Patricio Guzmán’s 3-part ‘you are there’ documentary of the beleaguered presidency of Chile’s Salvador Allende goes into great detail to show how a democratically-elected government can be destroyed from within. Guzmán’s cameras witness terrible events leading to the military attack on the presidential palace on September 11, 1973. It’s an amazing achievement — the film had to be smuggled out of Chile and away from General Pinochet’s killers. Also included is Guzmán’s first feature, a docu account of Allende’s first year in office — which ends with trouble brewing for his fledgling socialist state.

The Battle of Chile
Blu-ray
Icarus Films Home Video
1975-79 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 275 min. / Street Date September 24, 2024 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 39.98
Cinematography: Jorge Müller Silva
Narrator: Abilio Fernandez
Production chief: Federico Elton
Editor: Pedro Chaskel
Directed by Patricio Guzmán

The Battle of Chile is easily the most important document to date on the subject of Latin American politics. Barely covered in the American press, and dismissed by Nixon and Kissinger as business as usual, the 1973 overthrow of Chile is as much about U.S. politics as it is about a South American nation we don’t think about very much.

The overthrow of  Salvador Allende, the democratically elected leftist President of Chile, was a coordinated effort by the country’s oligarchs, which refused to accept Allende’s popular campaigns to reform the country along socialist lines comparable to a European nation. Allende never defended his presidency with dictatorial actions, so as not to give the conservative oligarchs a legitimate reason to impeach him. The country was split down the middle. The majority of ordinary Chileans favored Allende’s land reforms and nationalization of industry, but the wealthy right-wing Christian Democratic Party angled for political workarounds to bring him down. Allende’s good relations with key Army and Navy personnel prevented a military coup from simply seizing the government, an all-too common outcome for political disputes in Latin America. Although friendly with the Soviets, Allende remained faithful to the democratic process. He refused to build a Moscow-style ‘security state’ or to use force against his enemies. The political opposition attacked his administration in any way they could.

The stalemate was broken by Henry Kissinger of the U.S. State Department and the C.I.A. director Richard Helms. Richard Nixon authorized them to covertly get rid of Allende; money, advice and military aid soon began flowing in to undermine Allende’s efforts to pull Chile to the left. Financed by the U.S., strikes and demonstrations were organized to discredit Allende and cripple the economy; his programs were blocked in Chile’s congress. Allende refused to do anything overtly dictatorial, such as arrest members of the opposition. It is said that the assassination of a high-ranking Naval officer disrupted his relationship with the armed forces. Political and economic pressure from the U.S. continued. The army began operating on its own, raiding nationalized factories to search for weapons and harassing left-wing organizations supporting Allende. A premature coup attempt failed when only one or two small squads tried to seize the streets around the presidential palace.

More strikes followed. Hoping to resolve the legislative challenge to the legitimacy of his administration, the still-popular Allende planned to hold a plebiscite to measure public support for his programs. Guided by C.I.A. experts, on September 11, 1973 Chilean armed forces surrounded the palace and began bombing it from the air. Rather than be taken prisoner, Salvador Allende killed himself. General Augusto Pinochet then formed a military junta — he dissolved Congress, suspended the Constitution, and went on a ‘Franco-‘ like campaign of political cleansing. The terror lasted for 16 years.

But it was all recorded on Film.

Patricio Guzmán had just returned from film school in Madrid, Spain when he started making films about the Chilean political situation, around the time that Allende’s Popular Unity party was beginning to encounter stiff resistance from opposition groups. The film that became The Battle of Chile began with Guzmán filming public demonstrations and union meetings, and interviewing people on the street. Using film stock provided by French director Chris Marker (who would eventually become a credited producer), Guzmán filmed right up to the 1973 coup. In the immediate aftermath, hundreds of dissidents, Popular Unity supporters and student activists were rounded up by the dictatorial regime of General Pinochet. Director Guzmán and his producer were able to get their raw film onto a foreign ship and safely out of the country. The director and cameraman Jorge Müller Silva were arrested in Pinochet’s political round-up; Guzmán was released after a time but Silva was not so fortunate. He was ‘disappeared’ in the mass-murder atrocities that claimed the lives of thousands of Chileans. The documentary was edited and finished outside of Chile, partly in Cuba.

The finished The Battle of Chile is a massive work that records the political activity prior to the coup along with the opinions of Chileans on both sides of the political spectrum. We’re impressed by the level of sophistication of the average Santiago citizen interviewed. We see massive rallies for the government and violent demonstrations by opponents. In many cases voiceover narration characterizes what is going on. It names our C.I.A. as directing behind the scenes, instigating strikes in copper mines and paying truckers and bus drivers to paralyze the cities by bringing their vehicles to a halt. Guzmán’s cameramen film a huge audience for a pro-Allende speaker. They crowd jumps up and down in support of the government, the joke being that las momias (“the mummies”) of the status-quo right are incapable of movement.

The filmmakers also capture frightening footage of street violence. Citizens run in panic from attacking army units. The first half of The Battle of Chile, Part 1, The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie  concludes with some of the most dramatic documentary film ever shot. A Swedish cameraman (identified as Argentinian on the soundtrack) zooms his camera in on a jeep and a truck filled with soldiers arriving in an intersection.  ←  An officer fires in our direction, and then we see a rifleman take careful aim — directly at us. He fires, and a couple of seconds later the view flips to the ground. That cameraman was killed with one shot, having filmed his own murder.

Part 2, The Coup D’Etat  becomes increasingly traumatic as Allende’s fortunes go from bad to worse. His administration is blocked and the support of the armed forces evaporates. Loyal miners wonder why their President isn’t striking back at his enemies, who accuse him of outrageous public crimes anyway. The show ends with Salvador Allende’s impassioned speech to his country, vowing to never leave his office. We see waves of jet planes bombing The Moneda Palace, a regal building in the middle of the congested capital.

The critic Pauline Kael once questioned the documentary’s lack of ‘balance.’ She notes that the voiceovers mention ‘facts not in evidence,’ mainly the unseen outside aid and direction of the coup by the U.S. State Department and the C.I.A.. The voiceovers also do not mention Allende’s dealings with the Soviet Union. But time has proven the truth of the claims made in The Battle of Chile. Documents brought to light in later decades reveal America’s fingerprints all over the coup and the repressive, bloody massacres that followed — see the extras on Criterion’s  Missing Blu-ray, or look up ‘Operation Condor’ on Wikipedia. None of that is propaganda or conjecture. The Battle of Chile is an important document for remembering and learning from recent history …. a history actively suppressed by our own government.

Assembled a year after the other two sections, Part 3, The Power of the People  is a recap and examination of the political forces within the country before the coup, focusing on the ways that the opposition was able to undermine Allende’s legitimate economic reforms. Right wing opposition parties openly defy the law with illegal strikes, daring the President to overreact and give them a pretext for impeachment. Meanwhile, the loyalists within the nationalized industries watch their influence erode as common citizens become frustrated that Allende doesn’t act against his enemies. A professor works out the problem in a lecture that almost uses mathematical formulas … in this situation force is required because the opposition won’t play by the rules.

Politics IS force, one way or another — the docu’s implied message is that the only political change is revolution, and all revolution means insurrection and bloodshed. Allende remained true to the vision of democracy and was crushed by reactionary counterforces as savage as any communist dictatorship. The lessons of The Battle of Chile might apply elsewhere, when a progressive administration is blocked by an unscrupulous unelected minority that claims to have God and Right on its side. Even if flawed, a law-abiding representative democracy is the preferable option.

Guzmán’s invaluable document becomes highly emotional, once we realize that the idealistic Allende is sticking to his principles, and refusing to act like a cornered leader. He is still revered because he never fell into the trap laid for other good leaders, who chose to use violence and repression to stay in power. When Allende was elected, Chile was in the hands of a genuine 1% that owned most everything of value; the disparity between haves and have-nots was appalling. We can imagine Allende holding out, waiting for a country like the U.S. to lend its support in the name of democracy … but our State Department was already cultivating relationships with ‘security state’ dictatorships in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia.

The footage is raw and the sound rough — those English subtitles are essential. The footage of the assault on The Moneda Palace is traumatic — much like the insurrection against our own Congress on January 6, 2021. The outrageous injustice makes one want to scream.

In an interview seen on an earlier disc documentary, filmmaker Patricio Guzmán describes watching the ship carrying his raw film stock leaving port, bound for Sweden. He didn’t reunite with it until much later and was overjoyed to find that not one reel had been lost. He says that 80% of the film is footage shot by his crews, with the rest taken from newsreels. La batalla de Chile is a very important political document … if it hadn’t been made, those who would distort history for their own ends would find their work much easier.

Icarus Films Home Video’s Blu-ray of The Battle of Chile is one of the most powerful and persuasive political movies ever made; this French restoration was completed in time for the 50th Anniversary of the Pinochet coup. The remaster is a lot easier on the eyes than the older Icarus DVD — the 16mm images now look brighter and more defined. The aspect ratio has been recalibrated at 1:66, yielding a more theatrical experience.

The three-part film is officially titled La batalla de Chile: La lucha de un pueblo sin armas. It’s identified as an international co-production between Chile, Cuba and France. The show is in Spanish, with optional English subtitles. The first disc in Icarus’s two- Blu-ray set contains Primera parte: La insurreción de la burguesía, and Segunda parte: El golpe de estado. The second disc carries Tercera parte: El poder popular.

This set is actually a little thin on extras, if one wants outside analysis or extended interviews with the filmmaker. Instead, Icarus includes Patricio Guzmán’s very first documentary El Premier Año (The First Year), released in 1972 when Allende’s presidency was going strong. It’s an account of the effort to reform the country, starting with a tenuous grip on power — Allende’s government was a coalition without a full majority. The bulk of the movie is in Spanish, but a preface, written by Chris Marker, sketches the history of Chile up to the 20th century. Guzmán’s active, lively style is already present; it is less hectoring, and much more persuasive, than Cuban ICAIC films we’ve seen with too much Marxist slogan-slinging. Several minutes are dedicated to a state visit by a hoarse-voiced Fidel Castro; it needs to be remembered that Castro wasn’t demonized in other countries as he was here.

El Premier Año also looks clean and bright; it’s transferred at a 1:33 ratio.

Patricio Guzmán’s films dovetail with the anti-Facist documentaries of Marcel Ophüls — especially the 1988 epic docu  Hôtel Terminus. It examines the Nazi killer Klaus Barbie’s ‘aided’ escape to South America, where he advised the secret police wing of Bolivia’s military government, with his special knowledge of what were called interrogation techniques.  Icarus Films’ DVD is still in print.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Battle of Chile
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Extra feature The First Year (1972, 96 minutes)
Trailers.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 22, 2024
(7195batt)

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