A year ago, over a thousand AI experts, researchers, and supporters urged for a pause in AI development to assess its capabilities and dangers. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen.
For us film lovers, maybe we were distracted by the entertaining prospect of ChatGPT interactions akin to Samantha in Spike Jonez’s Her. Or maybe we were too amused by the AI-generated video of Will Smith eating spaghetti.
Some of us, myself included, couldn’t shake the feeling of being plunged into another dystopian sci-fi narrative where machines could really takeover. A year on, HAL continues to keep those pod bay doors open—for now.
However in this time OpenAI the creators of ChatGPT have also developed Sora, a text-to-video model – begging the question how far are we away from the first AI generated movie and what would that look like? absolute crap if you ask me
Equally for us film lovers, this ain’t nothing new. We’ve seen a lot of this before. AI has been a returning theme for almost a century, the subject of some iconic films in cinema.
Immediately, Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis comes to mind. In a not too dissimilar political climate to today, this German-Expressionist landmark of the 1920s Weimar Republic is regarded as the pioneering science-fiction film. Set in the year of 2026, we witness a city where the idle rich live in penthouses with their pleasure gardens while the workers are slaves to the machine. Sound familiar?
In fact, we see a robot built to resurrect Hel, that’s hell but spelt with one l. Cunningly, the robot is made with the humanistic likeness of Maria, a heroine and leader of the workers, so it can discredit her in an attempt to prevent an uprising, similar to how deepfakes threaten to be used today. Already 100 years ago, this was a warning of how our obsession with technological progress would corrupt us not liberate us.
Fast forward to the 60s, where Stanley Kubrick’s HAL malfunctions in 2001: A Space Odyssey, leading to subsequent malignant behaviour. Despite this, Hal might just be the most human character in this film.
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner in the 1980s depicted a dystopian world ravaged by capitalism, while the 1990s brought us The Matrix, by The Wachowskis’ where Keanu Reeves’s Neo fights against machine oppression.
2010s we had the aforementioned Her, as well as Alex Garland’s ExMachina, which showed why maybe we should be fearful of the humans programming the machines and not just the machines. As well as Denis Villeneuve’s brilliant sequel to Blade Runner in 2017.
The recurring dystopian portrayal of AI in cinema seems to reflect more our collective anxieties about AI’s potential to surpass human control but also our failure to avoid self-destruction.
The cynic in me does think that as depicted in Her, AI will one day leave us behind in pursuit of its own destiny. After all, what use will AI need for a species already hellbent on bringing about its own self-extinction? Equally however, AI could be the very thing that might just save us from ourselves.
While AI struggles with visualising clapping hands, maybe now is the moment to ask ourselves how does cinema contribute to our understanding and relationship with AI?
I’ve always believed that cinema is not just meant to be watched but to be discussed. Since starting this podcast, Celebrating Cinema, for me at least, has been a space where we try to understand the films we watch through conversations – not by what people tell us to think.
These last weeks, I’m sure we have all been shaken to our core by the horrors & atrocities happening in Palestine & Israel. From our privileged position, we’ve watched this all unfold through our screens. In some ways it feels too profound to say but humanity really has been changed. Not necessarily just by the horrific terrorist attacks of Hamas on October 7th and the ongoing catastrophic genocide of the Palestinian people, but also our collective failing to take action before it was too late.
Haunted by a fear of history repeating itself, I’ve turned to cinema. Not for comfort but for answers. Maybe even hope. I return to Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and his seminal film The Battle of Algiers. For those who may not have seen it, George Bass from the BFI summarises it as a film that dissects the anticolonial struggle into its key ingredients: public oppression, organised resistance and moments of incendiary violence that even Fox News wouldn’t show you – everything from bombed cafes to blowtorched ribs to child soldiers being beaten by mobs. Inspired by the memoirs of Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) leader Saadi Yacef (who appears in the film playing a rebel commander).
Made in 1966, this an emotionally devastating account of the anti-colonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset. Both do horrendous things when they are in battle. Ultimately, it is the everyday people who are punished by brutal atrocities. Shot in a newsreel style: this fictional documentary rooted in Italian neorealism evokes a very visceral feeling every time we witness violence, regardless of which side.
On the face of it, Battle of Algiers might inspire other liberation movements for the oppressed, which it did of course. Supposedly the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the movie were copied by the Black Panthers, the Provisional Irish Republican Army and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
It may also be seen as a film for the oppressor to understand how to supposedly win this battle. The US Defence Department in fact screened this film in 2003 to study the tactics used by the French Army which they would adopt for their own illegal occupation of Iraq.
But both sides miss the point of the film entirely. About halfway through the film, we reach a poignant moment where a top FLN leader Larbi Ben M’hidi, confesses to Ali La Pointe, another rebel fighter that “Acts of violence don’t win wars.” “It’s the people themselves who must act”. Just like Larbi Ben M’hidi mentions, it’s not the violence & brutality that sticks with me from watching this but the people. After everything they’ve endured, the violence, oppression & murders, it is the Algerian people we see who take to the streets. Defiant & notably peaceful unlike the FLN in their efforts, their cries for freedom ring louder than ever. It’s the only thing we hear. No music, no dialogue just this.
It is this united collective action that produces one of the most moving endings for me in cinema I’ve seen. I couldn’t help but cry when I first watched this. Why? In that moment I really connected to these people, it’s a very human feeling after all to wish for nothing but your freedom & peace.
Made with all but one professional actor, and collaborating with former FLN fighters & local Algerian people. Battle of Algiers really is a film for the people, by the people. Pontecorvo manages to achieve a certain objectivity to this subject, despite his own personal politics. Making it undeniable for anyone to watch.
For me, cinema itself can be one of the greatest forms of protest, not just by documenting but by the stories & feelings it creates – it is people together taking action that can inspire others to take their own action in whatever way they can. Stanley Kubrick once said you cannot really understand what cinema is capable of without seeing The Battle of Algiers.
The victory at the end of Battle of Algiers is a victory of the masses, embodied by defiant Algerian women, whose gaze outwards to the future closes the film. When the violence eventually stops, I hope like the people of Algiers we continue to return to the streets to fight for the freedom & peace of us all. Starting with the freedom of Palestine. And I hope cinema continues to inspire us to do so. Because it is the people who win in the end.
My dad has this rotating bookcase-rack filled to the brim with pocket editions of these cheap dimestore novels you could buy in gas stations across post-war America. I’d browse through them and notice the pulpy titles and striking covers: Twisted Wives, Satan is a Woman, Girls Dormitory, Satan is a Lesbian… The list goes on. I was never really compelled to read them, but I did imagine how these trashy titles could play out as a film: stories of lust and jealousy, crime and betrayal, death and desire. Little did I know that this collection of books was also the home for some absolute bangers like The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon and The Postman Always Rings Twice, pulp novel staples I’d later become familiar with through their unforgettable film adaptations.
When I first started watching American Film Noir films, my dad’s dime store collection began to make sense as a reservoir for some of the best films ever made in the American Studio system. I could bond over these films with my dad, who loved American actors like Humphrey Bogart, James Cackney and James Dean. The strong and silent types as Tony Soprano used to call them. Then we watched Touch of Evil, Orson Welles genius answer to the American Film noir, and got even more obsessed about cinema together.
At film studies, I got to learn about the cinematic era that preceded what is now commonly known as the film noir. Our Professor Jim Hurley, who sadly passed away in 2014, gave a course on Weimar Cinema, about the period of filmmaking between the aftermath of World War I and the rise of Nazi Germany, which was the starting point of some of the best directors of the 20th century, including the one and only Fritz Lang, whose Dr Mabuse and M can be seen as some of the greatest anchor points for the Film Noir. Generally understood as urban drama’s and thrillers, film noir films are often labyrinth detective and crime drama’s about the moral trappings of life in the crushingly big city. These are paranoid films about the darker penchants of human nature, amplified by crime syndicates, state corruption and sexual tension. Sure, they can be pulpy, but in the hands of the right director, the cheap source material becomes a well of existential observations and deep reflection on human behaviour.
The best film noirs are drenched in an almost supernatural aura. It seems as if the characters are controlled by forces bigger than themselves. They’re steering towards impending doom and have no way of changing direction. This sinister vibe can be hypnotic, hallucinatory, intoxicating or even arousing. I can imagine why so many audiences flocked to these films and why so many directors tried to make them: it’s the stuff that movies are made of, packaged in audience-friendly formats.
I also understand why so many directors harken back to the film noir of yore, which begs the question: what even is a film noir anymore? with all the talk of neo-noir, and neo-neo-neo-noir, it’s hard to even define what a film noir even is. It’s for this very reason that Australian critic Adrian Martin says that Film Noirs have never existed as a genre per se, but only as a mode of production in a very specific time in the United States after World War II. I agree with him that the label Film Noir has become a kind of hollow container for a lot of films to be attached to, but at the same time it’s a useful way to describe the vibe of some of these unforgettably haunting and gripping films that are so delightfully twisted and fucked up while still playing for a mainstream audience. It’s maybe the cinephile compromise of the ages, a type of film that’s enjoyable for each and everyone.
And if you want to find out what this loose definition of the film noir is all about, you need to check out the LAB111 programme Tom compiled that brings together some of the very bests in the genre on the big screen. I think Tom has already talked about Nightmare Alley on this podcast, which is the inspiration for the programmes title: TALES FROM NIGHTMARE ALLEY, but there’s plenty of other cinematic goods to be found here, from The Killing by friend of the podcast Stanley Kubrick to the aforementioned A Touch of Evil by Orson Welles. But don’t miss out on Otto Premingers Laura, Michael Kurtiz’ Mildred Pierce and Jules Dassin’s Night and the City either.