"Battle of Algiers" is available FREE until 12/21 on Comcast's On Demand

[Bozita]

I'm guessing that Comcast's On Demand is pretty much the same around the country.

You'll find this classic in the "Free Movies!" category.

Enjoy.


http://nymag.com/nymetro/movies/reviews/n_9697/

Prescient Tense
Re-creating the carnage of fifties Algeria—bombings, assassinations, police torture—The Battle of Algiers is as relevant today as it was in 1965.

By Peter Rainer Published Jan 5, 2004

The most electrifyingly timely movie playing in New York was made in 1965. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is famous, but for some time it’s been available only in washed-out prints with poorly translated, white-on-white subtitles. The newly translated and subtitled 35-millimeter print at Film Forum is presumably the version that was privately screened in August for military personnel by the Pentagon as a field guide to fighting terrorism. Former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski volunteered this blurb: “If you want to understand what’s happening right now in Iraq, I recommend The Battle of Algiers.” I wonder if these politicos are aware that Pontecorvo’s epic was once used by the Black Panthers as a training film? In fact, not much in the current Iraq situation is historically comparable to the late-fifties Algerian struggle for independence dramatized in The Battle of Algiers, but its anatomy of terror remains unsurpassed—and, woefully, ever fresh.

The movie’s original U.S. distributor inserted the disclaimer: “Not one foot of newsreel or documentary film has been used.” That disclaimer might still be helpful to first-time viewers. The Battle of Algiers has often been compared to Potemkin as an example of incendiary, documentary-style political filmmaking. But Eisenstein’s classic was a flurry of highly theatrical techniques; there was a formality to the revolutionary chaos he unleashed, with carefully patterned crowds surging on cue. Pontecorvo’s approach is much looser and more caught-in-the-moment, although everything is carefully choreographed. What perhaps accounts for the extraordinary realism is a combination of Pontecorvo’s chief neorealist influences, Rossellini’s Open City and Paisan (the movie that inspired Pontecorvo to become a filmmaker), and his own wartime experience as an anti-Fascist partisan who commanded the Milan Resistance in 1943. The Battle of Algiers is a movie made by a director who knows (in both senses) whereof he shoots.

more...

[rockymountaindem]

1. I got it here in Boston.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll probably watch it later.

[eleny]

2. "a field guide to fighting terrorism" - Isn't that pathetic?

It's a lesson in how an occupier can't win against insurgents. The final scenes are so moving with the people in the streets, relentless.

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. Be careful ... the French secret police are not apologetic in the end n/t

[EFerrari]

4. We should email our reps and demand they watch it. n/t

[Bozita]

5. waterboarding shown at the 1:39 mark

[Bozita]

6. Robert Greenwald's "Iraq For Sale" is also available FREE until 1/24/08

same place

[JVS]

7. Am I the only one that dislikes both sides in this film?

[jpgray]

12. Unless you're a fuckwit, you should dislike both sides.

Much like our current political system, though, they're the only games in town.

[zorahopkins]

8. I Hate Comcast

Comcast is a big corporation that has a low-quality, over priced product.

Plus, their customer service is terrible.

I hate Comcast.

[Garbo 2004]

9. Thanks for the info. n/t

[Bozita]

10. kick for the weekday crowd

[Bozita]

11. kick for the afternoon shift