Brahim Hadjadj

Brahim Hadjadj gives Ali La Pointe a watchfulness that holds our attention amid the tactical explanations of The Battle of Algiers (1966). Gillo Pontecorvo’s documentary manner needs actors who seem to belong to the events rather than stand outside them. Hadjadj’s physical presence suits it, and we rate his restraint highly. He makes Ali worth attending to even when the film has other people and events to get to.

This was his screen debut and his only leading role. He followed it with the part of the Arab in Luchino Visconti’s The Stranger (1967), then Omar in L’Opium et le bâton (1969). His later credits include Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s Chronicle of the Years of Fire (1975), and his screen work continued into the mid-1980s. Those films establish a career beyond Ali, though it is the debut that gives us the clearest grounds for a recommendation.

Pontecorvo also gives him fellow actors working with a similar restraint. Jean Martin’s Colonel Philippe Mathieu makes the military reasoning credible enough to be uncomfortable, while Yacef Saâdi’s El-Hadi Jaffar belongs to the same documentary style. Hadjadj fits beside them without losing the resistance that makes Ali worth watching. The value of his performance lies partly in that fit: he can hold our attention without forcing a film about the collective struggle to become a vehicle for its leading actor.

The limitation is how quickly the film moves away from the people it has made us notice. We found The Battle of Algiers hard to bear: Hadjadj’s watchfulness makes us care about Ali while the documentary style makes the violence feel close. We wanted longer with him before another explanation of the campaign, a reservation about Pontecorvo’s priorities rather than Hadjadj’s performance. Start with this role, but do not expect the intimacy of a film built around a single actor.