The Battle of Algiers

Over the years, everybody from the Black Panthers to war planners at the Pentagon has set up private screenings of Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers. This legendary 1965 film, which was nominated for three Academy Awards (those were the days!), provides a clear-eyed, dry-eyed account of the terrorist and counterterrorist acts that went on in the Algerian capital during the waning years of French occupation. And because Pontecorvo shot in a newsreel style, with handheld camera, grainy stock and frequent use of a telephoto lens, the docudrama has a take-to-the-streets immediacy to this day. Don't expect psychology or sociology, just history running its course.