An extraordinary political melodrama about liberation struggles in colonial settings, produced by its female star and released at the same time as Mehboob Kahn’s Mother India, with which it would ideally be programmed. It would also make a fantastic double bill with Gillo Pontecorvo The Battle of Algiers (1966), which also features the character of Jamila. When we began this podcast I was a bit anxious that we weren’t knowledgeable enough on Chahine’s oeuvre to say anything worth listening to. But as I’ve began reading the literature on Chahine, I realise that what we know and can bring to the table is a knowledge of film history and film aesthetics. None of the books on Chahine I’ve read, for example, mention the influence of Gone With the Wind on this film — extraordinarily interesting in the light of current discussions of the film — and we are beginning to dig out patterning: the melodramatic mode, the politics that underpin, the extraordinary long takes often shot in and for depth, the filming from the inside out, the mobile camera, the ease with which affect is generated, the cinephilia through which one sees and where one detects the influence of Dreyer’s Joan of Arc (1928), Sirk’s mise-en-scène, American post-war musicals; the homoeroticism more evident in some film than others but always a running thread; the filming of individuals with crowds, which are often depicted as community but also shown to turn against the individual. This is a film based on a true story and filmed in the heat of the moment where the fate of the heroine was not yet settled. It’s an extraordinary film that once more raises questions regarding the relations between political cinema and film form. We highly recommend it.
The podcast can be listened to below:
The film can be seen below
Some of you may find useful the 2019 Ritrovato Catalogue on Jamila, The Algerian, with its plot summary and credit listings:
and I made a fun gif to publicise this podcast:
Peter Hourigan, who alerted so many of us to the existence of Chahine fims on Netflix through the Ritrovato Page, has done a a lovely appreciation of the film (and of this very podcast) in Film Alert 101 here:
Dan Montedona for Illicit Film Club makes a very interesting point about how, ‘Jamila‘s historical importance often overshadows how good this film is at being rollicking entertainment’. The piece can be accessed here:
José Arroyo