Abstract

This study explores the American promotion and reception of The Battle of Algiers (1966, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo). By outlining the discourses which facilitated The Battle of Algiers’ circulation within American film-markets, this research outlines the distinct and varied ideological functions that the film has served in the United States. It focuses on three inter-related discursive issues which characterized the marketing campaigns and review journalism associated with the film. First, by de-emphasizing the roles that the Algerian state played in the film’s production, and labelling the film as a piece of Italian neorealism, American distributors and critics promoted it as a politically-neutral alternative to propaganda. In doing so, they effectively mediated the film’s anti-colonial politic, and carefully managed the imaged spectator’s identification with Algerian nationalism(s). This research then explores the film’s promotion as an (anti)colonial allegory for the Vietnam War and black-liberation movement. This discursive trend had varied results. At times it facilitated the articulation of anti-colonial critique within the American mainstream press. However, it more often worked to reify, obscure, and distort the on-the-ground realities of Third Worldist political organizing in ways which met, rather than resisted, the ideological imperatives of American imperialism. Ultimately, the film’s American circulation can be characterized as a site of persistent and ongoing struggle between two competing visions of humanism and globalism - defined by either the internationalist ethos of anti-colonialism, or the expansionist aspirations of liberal capitalism.