124. Le Torture

Ennio Morricone & Gillo Pontecorvo: La Battaglia di Algeri (RCA Italiana, 1966);
composed by Ennio Morricone

What do you do with the parts that wrench the narrative out of shape, but refuse to be left out? Pontecorvo’s docudrama about France’s protracted exit from a colony many of them had considered a départment de la République has two essentials. One – comprising 99% of the film’s length – is the military victory of the Algerian insurgency, for which operations in the capital are emblematic of the wider war. The other essential is the fact that the French were hideously torturing Algerian prisoners which may have broken the French as certainly as the FLN did. Torture was so typical of colonial administrations that there might not have been reason to raise the issue had the Nazis not then-recently had the temerity to visit colonial methods upon other Europeans, which was only part of how that cataclysm made colonialism too costly. (Alternatively, the Argentine military reportedly used this film to prepare a counter-insurgency against its own citizens.) Morricone’s great soundtrack comprises a delirious martial frenzy for most of the film, until a montage at the end with no dialogue or other source audio – just images of bound prisoners being blowtorched and electrocuted, accompanied by a perfectly forlorn and bizarre organ chorale.

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day through Advant and at least semi-regularly until Donald goes away.