Algeria 1954-62: A history lesson on film

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2004)

******SPOILERS****** The place is Algiers, the time is August 26, 1957 and the person involved is Ali La Pointe an FLN, National Liberation Front, leader trapped in a building with his men and given an ultimatum to surrender by the French military or end up being killed.
The movie then goes back some three years to All Saint's Day November 1, 1954 the start to the Algerian Revolt. Ali at that time 24 years old with a long criminal record is arrested and jailed for assault and while in prison he gets influenced by one of the inmates who's executed for being part of the revolt against the French occupying government.
When he's released Ali joins the FLN and makes his way up in that organization from a spy to a soldier and then to a major leader of rebels attacking French troops and police in the Casbah section of the city of Algiers. The revolt grow from taking pot shots on the French police and military to all out attacks on dance halls restaurants bus and train depots where hundreds of French as well as Algerian civilian are killed and wounded. Also the scale of attacks on the French police and soldiers reach such a point that law and order becomes almost no-existent in Algiers as well as all of Algeria by 1957.
The French government in desperation sends in it's most seasoned troops into the country to quell the revolt led by paratroop commander Col. Mathieu, Jean Martin, a WWII as well as a Indochina war hero. The French under Mathieu go about to put down the rebel revolt almost if not even more ruthlessly as the the FLN rebels which only turns more Algerians, who were neutral, against the French. Col. Mathieu's plan is to kill or capture all the top rebel leaders and with that accomplished he feels that the revolt would be extinguished and Ali La Pointe is one of those leaders that Col. Mathieu is looking to put out of commission.
The torture of a FLN rebel pays off when he breaks down and leads to French troops under Col. Mathieu to the place where Ali is hiding and thats where we get back to the beginning of the movie. Refusing to surrender Ali and his men are blown to pieces when the French army dynamites the building that they are hold up in and with that Ali La Pointe's contribution to the Algerian revolt is over but not for those still fighting against the French.
The movie goes into the early 1960's where the revolt got to the point where the French government, in a last and desperate effort to end the bloodshed, held an open election for Algerian independence in 1962 With the vote was 91% in favor of independence on July 5, 1962, the 132nd anniversary of the French entrance into Algeria, Algeria was proclaimed a free and independent nation and thus the bloody Algerian revolt ended.
Great docudrama of one of the most defining event of the post WWII world without a single inch of actual news footage. The Algerian revolt lasted eight years and cost the French some 18,000 soldiers and 3,000 civilians The loss of life among the Algerian people was astronomical being estimated a around and even over one million dead. The Algerian revolt even spilled over into France proper itself and cost some 4,000 casualties in that country in terrorist and counter-terrorist attacks.
"The Battle of Algiers" is one of the best historical films, even though it has no news footage in it at all, ever made and is being re-issued this year, 2004, on VHS and DVD. With what's been happening in the news it's re-release couldn't be more timely,don't miss it. It will be an historical as well as emotional experience to everyone that sees it.