Trivia / The Battle of Algiers

• Actor-Shared Background: Jean Martin (Colonel Matthieu) had himself served in a paratroop regiment in Indochina and Algeria. However, after leaving the army he became active in the French antiwar movement, which damaged his acting career for many years.
• Dueling Movies: Released in America the same year as The Lost Command, an adaptation of Jean Larteguy's Les Centurions with a very different take on the Algerian War.
• From Entertainment to Education: Both real-life insurgent groups and the Pentagon have used the film as a manual on guerrilla warfare and counterterrorism.
• Fake Nationality: The shaven-headed journalist is apparently supposed to be American but obviously played by a Frenchman. He uses American English with a noticeable French accent to ask a question, which is then translated for him into French.
• What Could Have Been: Gillo Pontecorvo originally planned the movie as a more conventional war film, entitled Para, about a French paratrooper who became disillusioned from fighting in Algeria and eventually joined the antiwar movement. He pitched the early script to Hollywood studios, hoping to attract Paul Newman for the starring role, but they weren't interested. Eventually, Pontecorvo and writer Franco Solinas revised the script to accommodate the documentary approach featuring non-actors used in the finished film.

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