Observations on Film Art No. 36
Ennio Morricone is perhaps the preeminent film composer of the last half century, an enormously influential artist whose iconic melodies and imaginative orchestrations grace some of the greatest films ever made. In this edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor Jeff Smith analyzes Morricone’s masterful score for Gillo Pontecorvo’s revolutionary bombshell THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, an explosive portrait of the Algerian struggle for independence from France. Exploring Morricone’s use of two distinct themes—one representing the French fighters, the other the Algerian resistance—Smith illuminates how the latter’s perpetually unresolved harmonics come to mirror the unending nature of the war itself.
In this collection of interviews conducted in 2004, directors Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone discuss the influence, style, and importance of Gillo Pontecorvo’s film THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS.
Made just three years after the end of the French-Algerian War (1954–1962), Gillo Pontecorvo’s THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS instantly ignited discussions of this complex historical period. Using the film as a point of reference, this 2004 documentary attempts to reconstruct the Algerian experience of th...
This is an excerpt from “États d’armes,” the third part of Patrick Rotman’s 2002 documentary L’ENNEMI INTIME, which focuses on the tragedies of the French-Algerian War. Here, Rotman combines new interviews with members of the French military involved in the conflict and archival footage to explor...
