249 The Battle of Algiers

[King of Kong]

Hey, let's be civil, mate. No need to resort to strong language. OK, they may be traumatised, they may feel traumatised - who cares about semantics? The point I am trying to make is that trauma shouldn't lead one to behave irrationally - it's an ideal, I admit, but I believe people should be responsible enough not to commit acts of wanton violence no matter which nationality/religion/ethnicty they belong to. And yes, many refugees have not settled as well as others. It would be interesting to find out why this is.

[The Invunche]

No harm meant by the language, dude.

You've pretty much answered your question yourself. Human beings are not ideal. Anyway, I don't think many of us can appreciate (to use your word) that kind of trauma. The fact that you ask "why don't they get over it?" leads me to think you (like me) have had a pretty trauma free childhood.

[HerrSchreck]

Don't you think these 1st/2nd generation Lebanese/Palestinian men should just get on with their lives, or take responsibility for their actions?

Growing up in a refugee camp where you sleep under the mattress every night for added protection against Israeli shells tend to mess people up. It's not only in Sydney and Paris these young men cause trouble today. We have our share of traumatized Lebanese-Palestinian youths here in Denmark as well.

Sorry for rehashing this.

Life & the newspapers rehash it. The problem is the infected open sore of the planet, driving people on all sides absolutely batty with irreconcilable rage.

My impossible dream is to see the US (yeah right) & UN come rappling down from helicopters kicking all authorities on both sides out of their respective gotvt offices on both sides, saying,

"Okay bubs... ya fuckin blew it. Staff change-- we don't allow fucking retards to administer Globally Precious Zones People Take Real Serious. Pack up your red phones & Wermacht-esqe tough guy uniforms (this means you too, Israel) and go home and go to your rooms and STAY THERE!"... then turn the whole stretch into a sort of international religious tourist zone... international zone like Tangier of yesteryear.

[Gordon]

Yes, the criterion is progressive. That ghosting/combing appears on chapter changes doesn't it (see Henrik's Life Aquatic review at DVDBeaver)? I never got round to checking if this phenomenon is on all cc releases.

Ah, I see. Thank you.

[Andre Jurieu]

"Okay bubs... ya fuckin blew it. Staff change -- we don't allow fucking retards to administer Globally Precious Zones People Take Real Serious. Pack up your red phones & Wermacht-esqe tough guy uniforms (this means you too, Israel) and go home ...

Problem is that the dispute is largely over what constitutes "home" and who has the right to declare a specific area to be their "home".

[HerrSchreck]

"Okay bubs... ya fuckin blew it. Staff change -- we don't allow fucking retards to administer Globally Precious Zones People Take Real Serious. Pack up your red phones & Wermacht-esqe tough guy uniforms (this means you too, Israel) and go home ...

Problem is that the dispute is largely over what constitutes "home" and who has the right to declare a specific area to be their "home".

Well yeah, and-- re the subject title you used-- my impossible little fantasy involves a US administration struck from an impossibly sensible & rational fabric, and able to behold this region with a firm & rational, unmanipulated eye.

[nyasa]

When I first saw this film, just over a year ago, it instantly vaulted into my personal top ten. It seemed so fresh and immediate. Admittedly, up to that point I'd had very little exposure to Italian neo-realism, so for me the film came almost without artistic lineage.

Within a month, I'd seen Salvatore Giuliano, which was a very obvious influence on Battle of Algiers. Indeed, one of the most striking images in BoA - people standing on roofteps - is a direct steal from SG. More recently, I've seen Rome, Open City, which betrays yet more of Pontecorvo's 'inspirations'. Some of the more dramatic music in BoA heavily echoes the R,OC soundtrack. And several scenes of R,OC are homaged in BoA , if not explicitly, then certainly in spirit - the shooting of Anna Magnani, for instance. And the torture of the Italian resistance leader.

Meanwhile, I've worked my way through Pontecorvo's entire oeuvre None of his other movies comes remotely close to BoA. It would appear that BoA was a masterpiece almost by accident - thanks to the alchemy of a compelling subject, brilliantly naturalistic performances, and a talented crew firing on all cyllinders - rather than the product of a truly great director.

And yet, despite now being able to place it in context, Battle of Algiers remains in my top ten. For the world we live in today, it's one of the most important films ever made.

[HerrSchreck]

I can just see Rumsfeld & co sitting around watching THE BATTLE OF ALGEIRS (particularly after hearing Rich Clarke is in the extras) with their classic obliviousness to their own relentless duplication of all the Worst Historical Fascist & Colonialist Strategic Mistakes, missing the larger picture and-- sitting on the edge of their seats getting a weird sense of deja vu as the film wears on and the French Occupation becomes gripped with a precarious sense of impending doom-- throwing their fists in the air with self-justification & inspiration via the Paratroopers "defeating" the Arabs.

The last five years have unhinged so many prior assumptions regarding The Modern Age, politics in the west effected Before The Watching Eyes & Conscience Of The Post-WW2 and VietNam (and Watergate) World... as pertains what it was thought one could & could not Get Away With. I'd heard either a historian or politician remarking that Hitler is alive and well in a sense, that he is the evil voice whispering in the ears of leaders everywhere craving power & a place in history, as they attempt to seduce themselves into doing & trying to get away with a little more each time, to Be KING, not PM or premeir or prez. But it is or was the restraining, humanistic voice of the watching, civilized world which ever held them back via all the cumulative lessons learned and written in bold up on the blackboard of Living History... a blackboard which has been erased in my own fucking country over the past 5 yrs.

Rather than be encouraged by the developing political neutering of GW Bush/Cheney, I'm worried by it. Just like all indulgent, ignorant, hot tempered fanatics, their worst moments of Accelerated Dangerous Absurdist Violence occurs when there's no longer anything left to lose...

[pemmican]

Whattaya mean, none of Pontecorvo's films come close to BoA? The restored Queimada (Burn!) is a pretty phenomenal film -- Frantz Fanon for cinephiles.

I'm fond of The Wide Blue Road, too, tho' I'll agree it isn't quite the equal of BoA.

P.

[der_Artur]

I know of two editions of this DVD (mine and a german forum member's) that have a sound bug at timecode 1:39:30. According to the subtitles Colonel Mathieu says "Fair enough. I'm [sic!] make this statement in writing." But you only hear him say "D'Acord." and see his lips moving with no sound afterwards. I have written to Criterion about this, asking if they realized this mistake and maybe already corrected it like with "M", but I received no answer. So does anyone have the same problem?



Does anyone have an other eMail address from criterion than the Mulvaney one? I'd like to write them to let Peter Becker know, that mistakes actually do come in threes. Although this is an older, and for some users minor one.

[Galen Young]

So does anyone have the same problem?

It's there on my copy. I would assume that it was the fault of the source print, but who knows, maybe someone will post that it was corrected on a later printing. Guess I got to stop buying those first printings, I'm getting a bad case of Criterion glitch fatigue!

[Cinesimilitude]

My copy is fisrt printing 2004, and has the same issue. As with M, I don't care.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

My copy is fisrt printing 2004, and has the same issue. As with M, I don't care.

Agreed!!

[AZAI]

Gillo Pontecorvo died yesterday at age 86... sad news

[Lemmy Caution]

Odd. I just watched the film for the first time on the day the director died. A very powerful well-done film. A great sense of immediacy to the whole proceedings.

I was also reminded of Salvatore Giuliano, but I found that film a bit confusing and hard to follow, as I didn't know the background (I'd rec listening to the commentary first, maybe while checking out cf.org, before getting to the film). Battle of Algiers didn't have that problem. It was all very easy to follow, lines delineated well. I liked how the film didn't really choose sides, but showed both adversaries going about their plans, each with their stomach-churning methods.

There was one scene that I really liked. During a period of heavy checks, a French soldier is walking down a wide alleyway. An Algerian boy is behind him. We don't know either of them, and aren't made to identify with either. The film stays neutral. It's clear they both mistrust the other's intention. Either one, or both, or neither, are in danger. Worried, the French soldier takes the initiative and frisks the boy. Nothing. Maybe there is no danger after all. Suddenly, a concealed weapon is pulled out and one kills the other. I just loved the dread and uncertainty of that scene. A tension and uncertainty which the viewer shares along with the two characters.

I'm really sorry that I put off watching the film for such a long time. And yes, my copy also had that mildly uncomfortable moment when the French paratroop head speaks a sentence but we only hear a word or two. Not much of a problem, but a small noticeable flaw. Btw, The French paratrooper leader was an interesting study.

[ellipsis7]

Obit from 'The Guardian' today...

[jbeall]

I would assume that it was the fault of the source print, but who knows, maybe someone will post that it was corrected on a later printing. Guess I got to stop buying those first printings, I'm getting a bad case of Criterion glitch fatigue!

I was showing this movie to my class on Friday, and noticed it, too. Maybe the subtitlers thought it was confusing without the extra sentence, I dunno.

Either way, it doesn't bother me. After some of the hideous subtitling I've seen on other dvds (usually by Facets), I'll deal with a tiny mistake.

R.I.P. Gillo Pontecorvo

[Rsdio]

Just a note for anyone in the UK, I happened to be looking at the VUE site to see if This Is England will still be on in Leeds when I'm there next week and was amazed to find that The Battle of Algiers is playing up and down the country on Tuesday in their cinemas. What the occasion is I have no idea, but for a multiplex chain to be doing something like this seems unusual to say the least. And most welcome, obviously

[ellipsis7]

The Battle of Algiers

Peter Bradshaw The Guardian

The rerelease of Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 black-and-white film The Battle of Algiers, recreating France's suppression of the 1950s Algerian uprising, is an extraordinary experience. Granted, the audio dubbing of gunfire sounds a bit rickety now, and the way the intertitles switch between Italian and French is eccentric, but everything else makes this a newer-than-new release. It is of its time in many ways, yet somehow more extreme, and more contemporary, than anything else around. Famously, the Pentagon arranged a special in-house screening in 2003, evidently fascinated by exactly the same qualities that have mesmerised the movie's followers elsewhere: its icy candour on the subjects of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, and the vital importance of torture in eliciting information.

Those torture scenes are laid out in montage for us without any self-conscious emotional affect or drama; they include blowtorching the suspect's naked torso, waterboarding, and clipping electrodes to the earlobes before hand-cranking the voltage. These scenes are presented without any of the internal humanising or dramatising conflict that would be considered vital now: they do indeed look almost like a military training film. Another sort of director, possessed of a more conventional liberal scruple, might have felt the need to show a torturer's inner pain or the torturee's hidden backstory. But Pontecorvo shows them in terms of strategy.

The anti-hero is Colonel Mathieu, played by Jean Martin, the paratroop commander entrusted by the French government with putting down the Algerian revolt. He is a tough, wiry professional soldier of the sort adoringly imagined by Frederick Forsyth: a veteran of the French Resistance who shrugs his shoulders at any possible irony. He is the centrepiece to the most remarkable sequence, captured on the film's poster. At the head of his troops, he simply leads a triumphalist, introductory parade down the main street, to reassure loyal citizens that the French army will crush the terrorists - and to face down the terrorists themselves. He strides easily, casually, with no sidearm on show, utterly confident in the power of the spectacle he has created. With his fatigues, beret and faintly sinister sunglasses, he looks like a cross between a top para in Northern Ireland and an IRA chief. Mathieu's face moves in and out of shadow on this sunny day: the result of the natural light that Pontecorvo is using, and integral to his "newsreel" effect.

The French authorities first license a covert bomb attack in the casbah - "state terrorism" before the phrase was invented - but then, under Mathieu, they embark on a disciplined campaign of isolating terrorist cells, torturing them for the names of operatives further up the pyramid-chain until the key figures at the top are obliterated. No nonsense about hearts and minds: this is a military solution to a military problem. "The culprits are presumed to be Muslim ..." Mathieu crisply briefs his men, and a 2007 audience holds its breath. "... so they will be able to hide more easily in the Arab quarters." This film was composed in an era when Islamic identity was not as important as it is today: there are no mosques, no religion here. Then the keyword was "Arab" and it easy to forget that as recently as the first Iraq war in 1991, the question was whether a putative brotherhood of Arab nations would support Saddam.

Mathieu's campaign is crowned with Pyrrhic victory. The terrorists are beaten, but a later popular uprising drives the French out, precisely as Mathieu had enigmatically appeared to predict, using Dien Bien Phu as his benchmark: the Indo-Chinese imperial burden which the French fatefully handed on to the Americans. Whatever they made of The Battle of Algiers at the Pentagon, this is a must-see for everyone else now.

[Rsdio]

Cheers, that explains that then. I'm still surprised at how wide the release is though, it's showing twice at my nearest VUE - to put that in perspective they only showed Pan's Labyrinth once and that was at midday on a Wednesday three months after it was released.

[Shrew]

Does anyone have an other eMail address from criterion than the Mulvaney one? I'd like to write them to let Peter Becker know, that mistakes actually do come in threes. Although this is an older, and for some users minor one.

Well, he is making the statement in writing, not in speech.

[psufootball07]

Wow, this may just be the best film in the entire catalogue of Criterion. Anyways I have a quiz where I have to put in order the sequence of events of this film and was wondering if anyone could help me. This is not the sequence events in the film, but pretty much timeline of what happened in Algiers:

FLN strike
French institute checkpoints
Ali goes to Jail (beginning of film)
Ali recruited by FLN (also very early)
Operation Champagne
French Paratroopers arrive
FLN attacks police officers and stations
Tortured FLN member gives up Ali (beginning of film, but really the end)
3 Algerian women bomb public places
Police bomb rue de Thebes (this seems to be the most difficult for me to place. Is this when they bomb Ali in his hideout?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kaujot]

Dude, quit asking for homework help.

[domino harvey]

Your instructor gives you objective assignments in a college-level film course?

[psufootball07]

No, this is just a brief check to see if you watched the film. I only have trouble placing the bombing at the rue de thebes and paratroopers arriving. After this you have to demonstrate some further understanding of the material and how it relates to culture and society at the time, which is not difficult with a film that feels like a documentary.