The Battle Of Algiers (1966/Criterion Collection Blu-ray Set) + Outside The Law (2011/Palisades Tartan
Blu-ray)
Picture:
B/B- Sound: B- Extras: B+/B- Films: B+/C
Two films
about the same historic event have been issued on Blu-ray, but the older one is
a classic and never one hardly known. 45
years separate them, yet they try to cover the same territory and with very
different results.
The even
is in how the French Government was (after something like 130 years!) was
finally driven out of Algiers by the FLN, a resistance group that became as
violent as the French in the 1950s. So
how did the native people of that country finally get to be their own country?
Gillo
Pontecorvo’s The Battle Of Algiers
(1966) was only his second film, but it was a huge international and critical
hit, though it was banned for years in France. It looks like a documentary, but is 100% a
dramatic film about how the FLN built resistance to the French and how they
were committing atrocities not unlike the Nazis that the French had recently
defeated. The FLN started upping their
bombings and the French sent in more troops.
As you know there is an Algeria,
the rest should not be a spoiler, but don’t read on if you want to see these
films and skip to the technical section.
The
French eventually captured the leaders of the movement and killed them most
publicly, which the film shows, but amazingly skips even more atrocities from
both sides and sacrifices many facts to twist around its idea of truth. You hear Right Wing types talk about Marxism,
but they throw that around at anyone they disagree with, trivializing the very
thing they say is evil. For a real life
Marxist like Pontecorvo, he uses the Agit Prop techniques of older Soviet
Cinema (Eisenstein obviously included) to show the Algerians as overly good
(which was amazing at the time since they had never been portrayed as their own
characters before) and the French as worse than they think they are and
undesirable at best, evil at worst. The
illicit appeals to pity are formulaic, as we see dead and/or injured children
when the Algerians are attacked, but the “visitors” are never given that
sympathy. The result is one of the most
effective political propaganda films ever made up there with Triumph Of The Will, Battleship Potemkin and (yes) Birth Of A Nation.
However,
it is additional celebrated as an alternate cinema, Third World Cinema,
successful Leftist cinema (there never seems to be a “false note” from the
filmmakers, even if the information and political leaning is manufactured) and
that any film could oppose the Hollywood narrative of the West, power,
individual people, movie stars and consumer society makes this a darling of
some very fine filmmakers today. That
still does not change what it is, but it is an enduring work as we still do not
hear enough about Algeria,
including how it immediately became an Islamic nation with the domestic murders
of any women who were considered subversives.
The change in the film that seems so happy becomes a nightmare for those
who still do not have a voice 50 years later, so it is still a male-dominated
cinema by men, just leftist men and having women doing some of the bombing does
not change a thing. No Wonder Khadafi
fled there!
Yet
forward to Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside
The Law (2011) telling the story of three brothers who want to have financial
success and freedom but get targeted by the FLN while all this madness is going
on (complete with its own reenactments of various riots and massacres) and
suddenly the history is in the background instead of being the story as it is
in Pontecorvo’s classic looking like a bad impersonator of Coppola’s Godfather (1972) too often for its own
good and the result (Oscar Nominated or not) is generations away from the
historic events and anything resembling the time in a convincing manner. The actors and locations are not bad and this
was likely more expensive to make than Pontecorvo’s film, but it never works
and I found it forgettable, especially as compared to the film that was more
effective 45 years ago. I still thing
the definitive film about what happened has yet to be made, but Pontecorvo and
company are ahead of them all and who knows (outside of an actual documentary)
if we’ll ever see that film.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Battle
is made from the especially processed 35mm fine grain master positive. The film was shot on DuPont No. 4 black and
white stocks, which could be soft, but had silver content and a unique look and
feel. The company had supplied stock to
Paramount (for instance) when Kodak fell behind in the 1950s for their big
screen VistaVision productions (including black and white films like the
original 1955 Desperate Hours with
Fredrick March and Humphrey Bogart) and they have a nice look that holds up
well. Ideology aside, I think the new
monochrome look Pontecorvo and Director of Photography Marcello Gatti derived
made this even more one of a kind and a one of a kind experience that hit a
home run for the film beyond its politics.
Highly influential a film, the look has never been duplicated because it
is one of a kind and this is how the film should look. In comparison, the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital
High Definition image transfer on Law
is somewhat softer because it has more picture fidelity to live up to and being
stylized down to look like what the makers think is its period backfires a
bit. Again, imitating The Godfather (which was a three-strip
Technicolor film, dark as it is) is always a losing battle. Still, the copy used is in nice shape, so we
know this is also is pretty much what this should look like. Director of Photography Christopher
Beaucarne, A.F.C., is at least consistent and he has talent, but the look and
narrative (Battle notwithstanding) do not always gel.
As for
sound, the PCM 2.0 Mono on Battle comes
from a 35mm optical print track and has been nicely restored to the point that
this is the best this film will ever sound and is an ace of a job down to the
amazing score by the genius Ennio Morricone.
The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) French 5.1 lossless mix on Law is towards the front speakers, but
the Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is lossy and much weaker, so this is still the
better soundtrack choice even as it disappoints to the point that it is only
narrowly better than the much older Battle
soundtrack.
Extras on
both include trailers, while the Criterion set has an elaborate slip case with
its two Blu-rays held by a DigiPak and a very think (thicker than usual even
for them) nicely illustrated booklet on the film including informative text, while
Blu-ray One adds Edward Said narrating the featurette Gillo Pontecorvo: The Dictatorship Of Truth, the Marxist Poetry making of featurette
including Pontecorvo and Morricone among the interviewees, stills Production
Gallery and filmmakers on the film interview featurette with Steven Soderbergh,
Oliver Stone, Mira Nair, Spike Lee and even Julian Schnabel. Blu-ray Two adds the Remembering History
documentary, excerpt from the Etats d’armes documentary about how
the French used torture in the battle, video case study of the film and
Pontecorvo’s Return To Algiers as he discovers how unhappy things are since
his landmark film, how many people have been assassinated over power struggles
since the liberation and he interviews every one from people old and young to
the moderate head of the country. Made
for Italian TV, it ends with the ironic note that the moderate was assassinated
because he was not enough of a Muslim extremist. Yes, there is overlap, but better to be
exhaustive than not.
Additional
extras on Law include its own Making Of featurette, interesting
Deleted Scenes, Cast Interviews with Laurent Weil and on camera interview with
Director Bouchareb which gave me more than the actual film.
Now you
can compare the two for yourself.
- Nicholas Sheffo
