In 1955, just ten years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, concentration camp survivor Jean Cayrol boldly implied “that the horror [had] not ended but simply moved elsewhere, taking on a different form” in his narration of Alain Resnais’ revealing documentary Nuit et brouillard, or Night and fog (Nowell-Smith 332). Cayrol and Resnais seem to have had a specific, contemporary example in mind: “the brutal counter-revolutionary activities of French forces in Algeria” (Nowell-Smith 332).
It took eleven more years, however, after the making of Nuit et brouillard for a film exposé to be released about the French-Algerian conflict, with the backing of Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo (Imdb.com). Although the film is a fiction narrative, the documentary-styled Battle of Algiers (1966) was banned from France for a five-year period, and American and British versions cut out the torture scenes because of their anti-French implications, according to Wikipedia. It has been rumored that Pontecorvo opposed any romanticism of his main characters (both French and Algerian); nevertheless, there was some disagreement between the Italian screenwriter and Algiers as to how the story should be told (Wikipedia.org).
In comparing the receptions of both Nuit et brouillard and The Battle of Algiers, one would think that the former would have been more censored or suppressed by the French for its violent and graphic images. Although the film is centered on revealing the horrors of German concentration camps, it also shows “evidence of French collaboration in the Holocaust” (Nowell-Smith 332). These segments were censored, but this and the fact that it was dropped from any consideration at Cannes were the only government-implemented setbacks of the film’s screen life (Nowell-Smith 332). The Battle of Algiers, on the other hand, was banned altogether in France. While its images can at times be graphic and emotionally raw, its depiction of violence is not to the extremity shown in Resnais’ film (nor is it “real” footage, like Resnais’).
In light of this surface comparison, it can be surmised that political messages, no matter what the film format in which they were packaged, bore more weight in national cinemas (in this case, France’s) during the post-war period than any attempts to censor violence or other grotesque images. History testifies to the fact that politics, not ethics, reigned in film censorship: real-life footage of anti-Nazi violence films was allowed, staged-life resistance movements in French colonies was forbidden.
Documentaries of that era were already associated with political themes and propaganda, but the French – indeed, the Western world – seemed unprepared for such a forceful display of resistance and political statements in fiction, though Czech and other Eastern filmmakers (mostly those in the Soviet bloc) had already been doing so for years (Nowell-Smith 330). While their films mastered subtlety, however, The Battle of Algiers was unafraid to show its bias toward Algerian resisters, perhaps for the best, at least cinematically. It is now among the most widely acclaimed films of all time.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford, 1996. 330, 332.
Internet Movie Database. La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058946/
Internet Movie Database. Nuit et brouillard (Night and fog). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/
Wikipedia.org. The Battle of Algiers (film). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Algiers_(film)
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