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James Clive Matthews is the author of two books of film criticism, a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and blog editor for the BBC's Pocket Films site. Here he picks five classic war films every home should have. Click to view Top 5 Greatest War Films.
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Best for History (La Battaglia di Algeri - 1966) |
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 Despite having been made 40 years ago, by an Italian director, in French and in black and white, The Battle of Algiers remains the most compelling, even-handed and – most disturbingly – contemporary war movie ever made. If you like the reality of history delivered with real emotional impact, make space on your shelf for this. |
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Made just 20 years after the end of the Second World War, the opening scenes of the aftermath of torture and the surrounding of revolutionaries in their hiding place would, to the audiences of the time, straight away have summoned images of the Nazi occupation of Europe and the heroic myth of the Résistance. Yet instead it is the French military who are in the Nazi role; the cowering rebels are Algerian Arabs.
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 Set between 1954 and 1960, The Battle of Algiers tells the story of the birth of Algerian independence from French colonial rule, the rise of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), and the French response to the group’s terrorist and propaganda campaigns. Yet this is no simple late-60s, lefty, anti-colonial interpretation of events as, despite having been based on the account of former FLN commander Saadi Yacef, who also co-stars, the Italian filmmakers, led by director Gillo Pontecorvo, insisted on being almost dispassionately even-handed throughout. The opening Nazi parallels are, rather than being a simplistic and obvious comparison, neither explicitly made, nor entirely upheld throughout the course of the film.
Though the ordinary Algerians are, generally, shown as objects of sympathy – the close-ups of eyes full of tears and resignation, a technique borrowed from silent cinema, being quite exceptionally powerful – and the French most often as racist, there is understanding and pity for both sides as the conflict gradually escalates, the body counts rise. With the main Algerian character an illiterate petty criminal who seems to enjoy the violence and destruction and the leading Frenchman a former Résistance man with a definite distaste for the tactics he has to use, the generalised portrayal of the mass of either side is quickly, if uncomfortably, subverted.
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| With a Western power occupying a Muslim country, bombs in cafes, seemingly random shootings by insurgents, the torture of terror suspects, plus the near impossibility of working out precisely who among the mass of the population is responsible, the contemporary resonance with events in Iraq and Afghanistan is self-evident. Bar the occasional dated car or helicopter – and, of course, the language of the soldiers – this could so easily be Baghdad or Fallujah, the scenes could have come straight from CNN at any time in the past few years. |
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 Yet it is the sheer realism of the course, grainy cinematography which gives the film its power as much as any parallels we may be able to draw with the content. Deliberately mimicking late-50s newsreel footage, and experimenting with the sort of shaky, hand-held, documentary style of shooting which has recently become so overused as to be tedious, it is impossible not to be sucked in. The scenes of the bomb-plantings in particular are deeply affecting and uncomfortable to watch, heightened yet further by one of the most tense and appropriate scores ever written by Italian master Ennio Morricone.
The film may last but a little over two hours, but make sure you have nothing else to do for an hour after that. The sheer emotional impact of a movie such as this means you’ll need at least that to come to terms with what you’ve just seen. |
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