[LMS] The battle of Algiers

The battle of Algiers, by Gillo Pontecorvo (Algeria-Italia 1967)

I saw it some days ago, and I liked it very much; I found it beautiful and difficult to analyze as well.
It is a chronicle of the urban guerrilla fought by the Algerian "National Liberation Front" (FLN) against the French settlers from 1954 to 1960. The interesting part is that the French are able to completely eradicate the whole FLN organization, but the movement for the Algerian independence is not stopped by this defeat and just a few years later achieves its objective.

I would say: it is quite detailed in the chronicle of the facts, leaves the viewer a desire to improve his understanding of the reasons of the historical developments. The crucial point for me is that I think I can hear in this movie the distant hoofbeats of history (I copied this of the hoofbeats from an article in the NYT), but I myself I am not oriented well enough and I can't understand which path the horse is running on.

There are a few things which are more transparent, for example the different levels of sophistication of the individual FLN leaders, some of the tactics both of the FLN and and the French army and also the "everyday" feel of the life of the French colonists who really felt at home in Algiers.

Since it leaves the sense of the complexity of events, the desire of understanding more and the necessity of being better oriented, I should say it is a good movie about history and politics.

To conclude, beautiful in my opinion the black-and-white cinematography with high contrast.