I'm surprised to see Battle on Q's list. I'd watched it a couple of times when I was younger and it used to make me cry (it has a couple of powerful scenes), but I rewatched it recently and I found it rather boring. And the fact that the original dialogues were dubbed annoyed the hell out of me. That, and whenever I see Yacef Saadi I want to spit on the screen.
The dialogue was not dubbed in the version I saw. The film is brilliant on many levels.
1. Pontecorvo manages to give the film a documentary quality, especially in the protest scenes-- I've been in many protests, and he really gets it right.
2. Overall, the cinematography is just awesome.
3. The score was done by Ennio Morricone long before The Good, The Bad and The Ugly made him famous and is equally awesome.
4. The NLF are the heroes of the film, but Pontecorvo doesn't pull any punches and doesn't try to hide the terrorist atrocities they committed. Similarly, though the French are the villains and commit many atrocities in the film themselves, Pontecorvo does not make them out to be evil, and the French Colonel who is overseeing the torture and collective punishments is actually portrayed in a sympathetic light. In this respect, it's a film that could not be made today.
5. There is only one professional actor in the entire film.
6. It was the first film to accurately describe the structure and methods of a terrorist/national liberation group. So accurate that it was considered an "instructional film" by the Weather Underground and Black Liberation Army, and was screened by the top brass of the Pentagon near the start of the Iraq War in 2003.
7. You may not like Yacef Saadi, but his presence in the film (along with a lack of professional actors) did give it a level of authenticity, as did the director himself-- who was an Italian Communist who was himself active in an underground anti-Fascist partisan organization during WWII
Also, the part about you crying during certain scenes-- I was watching a documentary about the making of the film (I got a 4-disc DVD box set of the movie with tons of extras), and Pontecorvo said when he was filming the execution scene near the beginning of the movie (in an actual prison where such executions were carried out), after he cut the scene, he turned around to see all the Algerian cast and crew broken down in tears.
Awesome, awesome movie. Again, doubt it could be made today.
Why do you detest Saadi so much?
Pan's labyrinth
That movie was fuckin awesome. Along with Children of Men and The Departed, that's probably my favorite movie that's come out in the last 10 years.
Topic: Top 10 Movies