Battle of Algiers Summary

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The Battle Algiers The movie, The Battle Algiers, tells the story of the events that transpired throughout the Algerian War of Independence. The conflict was between the population’s indigenous majority, the Algerians, and the French European settlers who colonized the land. The conflict became increasingly violent and ultimately the French Army was brought in to battle the Algerian rebellious group, The National Liberation Front. In the movie it is evident that although the French army successfully defeated the Algerian NLF group, when it came to the Algerian war as a whole, the Algerians were victorious. The guerilla war tactics that are demonstrated in this film were very disturbing to me. In the film, the members of the NLF kill French policeman in broad daylight without any sort confrontation. Covered from head to toe, the female members of the NLF conceal guns and hand them off to male members so that they can kill the French police officers without any sort of a warning. These brutal attacks reveal how much hatred that the Algerians must have felt towards the French because they literally showed absolutely no remorse towards murdering them in broad daylight. That this level of hatred existed reveals that the treatment towards the Algerians must have been extremely poor and the gap between the two populations must have been very wide. In this conflict though, the atrocious attacks weren’t only limited to the NLF, the civilized French paratroopers bombed their homes and killed many women and young children. The movie does a good job of presenting the fact that both sides committed atrocious acts. The movie does a good job of depicting the extreme variance in the qualities of life between each group. The indigenous Algerians live in what looks like a third world country, it is very underdeveloped. Meanwhile, the French settlers live in the same country
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