Lessons of the Pentagon's Favorite Training Film:
"THERE are no bad reasons for watching 'The Battle of Algiers'— the legendary epic about terrorism and counterterrorism in colonial Algeria by the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo and the screenwriter Franco Solinas — but some may be worse than others."

Among the most obvious of good reasons: a fresh print is going into theaters on Friday, opening at Film Forum in New York and at art houses in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington. Some viewers might seek out the film just for Marcello Gatti's cinematography, which has been restored to the newsreel-like immediacy that first startled viewers in 1966. But when a rerelease combines great artistic power with lasting political interest, celluloid junkies are not the only ones who ought to be excited. Architects could spend a happy two hours concentrating on "The Battle of Algiers" just for the winding staircases, inner courtyards and rooftop lookouts of the Casbah, the city's old Muslim section, where the events that Mr. Pontecorvo dramatized had actually taken place. Musicians could be content to take in the insistent, percussive score by Ennio Morricone and Mr. Pontecorvo, which is legendary in its own right.

Military strategists and revolutionaries, on the other hand, may have flimsier reasons for watching the film. The Black Panthers studied it in the late 60's as a textbook of urban warfare, even though it's more of a how-not-to manual. The movie does conclude with the Algerians' successful uprising against French rule in 1962, shown through one of the grandest crowd scenes ever devised, but "The Battle of Algiers" is mostly concerned with revolutionary defeat.

It recreates the events of 1954-7, when the French military systematically crushed a terror campaign and general strike organized by the F.L.N., the National Liberation Front. The Panthers were mistaken in their enthusiasm; and I think that Pentagon planners may have been misguided in their own way this summer when they organized a special screening to encourage fresh thinking about Iraq.

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas," read the flier for the event. "Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"

Apart from noting the inaccuracies that can bedevil any synopsis — in the film, children shoot policemen point-blank, not soldiers, and the Arab population builds to a state of sullen withdrawal
— I think the flier was too coy in implying that "The Battle of Algiers" could illuminate today's Baghdad. In fact, I'm not even sure the film works as a guide to contemporary Algiers. Its lessons ought to be applied to other situations cautiously, precisely because of the film's principal strength: its deep roots in a specific time and place.…

Not that any of this would interest moviegoers at the Pentagon. Their sudden fascination with "The Battle of Algiers" has to do with Mr. Pontecorvo's acute analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism, which he presented almost like a demonstration of Newtonian physics. Action: the F.L.N. (a small and ragtag organization, working without popular support) carries out terror attacks against fellow Arabs and the French police. Reaction: the police blow up a house. Counter-reaction: people from the Casbah support the F.L.N. in increasing numbers and carry out even more horrifying attacks.

The French, in turn, escalate hostilities; they send in paratroopers, whose leader, Colonel Mathieu, destroys the entire F.L.N. network by means of torture and extra-judicial killings. That apparently is the end of the chain reaction — except that the French have now outraged the whole Arab population. In the movie's coda, set after a long period of apparent quiescence, the Casbah suddenly rises up again as one.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/movies/04KLAW.html?pagewanted=all&position=