Truly a brilliant film. Not in terms of acting or filmmaking but in terms of content that remains stunningly relevant to this day some 60 years later.
Themes here include pacification of urban populations, use of torture on prisoners possessing information that may save lives, colonial powers in decline, tactical victories vs. strategic wins, guerilla warfare and on and on and on.
Opening with the French torture of a Muslim prisoner in Algiers toward the end of France’s colonial rule the film depicts both sides with a clear gaze. Neither is above reproach. France’s efforts to hang on to power over a population that largely doesn’t want them anymore is great “decline and fall” fodder…even containing a reference to France’s recent defeat in Indochina fresh on their lips and with lessons supposedly learned places the characters firmly in the most realistic of circumstances. French leaders and soldiers are given an impossible task and attempt in the best way possible enact their orders. Facing as we well know a largely invisible enemy disappearing within the general populace and acting in a way that does not spare fellow citizens puts the French in a no-win situation…a familiar spot for Americans in the 21st century.
The Muslim fighters are intelligent, organized, brave and patriotic but themselves not above committing atrocities. They fight with what they have…disguising themselves as women, hiding weapons is baskets, assassinating targets with bullets in the back of the head.
There is no honor among these parties…each recognize that there is no winner, only survivors. The film plays this out with all parties coming away scarred if they come away at all.
Its also a great primer on the North African Muslim culture. Seeing the Casbahs, drug usage, prostitution and so on comingled with the calls to prayer, devout followers of the faith and enmasked women gives one a good sense of the mix of European and Middle Eastern influences present in the region. The conflict between European interlopers and actual residents less than 10 years after the end of WWII (this is the same area English and German and American and Italian tanks and planes rampaged across scarcely a decade earlier) is disconcerting to me…history and the winds of change move faster than one ever can imagine at times.
But here we are some 60 years later and I’m imagining the film with be just as relevant at its 100 year mark. Maybe Americans won’t be the ones using this film as a primer for their military forces as a learning exercise as we have been in recent years. One can only hope.