Part way through “The Battle of Algiers” is a sequence in which Algerian locals perform quick, targeted assassinations on French officers throughout the region. One boy nonchalantly follows behind a policeman who suspects he’s up to no good. It’s a coincidence, the boy assures him, but the officer frisks him anyway. Satisfied to find nothing, he gets into a car, and the boy fishes a gun out of a nearby trash can and shoots him dead.
Resistance comes in many forms in “The Battle of Algiers,” and the interconnected methodology to each killing in this sequence seems like a precursor of the baptism montage at the end of “The Godfather.” Much has been made about Gillo Pontecorvo’s documentarian roots and this film’s modeling off news reels and ’60s doc realism, but that thread to New Hollywood makes it seem so much more modern.
Pontecorvo is constantly playing with intense close-ups, quick camera darts, rapid zooms and of course a stapled together editing style in which weeks pass by in a smash cut or the tides of war turn on a dime. To call it documentary realistic is accurate in the sense that it resembles news reels more than Old Hollywood, but the documentarians and found footage makers of today don’t credit as much to Pontecorvo’s political masterpiece. We see this film’s breadcrumbs on modern action movies and social cause movies all the way up to “Argo.” Continue reading “Rapid Response: The Battle of Algiers”