There was a time when, as a flier, you were treated, should I say, “royally.” Flight Attendants were Stewardesses (usually very good looking) and the aircraft themselves rarely full. Many people to whom I have related the following stare in disbelief – intimating through body language or such that I am either outright lying or just recounting some drug addled hallucination.

There was a day when air travel was glamorous.

But the truth is, that about thirty years ago, on Air Canada 747 flights that ran at least 4 hours, the upper deck or cabin of the 747 was designated as a “lounge” open to first class and business travelers. In this lounge, daringly-clad “hostesses” (some sort of filmy sari, as I recall) played soft mood music, served drinks and snacks and were available (I kid you not) to dance with you!

The lounges have been replaced by more seating.

I remember one such besotted flight from Toronto to Vancouver with a colleague of mine. The airplane was about half-full and we spent virtually the entire flight in the lounge. The young ladies, or hostesses, were a very agreeable lot – we had fun, drank too much and were constantly being asked to dance! After all, that was their job. Both my friend and I were too shy and frankly, even then, viewed the situation as preposterous –

Thus did not dance, preferring to drink and chat. 

Well, if affirmative action and the feminist movement didn’t change just about everything about air travel, then certainly the events of 9/11 did! The current and continuing austerity of air travel is, I suppose, the result of a complex mix of factors however the fact remains that traveling by air to-day is not any fun or even remotely enjoyable.

If you can afford First Class on an international flight, DO IT!

My trip back to Cannes this year from the United States was a “horror show” right from the get-go! A 90 minute wait for baggage check-in, then another 120 minute wait through security by which time my name was being called due to the fact that my plane was leaving. Then came a dreadful cheek to jowel seating situation for what amounted, in total, to about 14 hours of flying – not to mention more security checks with connecting flights and, in the end, no baggage for me, and many, many others, at the conclusion of the journey in Nice.

However, Alexander Pope, the 18th century poet wrote: “What is, is right.” And so the current conditions of air travel are what they are – we either accept and adapt to them or don’t travel by air.

The security checkpoints are difficult and lengthy but necessary.

And, let’s face it, the threat of terrorism is real and I, for one, don’t want to be a participant in a “bomb incident.” As well, it’s probably useful to remember that the “bombers,” at least in their minds, have legitimate grievances and these techniques are effective strategies for them and will continue to use them.

So, let’s talk about two great Gilles Pontecorvo films – “The Battle of Algiers” (1966) and “Burn” (1968) with Marlon Brando.

Movie Review:

The Battle of Algiers

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo — Casbah Films 1966
Starring: The people of Algiers

Recently re-issued in a beautiful digitally re-mastered 3 disc, box set with many extras including an excellent booklet which puts the film in a very understandable, historical context. Arguably, the most important film ever made in terms of its political impact, it deserves, in my opinion the reverential treatment it has received.

In addition, because of its theme of counter-insurgency and insurgency, “The Battle of Algiers” has a current power that was obviously not foreseen by Pontecorvo. Pontecorvo himself, an avowed communist, was a fervent anti-colonialist who, in making this film, was contributing consciously to the “world revolution” of the 60’s.

He chose to make the film in documentary style – although not a frame of it came from existing newsreels of the events in Algeria in 1954-57.

No actors or newsreel footage were used in the creation of this film.

Again Bosley Crowther’s comments in part from the September 21, 1967 edition of the New York Times:

“A most extraordinary picture for an opener at the New York Film Festival was placed before the first-night audience in Philharmonic Hall last night. It is Gillo Pontecorvo’s ferocious “The Battle of Algiers,” a starkly realistic reenactment of events as they substantially occurred between 1954 and 1957 in the rebellion against the French in the capital of Algeria. —— more commanding of lasting interest and critical applause is the amazing photographic virtuosity and political conviction of the film. So authentically and naturalistically were its historical reflections staged, with literally thousands of citizens participating, in the streets and buildings of Algiers, that it looks beyond any question to be an original documentary film —.”

As well as its stunning photography which utilized heretofore unseen techniques, “The Battle of Algiers” features a driving and profoundly moving music score by the young Italian composer who would become, again arguably, the greatest motion picture music composer ever – Ennio Morricone!

The Casbah (the Arab Quarter) is cordened off with barricades and barbed wire.

So, immediately, this motion picture was recognized as a great work of cinematic art and, of course, still is! But, also immediately, it was recognized as a blueprint for the enactment of terror and revolution. The film carefully explains how to create independent terrorist calls free of interaction from one another as well as how to spread terror among your “tyrant masters” by random and indiscriminate killing of the “occupying” civilians – including women and children.

Rebel leader explains how to prepare for a successful uprising.

“The Battle of Algiers” became required viewing for both the Black Panthers and on to the Pentagon. As an aside, I doubt whether George W. Bush has ever had the pleasure!

Men, women, and children are killed in indiscriminate bombings.

There are such moments of power in it: the keening of the Arabic women at their familial losses, the indomitable courage of the first civilian bombers as they set out to wreak havoc among the French population, the stirring pride of the French paratroopers as they march “into town” straight from Dien Bien Phu pledging to put down this rebellion at all costs and the harrowing scenes of torture as they set about to do exactly that.

The elite French paratroopers march confidently into Algiers, after the bombings.

Also, underlining the entire exercise is the feeling that these people deserve to be free – and will be free – no matter the odds and no matter the solid arguments that the French have for their continued dominant presence in Algeria. When viewing “The Battle of Algiers” I felt I was in Baghdad, or Saigon, or Belfast.

Pontecorvo has created an anti-colonial, political tract in the form of a motion picture – an extremely successful one both in terms of art and politics!

But, there is much more to point out, I think. The very next year, in 1968, Gillo Pontecorvo teamed up with an admirer – Marlon Brando – to make a controversial, commercially unsuccessful obviously dramatic film first entitled “Queimada” and then released as “Burn!”

For Pontecorvo, it was another “ferocious” attack on Imperialism and Colonialism – but with vastly different results!

Movie Review:

Burn

Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo — Casbah Films 1966
Starring: The people of Algiers

Immediately upon his success with “Battle of Algiers,” Pontecorvo began production in Cartegna, Columbia on a straight, dramatic film starring Marlon Brando and produced by Alberto Grimaldi; again with music by Ennio Moricone.

Once again, its theme was the evils and oppression of colonialism along with the moral vacuity of the imperialists. “Queimada” (a fictional Portuguese island in the Caribbean during the 1840’s) whose only crop is sugar is a valuable property of Portugal who rule with brutal force and little care for its occupants.

The oppressed.

Queimada is so valuable to the sugar trade that it is much coveted by the British Empire and, in this regard, the British government dispatches a secret agent, Sir William Walker, to foment rebellion and to lead the successful rebel government into a “protective” arrangement with the empire that he represents.

Sir William, of course, is played by Brando in what turns out to be a highly nuanced characterization that stands out in this quite “muddied” film. Brando, in his autobiography, states:

One explanation for the lack of clear definition in the story could be that Pontecorvo and Brando were at each other’s throats – in one instance, almost literally – throughout the entire production of the film.

Brando objected continuously to the dialogue that he was expected to recite saying that it looked like it came directly from the pages of “The Communist Manifesto!” So, Brando, the great liberal and admirer of “The Battle of Algiers” and its director locked horns with Pontecorvo, the Italian communist with sincere intensity almost from the outset.

The oppressors.

As an aside, Gore Vidal writes in "Palimpsest; A Memoir" that Italy is probably the only Western country that can accommodate the politics of communism successfully. But, the communist auteur Pontecorve failed to accommodate Brando and vice versa thus a constant artistic and political struggle ensued. The result is a film that lacks some clarity and failed commercially – the failure being particularly important as the DVD available is “washed-out” in places, scratched in others and is, in general, of dismal quality.

Which is a real pity, because its vision is grand, most of the acting superb, the “feel” of Queimada and its wretched inhabitants real and it is an important film particularly when seen along with “The Battle of Algiers” and in the context of to-day’s imperial struggles.

The rebel army in victory.

And, in that regard, quoting from the June 14, 2007 edition of “The New York Review of Books” in an excerpt from a review of Chalmers Johnson’s book “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic” is the following:

This after an exhaustive comparison of the Roman, the British and the American Empires – the similarities are astounding. Then follows the choices which are seen in the Johnson quote. So, “The Battle of Algiers” and “Burn!” live on as motion picture art with a political point-of-view that is alive and penetrating to-day. Both pictures should be seen!

A final note:

During one of Brando and Pontecorvo’s “violent” arguments over dialogue, Brando, because it was a close-up, was dressed in a jacket only (with shorts) in the 100 degree plus heat of Cartegna. He continually refused to read Pontecorvo’s lines, over and over again, substituting his own. Pontecorvo ordered retake after retake. Finally, Brando had the prop man strap a stool to his butt so he could sit down after each take – after thirty or forty takes Pontecorvo finally gave up! “I outlasted him,” said the gleeful Brando.