The Battle of Algiers [Archive] - Beastie Boys Message Board

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DroppinScience

07-13-2004, 04:02 PM

zx3geek

07-13-2004, 04:44 PM

I had to watch the Battle of Algiers back in early 2001 for a Contemporary African History course I was taking in college. What a powerful film! I highly recommend it! (y)

The most powerful scene in the film is a scene in which a bomb goes off in a stadium full of French settlers in Algeria. A small Arab child selling concessions in the stadium finds himself the immediate subject of a mob attack. The people are screaming, "there's an arab, kill him", and as the child is overwhelmed by this hateful mob a policeman rescues the child from the violence.

Here (http://www.marxists.org/history/algeria/) is a link to some basic information about the fight for Algerian independence.

This film is so important even the Pentagon (http://slate.msn.com/id/2087628) thought it was worth viewing.

Does anyone know the date when this is coming out? The link wasn't real clear. In any case, I will be the first in line to purchase this film!

rorschach

07-14-2004, 01:14 AM

DroppinScience

07-14-2004, 12:33 PM

Fun fact: According to The New Yorker, the US forces used "The Battle of Algiers" for training troops for operations in an Arab country. Which is kinda weird, cause (A) the French lost that one,

Well, can anyone point to a successful colonial example for the imperial European nation? Britain, France, Spain, etc. all had to jump ship from the respective nation full of "angry natives" at one point.

Blighty

07-14-2004, 01:12 PM

The movie is coming to DVD. Watch it and learn, suckas!

It's a movie. ie not real. Actors. Actresses. A script. It may be a powerful piece of cinema but erm...welll......it's a fucking movie!

Blighty

07-14-2004, 03:26 PM

I hate it when I swear to get my point across. I'd like to retract my swearing. It's a movie.

DroppinScience

07-14-2004, 04:11 PM

Funkaloyd

07-14-2004, 05:21 PM

Does the film show how Algerian and French security services created terrorism to get support from the French public and justify repression?

DroppinScience

07-14-2004, 05:29 PM

Beats me. I need to see the film.

rorschach

07-15-2004, 08:22 AM

Well, can anyone point to a successful colonial example for the imperial European nation? Britain, France, Spain, etc. all had to jump ship from the respective nation full of "angry natives" at one point.

No. But the French involvement in Algeria, Indochine (that's "Vietnam" for you Americans) and the Congo was slightly more upsetting because it happened after WW2. So much for THAT new world order...

Of course, the decline of "classic" colonialism only led to more subtle (read: covert) and/or commercial forms of involvement in the "third world".
:(

Shabadoo

07-15-2004, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by rorschach
Indochine (that's "Vietnam" for you Americans)

just because our president is a moron doesn't mean we all are.

rorschach

07-15-2004, 04:32 PM

just because our president is a moron doesn't mean we all are.

...but you elected him, right?
No, sorry, I'm joking...
:D

DroppinScience

07-15-2004, 05:56 PM

And in the English language, it's INDOCHINA anyways. ;)

Blighty

07-16-2004, 03:10 AM

Beats me. I need to see the film.

So you're telling people to 'watch and learn' from a film you've never even seen?

Blighty

07-16-2004, 03:22 AM

And don't be so patronizing, Blighty.

Yeah, it's a movie, but it's based on ACTUAL events, filmed documentary-style, so I think it's safe to say that the filmmakers were aiming for some realism. So you can TOO learn from it! :mad:

'Realism' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. 'Based on actual events' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. Filmed 'documentary style' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. And guessing what the filmmakers intentions were doesn't make it factually accurate. Movies are powerful things. The fact you haven't even seen this and yet your promoting it as a history lesson is a little troubling. I apologise if I was patronising but it's a movie. That you haven't even seen. That you're telling people to learn from. Why did you even start this thread?

rorschach

07-16-2004, 05:00 AM

Shabadoo

07-16-2004, 08:51 AM

i haven't seen it yet either, but i'd like to. factual accuracy issue aside, i heard that it's a really impressive film considering when it was made. the early 60's maybe? anyone know?

rorschach

07-16-2004, 09:01 AM

i haven't seen it yet either, but i'd like to. factual accuracy issue aside, i heard that it's a really impressive film considering when it was made. the early 60's maybe? anyone know?

The Battle of Algiers, made in 1966 by Italian Gillo Pontecorvo - it's an Italian/Algerian co-production (kinda cute, cause the Italians had some similar more or less unsavory business going on in Libya during WW2; see: Omar Mukhtar - Lion of the Desert)

Yes, I had to look it up...
:D

DroppinScience

07-16-2004, 12:16 PM

'Realism' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. 'Based on actual events' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. Filmed 'documentary style' doesn't mean it's factually accurate. And guessing what the filmmakers intentions were doesn't make it factually accurate. Movies are powerful things. The fact you haven't even seen this and yet your promoting it as a history lesson is a little troubling. I apologise if I was patronising but it's a movie. That you haven't even seen. That you're telling people to learn from. Why did you even start this thread?

Wow, Blighty. Wow.

I'm promoting the film because it looks GREAT and I think it's one that should be seen (myself included) when I viewed the 2003 re-release trailer. I would have seen it already but it never reached my local arthouse so I was SOL. Now that the Criterion Collection (an excellent company that distributes quality indie, foreign, etc. films) is coming out with the DVD, I thought it'd be a good idea to spread the word, especially since a lot of people on this board are mostly focused on the U.S. and its wrongdoings. I figured it'd be important to show that this stuff is certainly not limited to America and never will be.

And I DO think the film is factually accurate, considering the sources (French film made during the French New Wave era to show the French people what their government is doing in their name in the Middle East).

Yeah, I haven't seen the movie. Thanks Captain Obvious. I said people can learn from it. I was including MYSELF in that statement.

Now get off my back, Blighty! :mad:

DroppinScience

07-16-2004, 12:28 PM

The Battle of Algiers, made in 1966 by Italian Gillo Pontecorvo - it's an Italian/Algerian co-production (kinda cute, cause the Italians had some similar more or less unsavory business going on in Libya during WW2; see: Omar Mukhtar - Lion of the Desert)

Yes, I had to look it up...
:D

Well I'll be. No French involvement at all? All that French-speaking deceived me so I thought it was created by the French. ;)

And the Italiana had LOTS of unsavory business when it had to do with WWII and being part of the Axis powers (at least for part of the war).

rorschach

07-16-2004, 07:41 PM

Well I'll be. No French involvement at all? All that French-speaking deceived me so I thought it was created by the French. ;)

Oh, no, the French are way to arrogant/ignorant to go back on their own mistakes...
But it feels quite ... authentic, doesn't it?

DroppinScience

07-17-2004, 01:13 AM

Oh, no, the French are way to arrogant/ignorant to go back on their own mistakes...
But it feels quite ... authentic, doesn't it?

Wrong. Jean-Luc Godard came out with an excellent movie called "Le Petit Soldat" which was a scathing critique of the French involvement during that Algerian war. However, since it came out at the height of the war and patriotic fervor (I guess they had lots of "Operation Algerian Freedom" stuff going down ;)), it was banned from France for like 3 years.

rorschach

07-17-2004, 03:02 AM

Point taken, DS. Overall the French are incredibly ... sensitive about their history, in a weird way (as in banning a Godard movie). It only took them about 30 years before the first films about Algeria came out - and don't even think about questioning the official version of WW2 history where every French person was a hero of the Résistance (see: "Un Hero trés discret").
:(

DroppinScience

07-17-2004, 02:03 PM

and don't even think about questioning the official version of WW2 history where every French person was a hero of the Résistance (see: "Un Hero trés discret").
:(

It's probably that European condition of being cut down to size. So many of those nations (Britain particularly, but also France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and others) were practically running the world, then they cut get down to size and no longer have that same empire.

But yeah, the Occupation of France is a plenty thorny issue among French citizens (divided among those who fought the Nazi presence and those who collaborated) and even their liberation is one of mixed feelings (relieved and thankful that they got saved, but ashamed that they even had to be saved in the first place).

But if you wanna see truly fucked up shit, just anlyze the Italian experience in WWII (some fought the Allies, some fought the Germans, while the rest fought EACH OTHER :p).

cedric

07-18-2004, 04:47 PM

I've been wanting to watch this film for awhile. "The Battle of Algiers" shows Algeria's struggle for independence from the French colonial rule and shows how France is dealing with insurgents. They win the battle but lose the war.

Shit, doesn't this sound just like Iraq today? Oh sure, power is "transferred" but we all know that doesn't mean shit.

The movie is coming to DVD. Watch it and learn, suckas!

http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=249

france totally fucked up with algeria.
all these tortures and massacre.most of the french officer at these time are known to be fascists!some of them are still into a politic (le front nationnal)party hosted by jean marie lepen known as the fascists emperor!
everytime when it comes about elections they got a few percentage so the french kids can go in the streets and riot against them.

but we had nothing to do in algeria anyway.that´s why the insurgent won,because they were rigth!

in marseille we have a huge algerian community and i´ve never met any one who told me how good were the colonialist days in algier.

it´s a really sad period of time and i´m ashamed of that.
but at least it seems chirac understood the mistakes of the past....

i think nobody never really win a war any way.....

DroppinScience

10-11-2004, 01:31 PM

BUMP!

The movie is coming to DVD really soon so I think it's important that people become aware of this film. I just ordered it on Amazon, so I can't wait to watch it. I hear on the special features, it has Richard Clark talking about how he worries Iraq will be just like Algeria. So again, I think people should be watching and learning. *waits for the inevitable Blighty rant "It's a movie" crap* :rolleyes:

Anyways, Rober Ebert just wrote about the movie in his "Great Movies" section. Take a look:

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041010/REVIEWS08/410100301

------------------------------------

The Battle of Algiers (1967)

BY ROGER EBERT / October 10, 2004

The most common form of warfare since 1945 has involved irregular resistance fighters attacking conventional forces and then disappearing back into the population. Bombs planted by civilians, often women and children, have served as deadly weapons in this war. The United States, France, Russia, Israel, Northern Ireland, South Africa and several South American states have all had their experiences with urban guerrillas.

George W. Bush complained in his first televised debate with Sen. John Kerry that he thought Saddam's army would stand and fight, but it melted away into the city streets. He blamed some of the problems in Iraq on the fact that the U.S. victory came too easily and quickly; if the lessons of other conflicts are a guide, it may be too soon to declare that victory. The army disappeared, but it didn't leave.

Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers," filmed in 1965, released in late 1967, is the crucial film about this new kind of warfare. It involves the proving-ground of the emerging tactics in Algeria from 1954 to 1962, as France tried and failed to contain a nationalist uprising. Methods that were successful in Algeria would be adapted by Castro and Guevara in Cuba, by the Viet Cong, the Palestinians, the IRA and South African militants, and are currently being employed in Iraq. One conventional response has been the capture, interrogation and sometimes torture of the fighters, who are pressured to betray the names and plans of their co-conspirators.

This theory is described by a French military commander in "The Battle of Algiers": Terrorist groups are like tapeworms -- they keep reviving unless you destroy the head. That's not easy, because the groups are broken up into cells so that no member knows the names of more than a few others. As a consequence, neither side can really know how many (or how few) insurgents are involved.

"The Battle of Algiers" is "a training film for urban guerrillas," Jimmy Breslin declared on TV in 1968. Certainly it was shown by the Black Panthers and the IRA to their members, and in September 2003 the New York Times reported that the movie was being shown in the Pentagon to military and civilian experts. Times reporter Michael Kaufman wrote that Pentagon audiences were "urged to consider and discuss the implicit issues at the core of the film -- the problematic but alluring efficacy of brutal and repressive means in fighting clandestine terrorists in places like Algeria and Iraq." In short, the possibilities of torture.

Pontecorvo's film was released at the peak of anti-war sentiment in the United States, and had a surprising box-office success; it played for 14 weeks in Chicago. It was described at the time as "impartial," alternating between the stories of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) and the French police and paratroopers assigned to destroy it. "Pontecorvo has taken his stance," I wrote in my 1968 review, "somewhere between the FLN and the French, although his sympathies are on the side of the Nationalists. He is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality."

True up to a point. But watching the movie again on the new Criterion DVD, I believe Pontecorvo's sympathies were clearly with the FLN. The resistance opens with FLN members walking up to French policemen in the street and shooting them dead, often in the back. Bombs are used against police strongholds. These actions are seen in silence, but when the French respond by blowing up the home of a terrorist, the score by Ennio Morricone becomes mournful as survivors pick through the debris. His score withholds sympathy for the dead police.

Pontecorvo does, however, show the French leadership in a relatively objective light. In a film that was cast almost entirely with local non-actors, he uses the Paris stage veteran Jean Martin to play Col. Mathieu, commander of paratroopers sent in to back up the police. Mathieu, himself a member of the French resistance to the Nazis, later a veteran of the French defeat in Indochina, knows a thing or two about urban warfare. He is calm, analytical, strategic in his thinking, and considers the FLN to be the enemy, not a malevolent force. As French public opinion turns against the war, he is besieged by reporters, one of whom quotes the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

"Why are the Sartres always born on the other side?" Col. Mathieu complains.

"You like Sartre?" asks a journalist.

"No, but I like him even less as an enemy."

Pontecorvo's film remains even today a triumph of realistic production values. Filming on location in Algiers, using the real locations in the European quarter and the Casbah (which sheltered the FLN), he achieved such a convincing actuality that he found it necessary to issue a disclaimer: There is "not one foot" of documentary or newsreel footage in his two hours of film. Everything was shot live, even riot scenes in which police battle civilian demonstrators.

He cuts back and forth between Col. Mathieu and other military and civilian leaders and a raggedy band of FLN fighters, of which the key figure may be Ali la Pointe (Braham Haggiag), a reform school boy and professional criminal who converts to the FLN after witnessing a beheading in prison. Back on the streets, Ali receives instructions (carried by a small boy) to shoot a policeman who meets daily with an Algerian informer. A woman standing outside a cafe will hand him a gun.

Ali finds the cafe, the policeman, the woman and the gun, but when he pulls the trigger, the gun is not loaded. He feels betrayed by the FLN, but the woman takes him to her contact, who explains the reasoning: They did not know if they could trust him. Ali might have been recruited by the French in prison. The reason they told him to shoot the cop instead of the informer is that, if he were a police stooge, the police wouldn't object to the murder of a civilian, but they wouldn't let an informer shoot a French policeman. By pulling the trigger, Ali has symbolically committed a murder, earning his entry into the FLN.

This reasoning is chilling, and carries a terrible weight of logic. The strength of "The Battle of Algiers," the reason it is being viewed in the Pentagon 35 years after its making, is that it is lucid and dispassionate in its examination of the tactics of both sides. It shows the French setting up roadblocks and checkpoints between the Casbah and the European quarter. Then it follows three women, one with a child, who walk right past the checkpoints with bombs in their purses. One woman plants her bomb in a cafe and then, in a disturbing scene, watches the customers eating, drinking, smoking and talking -- customers who will soon be dead. The parallel with bombings in Israel, the U.K. and Iraq is prophetic and chilling.

Col. Mathieu does his job well. His chart of FLN cells has squares that are gradually filled in until, with the final defeat of Ali and three others, trapped in their hiding place, he declares victory. The FLN has been eliminated. Two years later, the film notes, "for no particular reason that anyone could explain," the uprising began again as mobs poured out of the Casbah and overwhelmed the police. In 1962, the French granted Algeria its freedom.

What lessons a modern viewer can gain from the film depends on who is watching and what they want to see. Those who study the French tactics should note that they failed. Although the American use of torture at Abu Ghraib has been credited, at least, with producing the names and locations of many enemy fighters, the scale of urban warfare in Iraq is escalating. A few days before I wrote this review, some 35 children were killed by a bomb while being given candy by Americans. The moral paradox is that many Iraqis will blame the deaths on us, because if we were not there, the bombing would not have taken place. Certainly the bombers were the murderers. But "The Battle of Algiers" shows now, as it did when it was made, that for nationalist resistance movements, the end justifies the means. President Bush said something in the debate that this film abundantly illustrates: Fighting terrorism is hard work.

My 1969 interview with Gillo Pontecorvo in South America, on the day he learned he was nominated for an Oscar, is online at rogerebert.com. "The Battle of Algiers" is newly available in a restored print on a three-disc Criterion edition, including documentaries, and interviews with Pontecorvo, terrorism experts and film directors like Oliver Stone, Mira Nair, Steven Soderbergh and Spike Lee.

DroppinScience

10-11-2004, 01:42 PM

Here's a review that Ebert wrote back in 1968.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19680530/REVIEWS/805300301

---------------------------------

The Battle of Algiers

By Roger Ebert / May 30, 1968

At the height of the street fighting in Algiers, the French stage a press conference for a captured FLN leader. "Tell me, general," a Parisian journalist asks the revolutionary, "do you not consider it cowardly to send your women carrying bombs in their handbags, to blow up civilians?" The rebel replies in a flat tone of voice: "And do you not think it cowardly to bomb our people with napalm?" A pause. "Give us your airplanes and we will give you our women and their handbags."

"The Battle of Algiers," a great film by the young Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, exists at this level of bitter reality. It may be a deeper film experience than many audiences can withstand: too cynical, too true, too cruel and too heartbreaking. It is about the Algerian war, but those not interested in Algeria may substitute another war; "The Battle of Algiers" has a universal frame of reference.

Pontecorvo announces at the outset that there is "not one foot" of documentary or newsreel footage in his two hours of film. The announcement is necessary, because the film looks, feels and tastes as real as Peter Watkins' "The War Game." Pontecorvo used available light, newsreel film stock and actual locations to reconstruct the events in Algiers. He is after actuality, the feeling that you are there, and he succeeds magnificently; the film won the Venice Film Festival and nine other festivals, and was chosen to open the New York Film Festival last November.

Some mental quirk reminded me of "The Lost Command," Mark Robson's dreadful 1965 film in which George Segal was the Algerian rebel and Anthony Quinn somehow won for the French. Compared to "The Battle of Algiers," that film and all Hollywood "war movies" are empty, gaudy balloons.

Pontecorvo has taken his stance somewhere between the FLN and the French, although his sympathies are on the side of the Nationalists. He is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality.

His protagonists are a French colonel (Jean Martin), who respects his opponents but believes (correctly, no doubt) that ruthless methods are necessary, and Ali (Brahim Haggiag), a petty criminal who becomes an FLN leader. But there are other characters: an old man beaten by soldiers; a small Arab boy attacked by French civilians who have narrowly escaped bombing; a cool young Arab girl who plants a bomb in a cafe and then looks compassionately at her victims, and many more.

The strength of the film, I think, comes because it is both passionate and neutral, concerned with both sides. The French colonel (himself a veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance), learns that Sartre supports the FLN. "Why are the liberals always on the other side?" he asks. "Why don't they believe France belongs in Algeria?" But there was a time when he did not need to ask himself why the Nazis did not belong in France.

SobaViolence

10-11-2004, 01:49 PM

Droppin', no matter what anybody says, i think you're cool.

"Why don't they believe France belongs in Algeria?" But there was a time when he did not need to ask himself why the Nazis did not belong in France."

amen, brother.

DroppinScience

10-11-2004, 01:58 PM

Ali

10-12-2004, 05:47 AM

I hate it when I swear to get my point across. I'd like to retract my swearing. It's a movie. Use the edit function, nitwit.

Ali

10-12-2004, 05:54 AM

sounds interesting, anyone see Biko yet? I haven't, but if it's about South Africa in the 80's then I was there and I can tell you two things:
1) Reagan and Israel helped the Nationalist Apartheid Regime while the rest of the world imposed sanctions.
2) The rhetoric used by the Bush administration is chillingly similar to what we were told by the Nationalists in the 80's.

Ali

10-12-2004, 06:04 AM

the Italians had some similar more or less unsavory business going on in Libya during WW2; see: Omar Mukhtar - Lion of the Desert)

Yes, I had to look it up...
:D The Italians got up to quite a lot of unsavory business during WWII, you shouldn't need to look that up! They were also pretty nasty to the Ethiopians (http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/ethiopia.html) in 1935

Not that you need to be squeaky-clean to make somebody else look bad (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/) ;)

sea_dragon

10-12-2004, 11:59 AM

Does the film show how Algerian and French security services created terrorism to get support from the French public and justify repression?

For the record, yes it does - there's a scene where the head of the French military goes into the Arab quarter (or whatever it's called, it's been awhile since I saw it) in an unmarked car and plants a bomb.

DroppinScience

11-07-2004, 04:27 PM

I FINALLY got this film on DVD about a week or so ago and I got the opportunity last night to watch it.

Lemme say, EXCELLENT film!

It's truly unsettling to watch a film set in the 50s looking exactly like the Iraq war today if you were watching it on a B&W TV set. I think the movie did an excellent job of showing both sides (the French military forces, the Algerian militants, etc.) and mourns the loss of life on both sides. Which is why I'm always loathe to dehumanize one side when it comes to this conflict, unlike others (some dismiss Americans completely, others think "towelheads" don't deserve to live... both WRONG (n) ).

Probably the most unsettling part of the film is where they have 3 Arab women recruited to plant a bomb in some cafes at the European Quarter. They take off their hijabs, put on make-up (thus Westernizing themselves), dress in typical blouses and necklaces the white women would wear, and bleach their hair so they get to fit in among the French colonial populace. They plant bombs in their purses and they go to some cafes.

There is a good long look taken at these civilians before they meet their demise. Truly powerful stuff.

Also HUGE parallels to today is how the leaders act. Take the French military commander reacting to people who think this war is not right. He basically says you gotta accept everything your country is doing and accept the consequences. Either for us or against us, right? :rolleyes:

I reccomend this film to ANYBODY. It's a must-see. I can't wait to see all the special features (including an interview with Richard Clark on how he feels Iraq is going the same route as Algeria)!

P.S. - And a big (n) to Blighty for his patronizing nature as well. Especially after seeing this film. Of course people can learn from this film. Why do you think the Pentagon made a point of screening it?