How Am I Doing? How Are They Doing? New York City Mayor Ed Koch, a quintessential New Yorker, offers his candid reviews of new releases on the big screen. Movie Review: "The Battle of Algiers " (+) January 24, 2004       The impact of this movie, first shown in 1965, is as powerful today as it was then.      The film depicts the struggle of the indigenous Arab people in the French colony of Algeria for independence from France which had occupied Algeria for more than 100 years. The European French lived in their part of the city of Algiers and the Arabs lived in the Casbah. In 1955, an uprising began throughout the country with its greatest strength in Algiers.      The film begins with the French army troops, under Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin), surrounding the Casbah in search of the uprising’s leader. The remainder of the film covers all that occurred between the uprising and an incident in the Casbah about ten years later. During that ten-year period, the Arabs increased the pressure on the French with deliberate bombings and shootings of civilians. The French respond with raids, torture and retaliation.      It sounds like the current Intifada in the Israeli/Palestinian war which began in l948 when the State of Israel came into existence. As a supporter of the Jewish state and knowing that supporters of the Palestinian Authority have sought to identify the Algerian Arabs’ motives and actions with those of the Palestinians, I come to a different conclusion.      The Israeli Jews are not French colonists. They are the sons and daughters of the Jewish nation in the land of their forefathers and the city of Jerusalem in which they built the two temples: One by Solomon, which was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., and the second by Herod, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. Most Jews living in and outside of Israel support the two-state solution with the Jewish nation living in peace next to the Palestinian nation. Let’s all hope it will happen in our lifetimes.      Irrespective of how you feel about the current situation in the Mid East, I urge you to see this well-acted film. read last week's reviews design by    The City of New York Mayor's Office of Film Theatre & Broadcasting 1697 Broadway Suite 602, New York, New York 10019.
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