The Battle of Algiers

I think people's senses are so overwhelmed by the surging inevitability of the action that they are prepared to support what, in another context, they would reject.

It uses realism as an effect, documentary as a style. You feel that you're really there, and you can't help but be moved.

It neither demonizes nor lionizes either side of the conflict, aiming for just-the-ugly facts objectivity. Nobody who sees it is likely to feel comforted, or even vindicated. The emotion it most frequently and fervently inspires is sorrow.

The film is not just a relentlessly gripping entertainment but also a cinematic Rorschach blot, a moral miasma that tosses our sympathies this way and that.

Essential viewing.

The film establishes a kinetic documentary effect, making the impact of every shoot-out and explosion a deeply personal experience.

Directed with a newsreel immediacy and a documentary seriousness, it could be used by young revolutionary groups as a guide to creating the political structure of a resistance movement.

The lessons The Battle of Algiers has to offer are painfully obvious. Why we still haven't learned them over fifty years hence defies all logic.

In terms of the political genre, this one may be among the greatest internationally with its documentary-style shoot...

[Director Gillo] Pontecorvo emerged during the "boom" of postwar Italian neorealism, but he was above all a documentary filmmaker. Both strains serve him well in this magnificent work. [Full review in Spanish]