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Fifty years later, it remains remarkably easy to see what all the fuss was about. While docudrama recreations of real events are much more common today than they were in 1967, the lack of familiar faces in The Battle of Algiers may still make you wonder, as many critics did back then, if some of what you're seeing is found footage. It's not, and in retrospect, Pontecorvo was extraordinarily fortunate that his initial vision for the movie... could not be realized.

Based on the eponymous campaign during the Algerian war, The Battle of Algiers is perhaps best known for its technical aspects, which have been rarely, if ever imitated: the almost universal use of non-actors; the hand-held, documentary-style aesthetic, so convincing that the film ran in America with a disclaimer that "not one foot" of actual war footage was used. But none of this would be nearly as powerful without the tense directorial prowess and incredible vision of Pontecorvo.

While technically brilliant and consistently engrossing, The Battle Of Algiers is not easy to embrace on political grounds; it neither demonizes nor lionizes either side of the conflict, aiming for just-the-ugly facts objectivity. Nobody who sees it is likely to feel comforted, or even vindicated. The emotion it most frequently and fervently inspires is sorrow.

Pontecorvo's most innovative and persuasive genre play was to crib from observational documentary, shooting whole sections of The Battle of Algiers as if its incidents were being spontaneously recorded. Riffing on the emergent Pennebaker-Leacock-Maysles approach, Pontecorvo and cinematographer Marcello Gatti often let the camera react to events, rather than overtly blocking them for the best exposure.

For those who have seen "The Battle of Algiers," Gillo Pontecorvo's masterful 1966 panorama of political insurrection and urban anxiety, the title alone can summon forth indelible images of Algerian resistance.

What continues to energize The Battle of Algiers's left-wing and postcolonial admirers, however, is its critical depiction of political oppression and military brutality, including the use of torture — issues that have unfortunately lost none of their currency. There's common ground here with the film's security audience... though the factors that draw audiences to the film (the promise of revolution on one side, the defense of order on the other) are profoundly different.

The gritty immediacy of cinematographer Marcello Gatti's documentary style remains relevant and impressive, giving viewers a genuinely immersive "you are there" feeling throughout (Paul Greengrass, _this_ is how you do hand-held without making a major, headache-inducing point out of your jiggling camera).

No other political movie of the past fifty years bears the same power to lift you from your seat with the incandescent fervor of its commitment. And none before or since has anchored that passion in so lucid a diagnosis of the fault lines separating exploiter and exploited. Pontecorvo's work can now be recognized as an absolute pinnacle of countercinema—the ne plus ultra of a mode that seeks to intervene strategically in the war for social change.

Pontecorvo doesn't sentimentalize the Arab cause or villainize French colonialism. His gripping handheld aesthetic establishes a kinetic documentary effect, making the impact of every shoot-out and explosion a deeply personal experience.

Though Pontecorvo's sympathies ultimately lie with the Algerians, he powerfully registers the loss of innocent life on both sides, refusing to trivialize war's casualties for the sake of a radical polemic. Truth transcends all other values in The Battle Of Algiers, and it's a testament to Pontecorvo's talent that the controversy that has always swirled around the film rarely has anything to do with its accuracy.

It's one of the best movies about revolutionary and anticolonial activism ever made, convincing, balanced, passionate, and compulsively watchable as storytelling.

In the movie's most shocking set piece, three Islamic women dressed as Europeans saunter through a French checkpoint to set bombs in public places. One of the women gazes sadly around the bar at patrons who are about to die. It's a moment of phenomenal cinematic and emotional power and, perhaps, a rare lapse into wishful thinking on the part of the director.