I almost couldn't believe how timely and relevant this film seemed, yet it is 40+ years old! And there's a decent amount of honesty about why and how all the events happen. Neither side is portrayed as good or bad -- all is realistically gray.
Commander Lt. Colonel Philippe Mathieu tells his men: "The problem, as usual, is: first, the enemy; second, how to destroy him. There are 400,000 Arabs in Algiers. All against us? Of course not. There’s only a minority that rules by terror and violence. This is the enemy to isolate and destroy.... It’s an unknown, unrecognizable enemy. It blends with the others. It is everywhere: in the cafes, in the alleyways of the Kasbah or in the streets of the European quarter, in the shops, in the shops, in the workplace."
The film is from 1966, black & White, in French, with English subtitles, winner of numerous awards. It's about the Algerian revolt of the 1950s and 60s that led to Algerian independence from France. Although it all scripted and staged, it has a unique, semi-documentary feel that was the intent of the filmmaker.
So much that we recognize is there: Western power occupying Arab land, insurgency (because locals abused by occupiers), terrorism (because there is no "army" among the occupied), polarization (for different reasons depending on what you believe), checkpoints (and that that they don't work and the officials know it), profiling, psychological ops, all kinds of "control" measures from misuse of the media to false flag ops to create justification for aggression. What's interesting is that the French commander who is called in to quell the revolt appears to be steeped in every underhanded, anti-freedom-and-democracy trick in the book, yet this is depicted as being perfectly natural, and the fact that such methods are routine is not presented as any kind of revelation. I guess not much has ever changed regarding war.
During a press conference, a reporter asks a captured official of the FLN: "Isn’t it a dirty thing to use women’s baskets to carry bombs to kill innocent people?" To which the "terrorist" spokeman answers, "And you? Doesn’t it seem even dirtier to you to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages with thousands of innocent victims? It would be a lot easier for us if we had planes. Give us your bombers, and we’ll give you our baskets."
_http://imdb.com/title/tt0058946/
I have an Algerian co-worker who almost cried when I mentioned having watched this film.
Commander Lt. Colonel Philippe Mathieu tells his men: "The problem, as usual, is: first, the enemy; second, how to destroy him. There are 400,000 Arabs in Algiers. All against us? Of course not. There’s only a minority that rules by terror and violence. This is the enemy to isolate and destroy.... It’s an unknown, unrecognizable enemy. It blends with the others. It is everywhere: in the cafes, in the alleyways of the Kasbah or in the streets of the European quarter, in the shops, in the shops, in the workplace."
The film is from 1966, black & White, in French, with English subtitles, winner of numerous awards. It's about the Algerian revolt of the 1950s and 60s that led to Algerian independence from France. Although it all scripted and staged, it has a unique, semi-documentary feel that was the intent of the filmmaker.
So much that we recognize is there: Western power occupying Arab land, insurgency (because locals abused by occupiers), terrorism (because there is no "army" among the occupied), polarization (for different reasons depending on what you believe), checkpoints (and that that they don't work and the officials know it), profiling, psychological ops, all kinds of "control" measures from misuse of the media to false flag ops to create justification for aggression. What's interesting is that the French commander who is called in to quell the revolt appears to be steeped in every underhanded, anti-freedom-and-democracy trick in the book, yet this is depicted as being perfectly natural, and the fact that such methods are routine is not presented as any kind of revelation. I guess not much has ever changed regarding war.
During a press conference, a reporter asks a captured official of the FLN: "Isn’t it a dirty thing to use women’s baskets to carry bombs to kill innocent people?" To which the "terrorist" spokeman answers, "And you? Doesn’t it seem even dirtier to you to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages with thousands of innocent victims? It would be a lot easier for us if we had planes. Give us your bombers, and we’ll give you our baskets."
_http://imdb.com/title/tt0058946/
I have an Algerian co-worker who almost cried when I mentioned having watched this film.
