-editor of a
book that collected
letters and
testimonies of
Algerians involved in
the war of liberation
against the French.
He also translated
much of Fanons
work into Italian.
Giovanni Pirelli wrote a lot about Algeria. 8
Giovanni Pirelli was very left-wing, and Feltrinelli too. They were all friends
of mine, at the time we were all connected by the glue of political
engagement.
And in particular the support for the Algerian cause?
Absolutely.
Did you use Pirellis book in your information-gathering? He compiled an
anthology of writings, namely he collected the eye-witness account . . . .
No, I didnt know that. But I repeat for the thousandth time that, compared
to six months of information-gathering on site and in Paris, we didnt care
what Giovanni had written about these things. One gets the information
INTERVIEW WI TH PONTECO RVO
Neelam Srivastava
117
........................
directly, and its much more substantial than the interpretations given by
someone else.
Did you meet Fanon? He was also in Rome.
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No, but I greatly admired his books. I didnt read Algeria Unveiled,
however.
Interview prepared by Robert Young and Neelam Srivastava (Newcastle
University, UK). Interview conducted and translated by Neelam Srivastava.
