Battle of Algiers

This is not a good guys vs. bad guys film - it shows the horror and terror of war, particularly the horrors of terrorism against civilians. You watch as the French, the most civilized, cosmopolitan of any Europeans get dragged down to the brutality and hatred of the Arab terrorists (which is the terrorists aim) - then you watch in admiration as the French Army marches in and deals with the situation.

I was rooting for the French army against the terrorists and the politicians back in Paris. This is a good movie to learn about the struggle that America now has with Arab and Muslim terrorists. One must be as tough and as brutal as the terrorists, but also keep the honor, civilized standards of our higher culture.

I highly recommend this film. Perhaps the director will do a new film on the horrible state of Algeria now that it is ruled by the Arabs - Islamic fundamentalist terrorism - the carnage goes on today.


why did they rebel?   September 6, 2004
Michael A. Calderon Zaks (san francisco, ca)
27 out of 35 found this review helpful

Some of these racist reviews aside, The Battle of Algiers shows more or less early on in the film just why the Algerian natives rebeled against their French colonizers: The French settlers lived lavishly while the natives lived in squalor, with the latter segregated from the former. Attempts by natives to walk in the French district were met with violence from the settlers and the police whom protected them. Racist epithets were part of the settler vocabulary, which went hand in hand with their paternalism.

Gillo Pontecorvo does an excellend job of portraying the Algerian War of Independence within the big picture which was the global decolonization movements. When a leader of the FLN, in handcuffs surrounded by troops and reporters, is asked by the French press if he thought carrying bombs in women's baskets was cowardly, his response was "not as cowardly as dropping bombs from planes over Indochina. But if you want to give us your planes, we'd be happy to trade in our baskets."

While the revolution may have become disappointing years later for even its independentistas, that was too much for the film to cover, with less drama for a movie. For the disappointing independences worldwide, you can read FLN participant Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth to find answers. If he was alive today, he would have referred to the relationship between France and Algeria since then as neo-colonialism, since the former still controls the latter's economy indirectly through the World Bank and IMF.

For those only taking up an interest in this film for the sake of understanding what it would take to defeat terrorism, the begining of this film should make you think about the social inequalities which inspire terrorism, and we can go back to each independence movement throughout the last two and a half centuries to find acts of terrorism among the independence rebels, from our own in the late eighteenth century US, to Ireland in the 20th century, etc. What they did in Algeria was no different.


Propaganda -- if great propaganda   November 16, 2004
Colin Wright (Richmond, Ca USA)
23 out of 30 found this review helpful

Battle of Algiers is one of my favorite films. However, it is propaganda -- and the viewer should be aware of that.

The bombing in the Casbah, for example, that is shown as the work of the French police, actually remained a mystery. An accidental explosion in a bomb factory? Some internicene feud? No one knew. Yet the film unhesitatingly makes it the work of the French. This is critical, as the FLN attacks on civilians then become subsequent. They are implicitly justified as reprisals for beastliness initiated by the French.

More egregiously, the film simply lies when it shows the FLN launching its operations in Algiers with selective attacks on French soldiers and policemen. Actually, they indiscriminantly attacked French males -- uniformed and civilian. See above: the moral fable becomes the 'good' FLN beginning with attacks only on combatants and only sinking to indiscriminant terrorism when it is initiated by the French. The truth would seem to be somewhat less flattering to the FLN. Rightly or wrongly, they waged their war through terrorism all along.

As with all good propaganda, 'Battle of Algiers' tells the truth -- most of the time. The specific bombing incidents shown really happened, etc. The viewer should be aware of the exceptions, which are significant and contribute critically to the message of the film.

My source, by the way, for the assertions I have made is Alister Horne's excellent history of the Algerian war. I am not attempting to condemn the FLN -- I heartily support the Palestinian 'terrorists,' who can be even less discriminating. However, the film does oversimplify the conflict and try to make one side out to be morally more irreproachable than it in fact was. As with almost all history, upon examination the morally satisfying fairy tale usually becomes a good deal murkier.


Excellent, highly partisan take on Algerian independence   January 30, 2003
rampageous_cuss (Under Billy Penn's Hat)
22 out of 26 found this review helpful

This film is a must see, not only as brilliant filmmaking with a riveting story, but also as a very clever, and obviously successful, piece of revisionist propaganda. Current events have made its message deeply ironic.

France seized Algiers from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, gradually expanding its presence in NW Africa. By 1954 more than 1 in 10 Algerians were of European descent (pieds-noirs), with 1/3 living in Algiers. Although France had granted full citizenship to Algerian Jews in 1870, few Moslems had it in 1954. An Algerian nativist organization, the MTLD, formed during WWII . An MTLD-led uprising in 1945 was brutally crushed by armed pieds-noirs, and a decade later a more violent nationalist organization, the FLN, splintered from the MTLD to pursue independance. In 1954, internal fighting between the MTLD and FLN resulted in assassinations of MTLD members in the 'native' section of Algiers, the Casbah, by FLN activists, two of whom were arrested by French authorities.

After being guillotined these men became martyrs for the FLN, which then stepped up its campaign of terrorism, both against its domestic political rivals and the French. This culminated in the abortive Philippeville uprising in October 1955 when appalling atrocities were committed against Euro-Algerian women and children. In August of the following year a titanic explosion occurred in a Casbah building reputed to contain an FLN bomb-making workshop. 80 Algerians living in the area were killed, and the FLN blamed the French. In January 1957 the FLN declared a ceasefire and general strike to demonstrate its political strength. This proved to be a disastrous tactical error when French paratroops under the command of General Jacques Massu isolated the Casbah and brutally rooted out the FLN network in Algiers.

Except for Philippeville, the events of the 2nd paragraph are covered by the film, which was made under the auspices of the post-colonial (FLN) Algerian government. Not surprisingly the movie is heavily slanted to the FLN's view of history, but the characters on both sides are interesting and sympathetically portrayed. This includes the main character, Ali La Pointe, who in real life was a former pimp and sadistic executioner for the Algiers FLN. The film presents an interesting consideration of counter-terror operations, including a sarcastic take on racial profiling!

It must be added that with the former FLN currently prosecuting a brutal counter-insurgency against election-winning Algerian Fundamentalists, an ironic light is cast on the film's message of respect by the counter-insurgency forces for the heroic insurgents!