Simba and Battle for Algiers

For this project, we are asked to watch the films Simba  and Battle of Algiers and make comparisons.

I watched the films in reverse order as had some difficulty finding Simba  online, eventually having to order a DVD. Battle of Algiers is available in iStore so was able to view on iPad.

Battle of Algiers

The film commences with petty criminal Ali La Pointe turned by an incident in prison when views the guillotining of a presumed FLN supporter.

Set up to prove he is not a spy, he is asked to shoot a policeman who is seeing an informer rather than the informer himself, but the gun is not loaded. This, it is explained to him by Jaffer, one of the senior FLN (National Liberation Front) members, tests Ali as a spy would not be allowed to shoot a policeman. Demonstrates that the FLN worked in an organised way.

The FLN also worked out that they had to use the Kasbah as a base for their anti colonialist activities, which involved clearing the area of pimps, prostitutes, drugs and alcohol. It was an early example of a male dominated group imposing Muslim rules in society, a phenomenon common in modern times. The film shows the first Muslim marriage in the Kasbah and Ali murdering a local mafioso type, presumably involved running parts of the low life in the Kasbah.

There are then a series of murders of French police and soldiers. The French retaliate by erecting barbed wire around the Kasbah, restricting movement. In one scene we glimpse two white people passing through a checkpoint without being questioned.

After the Head of the Prefecture orchestrates the planting of a bomb outside the house of a presumed culprit blowing up many people including women and children, the locals march towards the French headed by Ali. But Jaffer confronts the group, saying they will all be killed if they progress. Instead he says the FLN will avenge the deaths. He does this by organising a bombing campaign. In an early example of women acting as guerrillas, Djamila, Zohra, and Hassiba disguise themselves as European women and carry bombs to several places such as Air France offices. The filming of this event takes several minutes, in documentary fashion.

General Carelle ex French resistance leads paras in January 1957. Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe Mathieu is head of operations.

The FLN organise an eight day strike. As the day nears, Ali, who is against the he strike, meets one of the FLN leaders (Ben M'Hidi) who explains that to win the revolution requires the support of the masses, not just armed insurrection. It is hard to start a revolution, harder to continue, and hardest to win, the leader says, adding that the work continues once won. These philosophical sentiments are entirely missing from Simba.

When interviewed by press, Mathieu says it is up to the press whether the strike succeeds. We need political will as well as military solutions, he claims. Should we enlist asks one reporter, “God forbid”  replies Mathieu: "Just write and write well" with a subtle hint as to what that writing should contain.

He continues: "Sometimes the political will is present, sometimes not, sometimes is not enough”. “What is Paris saying?" he asks

“Just another article by Sartres.” Comes the reply

"Why are the Sartres always on the other side?" Mathieu asks.

"You don't like Sartre?" asks a reporter. "No, replies Mathieu, "but I like him even less as an enemy."

At the commencement of the strike, the troops  round up everyone in Kasbah. Most are released back with French propaganda ringing in their ears: "the FLN prevents you working. France is the Motherland."

Men are questioned and their information starts to unpick the FLN's "triangles" of operatives - everyone knows just the person who recruited them and one other.

Mathieu is very blunt in a press conference. He is pushed hard as to whether his forces are using torture.

"We are soldiers" he announces, "our duty is to win."

Mathieu asks the reporters whether France should stay in Algeria. If the answer is yes, he adds, then the reporters must accept "what that entails."

Not long after, all the FLN senior command are captured or killed, Ali La Pointe and comrades being blown up.

For two years, there was comparative calm. Then uprisings commenced in December 1960, many people killed as Algerians attempted to enter the European Quarter. The mass nature of the demonstrations swayed French public opinion, and on 2 July 1962, Algeria achieved independence.

Fine film, presenting both sides of the case: the case of the FLN fighting for independence, their modus operandi, and the assistance they received from their fellow Kasbah inhabitants; but also the indiscriminate bombing of Europeans by the FLN, and the double standards of the French media opinion. As Mathieu makes clear: if the French wish to stay in Algeria, then that means acceptance of some dubious means to eradicate opposition.

It is a hard-hitting movie, and caused sufficient controversy in France to be banned until 1971. Losing a colony was one thing; to looks as if the French were largely to blame is another. It also resonates today; the urban guerrilla tactics of the FLN are being used in Iraq as I write by ISIS. In 2003, according to Wkipedia, the Pentagon showed the  film with a flyer reading:

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

This is much more like Belfast than Kenya. The British reacted in very similar ways To the killing of police and soldiers.

Simba

The credits indicate this to be a purely fictional film.

An African cyclist comes across a white man wounded and lying on the ground. The man pleads for help and mercy but the African draws his panga and murders the White.

All the passengers in the airport are white.

Alan Howard (Dirk Bogarde) arrives in Kenya to visit his elder brother, David. He is met by his old friend Mary (Virginia McKenna) and they drive to the farm, gently soliciting each other.

Police are at the farm as the pair arrive. David's body is laid out and the house has been trashed. Dramatic scene as Alan peeks beneath the sheet to identify David. Alan makes tearful.

"Were any of the boys killed?" Alan asks the policeman. "No," he replies, "they all run off into the woods at the first sign of trouble." (As if to say that is what you expect of the local Africans).

Alan stays with another family locally. "Why was he killed?" asks Alan. His host replies:

"Africans don't understand why; why doesn't' apply to the Africans, any more than it does to a backward child. They act entirely on instinct." His wife says this is nonsense, that David was kind to the Africans, and Mau Mau do not like white people who are kind.

The host continues that before the whites came a few years ago, the Africans had only just "come out of the trees" how can they be rational adult human beings? "They are nothing more or less than backward children."

Alan decides to stay to look after the farm, to Mary's obvious relief.

The policeman refers to the local doctor. "I am always suspicious of educated natives."

Mary works with the local African doctor, Dr. Karanja. He is troubled by being seen as a local black man by the whites, and too close to the whites by the locals.

At a security meeting for white settlers, emotions run high. "make the Africans fear us.". Dr. Hughes urges the whites to reason with and make friends with the Africans. "We are not the only people with a stake in this country. We must learn to live together black and white, side by side, there is no other way out."

Another man criticises David Howard for being sentimental. "We have to crush the Africans, or get out", he says.

Alan is concerned that perhaps the whites are being weak. as he speaks to Mary, African drums are heard in the background.

The Mau Mau meet in the dark. (Dyer makes much of the contrast between the meeting of the whites in daylight and the Mau Mau in the dark, but it is not surprising as the organisation acted under cover). There is an initiation service headed by Simba wearing traditional African dress. A local man, presumably sympathetic to Europeans, is killed.

Alan sees a child orphaned after his family was killed by Mau Mau because they would not turn against the whites.

He sees a note from Simba, urging him to go home. Karanja urges Alan to leave, "I am trying to frighten you", Karanja says, but Alan says he is staying. Alan is suspicious that Karanja placed the note.

"My people are simple, and they have their grievances", explains Karanja, when Dr. ....asks him how he thinks the situation will develop.

Two of the farm's animals and one of the 'boys' are killed, vultures swooping overhead to add atmosphere to the scene.

Alan fights with an intruder who is trying to rob him. The intruder is shot. Karanja argues with Alan who suspects the doctor to be a Mau Mau sympathiser.  "I despise Mau Mau" says Karanja in an impassioned speech.  But as he dies, the intruder identifies Karanja as Simba.

Alan asks Mary to marry him. She loves him but cannot commit. She is afraid of what Alan might become. "There is no peace any more", bemoans Mary.

Mary's parents decide to go to England but just as they celebrate the good news, Mr. Crawford is murdered by a Mau Mau gang who steal the guns. His wife shoots an intruder, but is shot herself. Alan and Mary arrive to see the carnage.  Alan loses it, shouting at Mary that the boy she trusts is responsible for the killing.

Mary implores Karanja not to blame himself but he does. He admits to the head of the police that Simba is his father. After a chase, Simba is confronted by a real lion. The police chief urges Howard not to shoot Simba, explaining later that if he did, the Africans would believe his spirit would enter the lion. Every time subsequently that Africans would hear a lion roar, the poor fools would think it is Simba calling for action. "That makes no sense to me", says Alan. "This is Africa, it makes sense here alright", replies Drummond.

During the night, all the house boys on the farm flee. Alan is left with no-one to run the farm. He arrives home later to find a dead cat hanging outside. The telephone line is cut and his jeep torched. Meanwhile Mary has found out from Alan's former house boy that he is in danger. She drives with Karanja and a policeman to Alan's farm, crashing on the bridge that has been blown up.

Mary and Karanja arrive at the farm at same time as the Mau Mau. "I wish to hell you had not come" Alan tells Mary. "Too late for wishing, darling", she replies,"I am here."

Karanja says he is to talk to the mob. Alan calls him a blithering idiot, presenting him with a gun. "This is a better weapon than words."

"This is not the answer", says Karanja. "These men are my brothers." He confronts the mob, imploring them not to impose more suffering. His father arrives, the men obviously fearing him. Simba says Karanja is not his son, but a white man. Both are shot, Simba by Alan, Karanja by the mob. "We don't deserve peace" are Karanja's last words.

Alan and Mary escape as the police arrive just in time.

Simba is indeed a film that presents a binary view of white and black culture. Dyer presents it as:

"..a rigid binarism, with white standing for modernity, reason, order, stabilty, and black standing for backwardness, irrationality, chaos and violence."

As some of the quotations above show, the film does little to change the view of the vast majority of the Africans by the white minority as childlike and superstitious. This view contrasts with the role of the self trained Kenyan doctor, Peter Karanja, who turns out rather improbably to be the son of Simba, the local Mau Mau overlord. Karanja defends David Crawford as good man yet understand the issues of the grievances as the above quotation indicates. Dyer points out that the film characterises him as 'reasonable, rational, humane, liberal'. He contrasts too the liberal stance taken by what he calls ' the socially subordinate' Irish Dr. Hughes, and Mary with the hardline view takne by white male landowners. This is probably going too far - it is very likely that the more extreme views expressed by some of the whites would indeed be taken by male landowners as they had more to lose at the hands of the Mau Mau.

The major omission in the film is a portrayal of the reasons for the uprising: in particular the appropriation of 28,000 sq km (source: Wikipedia) of prime agriculutural land, and the subordination of the local populace to employee status, reliant on the white colonials for work and income. It omits too any mention that the colonial regime committed a number of war crimes, notably the Chuka Massacre and Hola massacre. But as with the FLN in Lagiers, there were atrocities on both sides. It was, according to Anderson (2005):

"a story of atrocity and excess on both sides, a dirty war from which no one emerged with much pride, and certainly no glory."

The Mau Mau killed many Kikuyu people deemd to be sympathasizers, notably in the Lari massacre of 1953. The fear engendered in the local populace by the Mau Mau comes through strongly in the film as the servants flee from Howard's farm near the end.

Simba is therefore much less balanced than Battle of Algiers, but here are some important differences that help explain why this may be the case:

 

SIMBA	BATTLE OF ALGIERS
Fictional	True story
Filmed during the uprising – in a period when the action was actually happening and when the colonial regime was still in force	Filmed after independence when a sense of retro perspective can be applied
The film is set in an rural setting with much coverage of the colonialists in situ	The film is set in an urban setting and includes no input from the colonialists who live in the European quarter.
Some propaganda agenda may be assumed for the continuation of the colonial status quo	No propaganda agenda as post independence
The racism of the more extreme settlers is never in doubt	More about colonialism than race
Pure fiction	Semi documentary in nature
There is little philosophy included – it is a love story overlaid by a colonial situation.	Includes some philosophical scenes, notably the conversations of Mathieu with reporters, that directly set out the contradictions of colonial rule
British film	French film (albeit directed by an Italian)
Women play subservient role for both black and white populace	Women involved in operations and demonstrations

   

It is notable that Battle of Algiers was banned from being showed in France until 1971, due presumably to the presumed sensitivities of the audience to the loss of a colony. Perhaps a movie more along the lines of Simba would have been viewed more sympathetically by those who make these decisions.

Reference:

Anderson (2005) Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-84719-9.