The Battle of Algiers

I wish I could locate a videocassette of this film--subtitled, not dubbed. The first time I saw it, I was a little put off by what I thought was a pompous disclaimer that "not one foot" of documentary footage had been used. But, in light of the finished product, it's a remarkable statement. If a film has better captured the harsh and ugly realities that are an inevitable part of a true revolutionary movement, I never saw it. It is greatly to its credit that one never gets a sense of "good guys vs. bad guys" here--only of people trapped in a truly impossible set of circumstances, from which no escape is possible without confrontation and bloodshed. It was depressing to see this movie in Berkeley in the early 70s, and hear the audience cheer the "heroic" Algerian revolutionaries while booing the "villainous" French, in view of the great pains that had been taken to present a balanced viewpoint. This film is thrilling, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and beautiful--sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. If you haven't seen it and it show up anywhere in the vicinityh, drop everything and go--and pray that it's subtitled and not dubbed. (There are dubbed prints and, as is usually the case, dubbing pretty nearly wrecks it.) This is a masterpiece.

Capturing a historic incident/moment with extraordinary accuracy makes a film truly beautiful, painful, and masterful. With the tradition of Italian Neo Realism and French New Wave - i.e. shooting in location and casting nonprofessional actors, The Battle of Algiers harshly seals the ugly realities of both French Legion and Algerian Guerillas - i.e. indiscriminate bombs, tortures, and scapegoats. Ennio Morricone composed one of his early successful scores.

..who had lived through the real battle.

Director Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti are true geniuses who amazingly filmed the movie in black and white and experimented with various techniques to give the film the look of newsreel and documentary film and that too making it an engrossing n enlightening experience.

Although the rebels lost the Battle of Algiers, they won the Algerian War n their freedom from the French colonial regime.

This movie showed the impact of colonialism on daily lives.

The guy who played Ali is noteworthy, one of the rebel female has a sharp contour cheeks and the character lil Omar will always be remembered.

The torture of the rebel prisoners is the most poignant relevance to the recent ongoings worldwide.

The ironical aspect is that of the Colonel, who himself suffered torture by the Nazis in a concentration camp, now torturing common civilians to obtain information.

"Battle of Algiers" is simply one of the greatest films every made. If film making can be about truth as well as fantasy, then a movie that includes a title card telling viewers that there is not one foot of documentary or newsreel footage in it must deserve viewing.

"Battle of Algiers" contains scenes that seem so real, you suspect that they couldn't have been staged. When three Algerian women come down from the Casbah to plant bombs in the French quarter of the city, you can almost cut the tension with a knife. When the bombs go off, you think they must have been real bombs. And when you see the devastation they leave in their wake, you cannot fail to be moved. The massive rebellion in the streets at the end of the film also seems so real, you sit wondering how many extras must have been injured filming those scenes.

"Battle of Algiers" combines brilliant photography, crisp direction, an intriguing plot and some very fine acting. Throw in a terrific music score, splendid editing, impressive special effects and the best example ever of docudrama style production and you have a masterpiece of film making.

But film making is not nearly as important as human life and no film in general release today says more about America's current involvement in the middle east and many other parts of the world than this picture about the French in Algeria, made more than three decades ago.

Every American should view this film, then think about our current occupation of Iraq.

I ask myself why we never see these kind of movies on TV, instead of airing again and again the same old lethal weapons, jurassic parks, and other similar stuff? This is real cinema, this is why it is considered a form of art!

With the metaphysical crudeness of black and white, the dramatical facts of the Algerian rebellion against the French are accounted. The movie has the realistic appearance of a chronicle. And there are tons of intellectual honesty, too. I mean that there are no white hats VS black hats. You can see terrorists troubled as they are about to leave a bomb in a cafe. Policemen who struggle to save an arabian child from being killed by outraged crowd. Most of all, I like the frank words of Colonel Mathieu about the "bad methods" he's using during interrogations... Watch the movie and you will know.