Top 10 War Movies
The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo) — French-Algerian war
An occupying army will always be outnumbered by a civilian population. When the locals decide that subjugation is a death sentence and that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose, they can make enough mischief to drive the colonials out. This faux-doc report of the 1954-57 Algerian resistance by the National Liberation Front, and the popular insurgency it stoked against the occupying French, had the revelatory force of a cinematic IED when it opened during America's Vietnam turmoil. Made by an Italian team but produced by FLN leader Saadi Yacef (and based on his prison autobiography), the film borrows its panoramic narrative and churning style from an earlier reconstruction of an urban uprising, Nanny Loy's 1962 Four Days of Naples. A canny propagandist, Pontecorvo knew what Hollywood knew: to win an audience’s sympathy for an underclass people, make them beautiful. The Battle of Algiers wins the battle of ideas with Algerian faces that are artfully sculpted and wide, imploring eyes meant to haunt the viewer. The movie certainly left its mark on generations of American officials. Carter adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called it a must-see for policymakers, and in the summer of 2003, as the Iraq insurgency started exploding, the Pentagon's special-ops office held a screening of the film. Those in attendance apparently didn't take its message to heart, and the Bush Administration found that the occupation of Baghdad was a much longer, costlier, deadlier battle of Algiers.