Battle of Algiers
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VHS Movie Reviews of Battle of Algiers
Movie Review: Outstanding Political And Military Quasi-Documentary Film!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great film, period! If you have not seen the film, get it at your video store and rent it. I own it, but as CRITERION DVDs can be a little expensive, I don't wish to urge you to buy it until you see it. I am sure, however, that once you do, you will purchase it. Especially if you are a lover of history or politics. The film has been discussed here at length, and I must admit, they are some of the best reviews I have ever read on DVDs. There are some very intelligent reviews on this particular DVD. I remember first watching this film in a class on Nationalism and Colonialism, while I was an undergraduate at UCLA. This film is great, and I have always remembered the discussion following the film.
The events of the film takes place during the period of the French occupation of Algeria, from 1954-1957. What amazed me about the film is that these are not actors. [Not professional]. This is the real deal here. No manicured nails and chauffer driven stars on this set. The Algerian government intended this film to be as realisitic as possible. Their victory over the French was not going to be some silly parade of stars. No way, this was for prosterity: And the film shows it. The film is done in a documentary style, so that the viewer gets a better feel for the events the would eventually lead to Algeria's independence. There is also an ugly side to the conflict as the French are hell-bent on keeping Algeria. The film is shot in black and white, and this was a very wise decision. It is much better with the grainy black and white than you could ever imagine. Highly recommmend. [Stars: 5+]
Movie Review: that rare film: it doesn't tell you what to think/feel
Summary: 5 Stars
Almost every war movie stacks the deck. Enemy soldiers wear heavy boots, are unshaven, speak in accents and die in large numbers at the end. Heroes are played by actors who get $10 to $20 million a film; of course they get to go home and pick up their lives where they left off. Moral complexity? Not that you can notice --- war movies are like Westerns, just with better weapons.
Political movies are no better. The filmmaker --- if not the studio --- is on one "side" or other. The movie is a function of its point-of-view.
What if there were a political film without a hero? A war movie that doesn't take sides? Would that be a snooze?
"Battle of Algiers" is that film. It is not only one of the greatest movies about conflict, it is one of the best movies about political conflict. In fact, it is one of the greatest films ever made --- so great that no one has been able to steal from it.
"Battle of Algiers" is rooted in fact. It covers the period from 1954 to 1957, when Algeria was a colony of France and Algeria's National Liberation Front led uprisings in Algiers. French troops were sent in. The revolt was crushed.
But the movie is not the record of a victory or a defeat. It's about what makes people cry "Enough" and do something about it. It's about the cost of conflict and the loss of innocent life. And, in the end, it's about the tide of history --- in this case, about what may be the inevitable result of colonial occupation.
The movie looks like a documentary, shot in black-and-white by a cameraman who flinches when bombs go off.
In fact, there is not one frame of historical footage in the film.
As for actors, there are 150 amateurs in the film. The only professional is the French Colonel. The Algerian boy who plays Ali La Pointe was an illiterate street kid with no acting experience. Journalists and French soldiers were played by tourists.
As for taking sides, Pontecorvo doesn't. He doesn't even have a designated hero. He's following a "collective protagonist" on the Algerian side and the power of France --- personified by Colonel Mathieu, who was a Resistance fighter during World War II --- on the other.
For all that, "Battle of Algiers" is a hugely controversial film. When it was released in 1967, it was widely honored --- it won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay (Gillo Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas), Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film. It was also banned for years in France after some theaters showing it were bombed. For a decade or so, it was shown --- with noisy projectors and sheets for screens --- in the Middle East as a training film for insurgents. And in 2003, the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at the Pentagon screened the film as a possible scenario of what American troops might face in Iraq.
The plot: Ali La Pointe is a petty criminal in jail for a minor offense. There he sees an execution of a fellow Algerian whose last words are "Allah is great! Long live Algeria!" When he's released, Ali is recruited by the National Liberation Front, which has developed an effective new tactic --- making war on French civilians.
This splits the viewer down the middle. It's very hard to cheer the French, but what can you say about people who put bombs in coffee shops and blow up high school kids? Does the end justify the means? If not, how do you effectively break the yoke of colonial oppression?
For all the action scenes --- and "Battle of Algiers" has some of the most astonishing street fights and scenes of "terrorism" ever filmed --- it's the conflict of ideas that's most stinging. Here's a news conference with a captured freedom fighter:
Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?
Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.
Most of all, there is a compelling argument about the wisdom anbd effectiveness of torture. Here's the leader of the French Army in Algiers:
Col. Mathieu: The word "torture" doesn't appear in our orders. We've always spoken of interrogation as the only valid method in a police operation directed against unknown enemies. As for the NLF, they request that their members, in the event of capture, should maintain silence for twenty-four hours, and then they may talk. So, the organization has already had the time it needs to render any information useless. What type of interrogation should we choose, the one the courts use for a murder case, that drags on for months?... Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.
The music is by Ennio Morricone, who scored Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" --- better believe it will haunt and agitate you. And when you see what happens at the end of the film, you'll know why I tell you that your heart level will definitely elevate.
The film is in French. The subtitles are large and clear. But you don't need to hear the sound to understand the plot. Understanding the message is much more difficult. Indeed, forty years after "Battle of Algiers" was released, its issues are the biggest international challenge we face.
If you love movies, this is necessary viewing.
Movie Review: Extraordinary film
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm a good friend of Haskell Wexler, and edited his film, "Medium Cool," in 1968. This film came out the year before and was required viewing for all of us -- especially because of the way it made a scripted story look like a documentary. I loved the film back then but hadn't seen it again until last week. I admit I was a bit worried that it would appear dated and irrelevant.
Quite the contrary!
Given events on and since 9/11, Iraq, Madrid, London, Lebanon -- the West's global struggle against Islam -- this film is more important and relevant today than ever.
There is one sequence in particular in which three Arab women disguise themselves as Europeans in order to slip bombs past the French colonial checkpoints and plant them in locations where they will kill the maximum number of Europeans. I won't spoil the extraordinary suspense of this sequence by telling you whether or not they succeed. They are not suicide bombers, but as they place their deadly packages they look around at the people they are about to kill. It is simply one of the best pieces of pure cinema ever.
Movie Review: Original and Superb!
Summary: 5 Stars
One of the most realistic war movies ever made, Battle of Algiers is a must see for those that would like a deeper insight into revolutionary mentality and/or expert film making. From actual FLN rebels used in the film to the scenes being shot on location, Gillo Pontecorvo is able to combine a terrifying event into a cinematic masterpiece.
As noted plenty of times this film is not a journalistic account of the Algerian liberation or the events that preceded it: this movie is a faithful reenactment of the battle in all of its brutality. The atrocities of a revolution are showed from all sides involved: it is no wonder that the public's opinion of the film in this day and age is favorable, regardless of the viewer's background.
Despite some of the ill-informed reviews that claim the opposite, this story truly is the most unbiased account of any war to date. All sides involved are at fault for the devastation the war caused regardless of whether or not the French had a right to hold onto Algeria in the first place (an Algeria that wanted to be free). French viewers shouldn't have a problem with the film in modern day as most regard the battle of Algiers as a catastrophe. Be prepared to see both French and Algerians alike reverting to acts of barbarism in a fight of ideology and flesh (from torture to the killing of civilians, the fight for freedom and the fight for control both have its cost, the movie shows this beautifully).
The movie follows around a few known rebels such as Ali La Pointe of the FLN as they use every force imaginable to separate Algeria from the French government. Most of the scenes are shot in the Algiers' Casbah, a highly dense Arab Casbah with a community of thousands of Algerians. The scenes are beautiful in a realistic way one typically sees in only documentaries.
And yet on the opposite side of the war we follow the renowned French Colonel Phillipe Mathieu, a decorated and highly intelligent paratrooper. Ali La Pointe is superb - believably fighting for a cause he believes in - while Colonel Mathieu reasonably states in the film that he must achieve victory by any means necessary, and yet he's still portrayed as human. Mathieu explains to the press how, if the French people want, he'll gladly leave Algeria but since a war is what they want he'll humbly do his duty. Jean Martin's (Mathieu) performance is so good that one would find it surprising that he did not win the academy award for the role.
On par with the scenery the music is both intense as well as exciting, treating Battle of Algiers with the proper respect it deserves. The music is of significant note though because it's so emotionally engaging: Middle Eastern sounds supplement the highly suspenseful movie while not overpowering the movie by striving to be better than it.
In Battle of Algiers everything that should be in a good movie is present while we also have a number of unique elements. The realism of Battle of Algiers is extremely unparalleled and the acting (performed by average people for the most part), is superb! Check this movie out today, you won't be disappointed!
Movie Review: Snip the head . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
Well, if you're a history buff, this is a great flick to add to your collection. I would say that the two most underappreciated aspects of this film are timing, for the benefit of the viewer, what is going on in the world at that point, and secondly, cuo bono, who profits, who made the film?
So let me repeat, it's an excellent film, done in the documentary style of the hand held camera relied upon in the opening scenes of "Private Ryan" and "Blow" to give it a more 'you are there' sense. (And if you're like me, probably scared the hell out of you in Spielberg's "Ryan.")
So at that time of the world, the French had been disenfranchised as a world power. France had fallen in 17 days to the Nazis, the so-called 'Resistance' was riddled with informers, German sympathizers and quislings, and a few years after that, the French Army was decimated at Dien Bien Phu ("Hell in a Very Small Place") so it was looking forward to holding on to what it had.
Unfortunately, what it had in place was Algeria. Again the timing for colonial powers had really come to an end for all the nations including England and the U.S., although England and the U.S. managed to preserve some of their dignity from the Plantation Owner mentality and just quietly left the room. So to speak.
So the Algerian people began resistance, bloody resistance and then open warfare in the guise of the FLN, the organization dubbed (by the French) as a terrorist cell of little consequence. (Hey. Weren't we terrorists a couple of hundred years ago?)
So that's the time in which the two forces collide and the reasons why. For one, self-determination; for the other, the end of an era.
The cuo bono part is that the film is commissioned by the Algerian government. Wow. What does that mean? Remember Roger Daltry's voice ". . . here's to the new boss, same as the old boss?" I'm not saying it isn't, as it proclaims, an even handed view of the conflict. But how would you know? As an aside, it's the same feeling I get when someone directs me to a really straightforward website which ends in 'dotgov.'
But it seems to be a fair view of the conflict. Good film making. It won that year's Venice Film Festival. If I thought there was a text or script driven flaw in it, it would be that there's a two year gap at the end in which the voiceover, addressing the victory of the French Foreign Legion, says words to the effect that the FLN disappeared for two years and then no one knows how it came back but it did and was victorious. Nobody knows? See my comments on dot.gov.
See it. Worthwhile. Good history. 4 stars. Larry Scantlebury