The People From the Casbah, Movie Review Example

The densely packed neighborhood of traditional Algiers, the Casbah, was the urban heart of the liberation struggle; it remained a heart of struggle in the 1990s. Comparing the film with the documentary, why was this particular neighborhood a center of political resistance? Did the people from the Casbah gain power after 1962? Why or why not?

The reason why I think Casbah has such a prominent presence in both films is due to the fact that it played a major role in both the Algerian war and it represented a statement about the drastic changes implemented after the war. This can be attributed to the fact that Casbah maintained a distinct difference in spatial and ideological distance from the French colonial occupation of Algeria.

During one part in the Battle of Algiers, Ali la Pointe is having a private conversation with one of his fellow members of FLN, where the man provides him a premonition about the movement. The man tells Pointe that the real struggle of the revolution will happen after they win, as it’s hard to start a revolution but even harder to sustain it. In the documentary, Return to Algiers, Pontecorvos notes that the main should have added it’s hard enough to sustain a revolution without the successful implementation of democratic freedom and attempt to implement a sustainable uncorrupt Democratic structure.

Due to the distinct special and ideological differences between Casbah and the other parts of Algeria, it naturally became the central location for the poor and oppressed outliers of the French colonial system. This is why Casbah served as the main location for the spark that fuieled and inspired the FLN movement. The great irony that Return to Algiers presents is that Casbah is now the center for Islamic fundamentalism that now rebels against the same political structure that was put in place as a result of the rebellion and expulsion of the French. This is due to many economic factors that led to what the people perceived as a corrupt Democracy that cause repression and no real economic growth.