The Battle of Algiers (1966)

Just a few words for 'La battaglia di Algeri'. Watch it! It's astonishing, fast, dramatic, crude, real, touching, historically accurate. To everybody who wants to know more about Algerian civil war: buy it, find it..!

Fmovies: In 1954, the National Liberation Front of Algiers shots many French policemen beginning a movement for the independence of their country; in return, the Chief of Police plants a bomb in the Arab quarter, killing many dwellers. The NLF sends three women with bombs to two bars and the Air France office in the European quarter, killing many people. The French government sends the military forces under the command of the abusive Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) that does not respect the human rights and uses torture to destroy the NLF command. In 1962, the Algerians finally achieve their aimed independence.

"La Battaglia di Algeri" is a powerful and impressive masterpiece about the fight that happened in Algiers in the period between 1954 and 1962 between the Algerian resistance and the French military forces. A couple of months ago I saw "Mon Colonel", another magnificent movie about this dark period of the mankind history. In both movies, we see no difference between the methods used by French in Algerian, or the Nazis in World War II, or the South American's dictatorships in the 60's, 70's and 80's, or by the American in Iraq, of the Chinese in Tibet. "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality for us, but torture and abuse of the human rights for the others" should be the correct sentence applicable to most nations. Therefore the writing of Machiavelli in "The Prince" about the behavior of the "princes" along history could be updated to the disrespect of human rights by powerful nations against weakest ones in the name of their best interests. This movie is impressive because it seems to be a documentary, with grainy cinematography and non-professional actors, in a perfect contemporary Neorealism. I am not familiar with the work of director Gillo Pontecorvo, but I really believe that this movie is his masterpiece. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "A Batalha de Argel" ("The Battle of Algiers")

If one has not seen this film, one cannot begin to imagine Pontecorvo's extraordinary achievement. The acting is so natural and convincing that many viewers and even some critics assumed that the movie was a documentary. Only a master director could have taken this raw acting material and gotten such performances out of it. And despite his leftist viewpoint, Pontecorvo neither ridicules or demonizes the French, as does Michael Moore the Americans in his recent putative documentaries Bowling at Columbine and Farenheit 9-11 -– though I do a disservice to Pontecorvo to compare his work to that of Moore.

See this movie now that it has been released on DVD in the United States and learn from the history it so brilliantly conveys.

The Battle of Algiers fmovies. Just when I thought I was starting to hate every movie in sight, I had the amazing priveledge to watch "the Battle Of Algiers" which is this amazing account of the oppression of the Algierian people by the French in the 1950's.

When the movie starts, we see 4 people hiding from the French Army. Then all of a sudden, this amazingly haunting music starts, and we're told the story in flashback of how the Algierian people tried to revolt against the French Soldiers.

From what I understand, the movie uses no documentary footage, which is amazing as some of the scenes in the movie must have taken a great deal of effort to produce., There are some pretty amazing crowd scenes and the explosion scenes are just breathtaking.

Also, I guess some of the actual revolutionaries are in the film as well. They are pretty hard to point out as all of the acting here is amazing, very realistic.

So, looking for a war movie? Dammit, don't go for Private Ryan, go to Algiers.

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.

In 1962 after more than 130 years of French colonial rule, Algeria became independent. Gillo Pontecorvo's `Algiers' shows the decade leading to that liberation in a powerful story about Muslims asserting their rights through violence, hiding, and plotting in the Kasbah, a demiworld of narrow, winding, seemingly endless alleys that are the only protection the rebels have from the eyes of the French. The re-release of the 1965 black and white film is a convincing story of a people who do not want to be occupied and will give their lives so their families can one day be free.

The story centers on a couple of Muslim leaders, the charismatic Col. of the French forces, and the bombings and shootouts that at one point averaged just over 4 per day. The film's sympathy is for the Muslims, but the Colonel has moments of reflection that could be sympathetic, especially with the revelation that he was a member of the resistance in WWII and may have suffered in a concentration camp. The director shows the influence of Italian neo-realists like Roberto Rossellini (`Paisan') by shooting in documentary style on location, using non-actors (except for the Colonel), and generally avoiding an agitprop angle.

But the film's sympathy in the end belongs to the occupied people. When 3 rebel women change appearance to look French, infiltrate, and plant bombs, the irony obvious to American audiences in their current struggle is a tribute to the strength of the narration and characterization and the universal dislike of occupation and subjugation.

The torture of the Muslim prisoners is the most poignant relevance to the recent scandal in Iraq. The Colonel's justification for the practice to gain life-saving information is classic `ends-justify-the-means' logic still being used by great nations. In fact, the Pentagon reportedly had seen this film during the first days of the second Iraq War; some say they learned nothing from the film, which is an unforgettable study of occupation and defeat.