1966 ‘La battaglia di Algeri’ Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo
Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his start as a petty thief to his rise to prominence in the organisation and capture by the French in 1957. The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme measures taken by the French government to quell the revolt.
La bataille d'Alger, La batalla de Argel, A Batalha de Argel, I mahi tou Algeriou, 阿尔及利亚的战争, Cezayir Savaşı, 알제리 전투, Schlacht um Algier, Битката за Алжир, Битва за Алжир, La batalla de Argelia, Slaget om Alger, Maarakat madinat al Jazaer, Η μάχη του Αλγερίου, De slag om Algiers, Taistelu Algeriasta, Bitva o Alžír, Cezayir Savasi, I mahi tis Algerias, Bitka za Alžir, Alžirska bitka, Kampen om Algerie, Az algíri csata, Ma'rakat aljazaer, Aruje no Tatakai, Bitwa o Algier, Nabard-e aljazeere, Slaget Om Algier, Η Μάχη Του Αλγερίου, نبرد الجزیره, La Bataille d'Alger, הקרב על אלג'יר, ბრძოლა ალჟირისთვის, The Battle Of Algiers, 阿尔及尔之战, 阿爾及爾之戰
Italy
Venice Film Festival
USA
ItalyVM18
Algeria
Sweden15
USANR
Argentina
Uruguay
France12
Germany16
UK15
Brazil
PortugalM/12
South Korea15
Netherlands16
France
France12
AustraliaM
UK15
Netherlands16
Netherlands16
France12
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal
South Korea
Sweden
UK
USA
Uruguay
"You just have to pull the trigger..."
"... If your answer is yes, you have to accept the consequences."
A harrowing work of blunt, unglamorous political instruction and conviction, and one of the great pieces of armed revolutionary cinema. A claustrophobic, maze-like, and yet clear-eyed depiction of on-the-ground human suffering under brutal colonial rule as well as a thrilling, grit-textured newsreel procedural documentation of organized guerrilla resistance that’s so authentic it was studied by both left-wing and right-wing groups for possible insights into their opponents. It takes a very real, overwhelming geopolitical situation and realizes it in the POV of human eyes and ears (the constant machinery of the sound design in helicopters, loudspeakers, guns, etc vs. the wails of…
"The Battle of Algiers’ continued relevance is both a point of fascination and something to mourn. Thirty-five years before the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Pontecorvo’s film gave us a cinematic blueprint of how Western oppression in the Muslim world could lead to radicalization and terror. The United States, at least, took little heed. And even after 9/11, official policy has largely been to continue the cycle of violence. Meanwhile, American movies are still trying to keep up with The Battle of Algiers. For every Zero Dark Thirty (which, in the light of this film, looks even more like an exposé of military-employed torture), we get a handful of Lone Survivors—movies only concerned with, and largely uncritical of, the American perspective on the country’s foreign misadventures."
(More here.)
there’s a child hanging limp, carried from a ruined building. a furious mob marches into the streets, crowded together in a closed-off ghetto. a leader promises retribution.
a woman darts nervous eyes in a café. she leaves a bag behind as she exits through the door. no one thinks twice about it. another child, eating ice-cream, looks at her as she passes. a bomb goes off.
colonialist states are violent systems that breed more violence. citizens become collateral. revolutionaries find that they must go to lengths thought unthinkable to defeat the brutality of the behemoth before them. they can focus on rebuilding once the war is done. violence is not the end, it is a means to an end where…
Ashamed to say this was my first viewing. A very great movie, absolutely scorching. I like how this is unquestionably an anti-colonial, pro-Algerian movie that also has the stones the show the righteous side bombing public places and leaving dozens of ordinary people dead. It shows us these images without larding them up with disingenuous moralizing about how they’ve Gone Too Far, or reassuring us that This Is Actually Good. It just is. This is a world of violence.
Ben M'Hidi: It's hard to start a revolution. Even harder to continue it. And hardest of all to win it. But, it's only afterwards, when we have won, that the true difficulties begin. In short, Ali, there's still much to do.
Col. Mathieu: Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.
Essentially, these are the motivations of the two sides in The Battle Of Algiers. While the ‘based on a true story’ fiction documents the Algerian struggle for freedom, it really is about the battle for winning the minds of your people. In the case of the FLN, they have to create the spark that starts the flames of a revolution.…
Quite possibly the most electrifying — and influential — political thriller/war movie ever made.
88
Fell hook, line, and sinker for this as soon as Morricone's propulsive magic started to flare out of the soundtrack, but even on its own, this is a hell of a film, one which I can't really contextualize past its very own overdose of precedence. A corridor thriller intermingled with an angry, sinister conflict of perspective. Reminded me of Jason Bourne blockbusters or Billy Friedkin joints, only sharper.
For a film full of specifics, perhaps one of the most timeless films ever made.
Revolution is not clean. The Battle of Algiers closely follows the titular battle and its place within the Algerian War of Independence. However The Battle of Algiers has no exposition. It merely a presentation, without an explicit side. Nothing is romanticised, nobody is spared. What The Battle of Algiers represents is a revelatory look at urban guerrilla warfare. In this fight for independence, to escape colonial rule, men, women, and children died. The Battle of Algiers is a work of bombs and bullets, but also one of men carrying the corpses of children out of rubble. Troops on the streets becomes gunfire on the streets becomes tanks on the streets. The French were brutal, highlighted here by…
Conveyed as a historical record as well as an assessment on the ethics of violence, The Battle of Algiers employs a documentary-style form of editing which bolsters its perception of authenticity. Based on tangible incidents in the Algerian War of Independence, a conflict defined by guerrilla warfare and the use of torture between the French government and the Algerian National Liberation Front.
Written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, who focuses on the shared natures of the confrontation and minimises the personal perspectives, the movie offers an intriguing presentation of neorealism and is beneficially shot on location. The Battle of Algiers stimulates a frank and realistic turmoil of wartime existence and introduced techniques which were later assumed by the work of directors such as William Friedkin and its easy to understand why, as this movie is gripping from start to finish.
Redemptive powers of political revolution, Marxism and dynamite, fuelled by the pulsing magic of Ennio Morricone.
NEWSFLASH: The classiest western ever made is set in the east!
Prescience is key in this medium, The Battle of Algiers’ cautionary tale of white interference applicable to practically all of western civilisation today. As history tells it, The Birth of a Nation was the famed political film noted to have been screened in The White House to the President on release, but one can’t help but think in the decades to come it should’ve been this. With The Casbah’s streets crowded with rebels and landscapes as gargantuan as the work of Griffith or Lean, one wonders how Pontecorvo achieved the mind-boggling scale of the…
