PONTECORVO'S ‘DOCUMENTARY’ AESTHETICS

Abstract

Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers has often been approached as pseudo- or quasi-documentary, or as akin to newsreel. This article aims to show that the film's relation to historical reality is more complicated and more interesting, both historically and aesthetically, than such an approach would imply. I argue that, through its sophisticated aestheticization of its historical material, the film could be said to raise disconcerting questions that, in a sense, it refuses to answer. It is deeply non-committal, I argue, about the importance of the actual ‘Battle of Algiers’ and the place of torture within it – issues ‘decided’, and still debated, in a sphere of representations and a history of which, as the article shows, the film itself quickly became an important part. This process, I suggest finally, reveals something about the peculiar relations between history and its representations in this particular case, and raises more general issues about the relations between aesthetics, history and the work of the critic.