DVD Review: ‘The Battle of Algiers’
The insurgents are engaged in a ruthless bombing campaign with no regard as to who gets killed. Additional foreign troops are brought in to stanch the violence and restore order. The troops seal off the insurgents’ urban enclave and set up checkpoints. They answer the insurgents’ violence with even more violence.
Baghdad in 2007? No, it’s Algiers in 1957 and the subject of “The Battle of Algiers,” an extraordinarily timely documentary and one of the most influential films in the history of political cinema.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 movie concerns the struggle in the late 1950s for Algerian independence from France. The film is so heavy, to use a term from that era, that it was banned on release for fear of creating civil disturbances.
“The Battle of Algiers” was shot in black and white and in a quasi-documentary style using largely untrained actors who play the principles – the FLN insurgents who carry out a series of violent attacks only to have the French push back with a counterinsurgency campaign that is even more violent. And ultimately fails although most of the FLN leadership is captured or killed.
When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, it was gripping, but today it is profoundly insightful because of the nightmare that the Iraq war has become.
The three-DVD Criterion boxed sex of “The Battle of Algiers” has a timely bonus – an interview with Richard Clarke, the former national counterterrorism expect and author of the seminal “Against All Enemies,” and Michael A. Sheehan, the former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism.
The interview, conducted by Christopher Isham, chief of investigative projects for ABC News, took place in 2004 before the war in Iraq had come totally off the tracks.
In one of several prescient comments, Clarke notes that “The Battle of Algiers� had been recently shown at the Pentagon, but says he fears that its major lesson was not taken to heart:
There are no military solutions to insurgencies, only political solutions.
How right he was.
21 Responses to “DVD Review: ‘The Battle of Algiers’”
I remember having seen about half of the movie years ago on TV. I wasn’t very impressed, thinking “this is so 30 years ago” and believing that no western democracy would get into such a situation anymore. My bad…
Gray:
OUR bad.
I urge you to try to rent or buy the movie. It is incredibly, stomach-wrenchingly violent in contrast to the largely sanitized images that we see from Iraq.
Like I said, it’s a three-DVD set. Amazon has some slightly discounted used copies. In addition to the Clark-Sheehan interview there are interviews with French officers and a ton of historic stuff.
Shaun, thanks for this review / pointing out this documentary. It sounds very interesting and truly like a must watch.
History repeats itself over and over again.
It’s true.
and sad.
“I urge you to try to rent or buy the movie.”
Sure. With the history of the last four years in mind, watching it will lead to quite different conclusions, I’m sure.
Gray:
As MvdG notes, history repeats . . . You are welcome to reach your own conclusions, but it is tough to escape the fact that the people leading the counterinsurgency in Iraq during the British occupation, Vietnam during the U.S. war, and Somalia during the U.S. interlude, among others, failed to take to heart that there cannot be military solutions, only political ones.
Incidentally, Richard Clarke notes in his interview that “The Battle of Algiers” had been used as an Al Qaeda training film. It is not difficult to see why.
We’ll never learn, will we. Where are the Iraq war supporters right now? I want their take.
The Algerian insurgency is covered briefly but well in the book The Unconquerable World. The author primarily focuses on political vs. military power in guerilla conflicts.
We should make this mandatory viewing for the State Dept, Dept of Defense, all intelligence agencies and all representatives in Congress. Let them watch it about 20 times before they plan or vote on the upcoming confrontation in Iran, or decide to support the surge in Iraq. Where in the world have insurgencies been defeated by military force in the past????
“there cannot be military solutions, only political ones”
You’re preaching to the choir, Shaun.
Gray:
One great Bob Marley lyric deserves another:
Until the philosophy which hold one race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned -
Everywhere is war -
Me say war.
Great quote, but wrong thread, Shaun!
Gray:
Nah, just a little cross post commenting. This Marley lyric surely applies to “The Battle of Algiers” and “The Mess in Mesopotamia,” which has been on top of the charts for nearly four years now.
Ok, that’s an example of a topic crossing postlines that I actually like!
Maybe W and Billy Kristol don’t have this on their DVD list. Maybe if W read more Camus things would have been different. Algeria lived the Bush Doctrine, General Khaled Nezzar just cancelled the party. Snark – In the Bush/Rummy world a ‘flyover’ trumps a movie or DVD anyday.
Richard Clarke said: “There are no military solutions to insurgencies, only political solutions.”
No. Richard Clarke is wrong.
Classic historical examples:
(1) The Roman empire against the Jewish zealots. The war lasted for years, with the classic hit-and-run strikes of insurgency.
Rome sacked Jerusalem. Judaea was dotted with crucifixes. Ended in the 10th Legion (Julius Caesar’s old legion) under Flavius Silva laying siege to the fortress of Masada by the Dead Sea.
(2) Boer War. Britain in South Africa. Boer farmers by day, take their ponies and ride on hit-and-run strikes by night, return by day and be peaceful civilian farmers. Kitchener invented the concentration camp. Locked down the entire country. Boers driven to exhaustion.
Your standard conventional wisdom would be that guerilla insurgencies always win. That is shaped by the exception – Vietnam – in which, in fact, the insurgency did not win.
The Viet Cong were decimated in the Tet Offensive and never recovered. The South was conquered by regular army units of North Vietnam.
As you all clearly agree with Richard Clarke, I know this is a pointless argument.
But it clearly does need to be said. Josephus, “The Jewish War” is a classic text of the defeat of an insurgency – driven by religious fervour – by military force.
Another example: Russian civil war. 1920s.
Bolsheviks faced ethnic based insurgencies across the southern reaches of what used to be imperial Russian (Kazakstan,Caucasus region etc).
Red Army units, backed by Cheka, dispersed on armored gun trains decimating the region. Those who surrendered were executed.
Insurgencies collapsed.
(Rayfield, Stalin and his Hangmen. Random House)
Seriously, I could go on and on. I am not saying the US should replicate these tactics…just that Richard Clarke is clearly wrong that “There are no military solutions to insurgencies.”
Marlowecan:
Good points all. Perhaps Clarke should have said that “there are seldom military solutions . . . “
Shaun said: “Marlowecan: Good points all. Perhaps Clarke should have said that “there are seldom military solutions . . . “
Hi Shaun. Thanks for the comment. Sorry about the multiple posts…a mix of Clarke’s comment and too much coffee
BTW: I thought your review was excellent…and a very apt choice of films considering the present day circumstances. I saw this on television years ago, and was fascinated. Perhaps the best film ever done on insurgency.
I did not know it was out on DVD (in a special edition no less).
Definitely a must-see.
Thanks
Marlowecan’s comments bring up a couple main questions:
Why was Algiers (and possibly Iraq) different than the successful squashings of insurgencies that he cites?
Next, if we don’t wish to follow those successful but immoral tactics, where does that leave us?
Marlowe- Interesting examples- but none of them was a defeat of an insurgency by a foreign power. I think if we were defending an insurgency on our own soil, it would be a totally different situation.