Word: casbah
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...wave of assassinations and counter-bombings, Lacoste chose tall, hawk-nosed Brigadier General Jacques Massu, commander of the 10th Parachute Division. Massu moved in a rock-hard force of 20,000 green- and red-bereted paratroopers, legionnaires and spahis to take over the city of Algiers and its teeming Casbah. Troops stood outside stores and restaurants frisking every passerby, man and woman. All parcels were opened to prevent bombs from being planted in public places by anybody, European or Moslem. At least two soldiers rode every streetcar and bus. A constant cover of helicopters hovered over the city. Essential municipal...
...misfits complain about other people's houses having this or that, but the resouceful type knows otherwise--he can get along anyway. Take sex, for instance. Adams House, of course. A beehive with trapdoors. The Gettysburg of the war of the sexes. The Casbah. Well, if you can't dress your girl in khakis and a raincoat, or climb out a street floor window, then you don't deserve even the concessions we've been able to get for you (necking from four until seven on weekdays, until eight on Friday and Sundays, and until eleven on Saturday, except when...
...Governor General in Algiers, a French official fended off newsmen: "But there is no war in Algeria." At first sight, the evidence supported him. In Algiers' sidewalk cafes, French colons sipped their Pernods, while in the gutters, Arab urchins drowsily peddled postcards. But as night fell over the casbah, shots rang out in Algiers and in every other big city in the country. In eleven months, Algerian terrorists killed 457 Frenchmen and 505 pro-French Arabs, wounded close...
...theme of grim reality punctuates both the filming and the acting. Director Julien Duvivier lets his camera dwell at length upon the filth and vice of the Casbah. He delights in picturing squalid, old women sitting in doorways or sunning themselves upon the endless steps and terraces of the native quarter. Occasionally, however, the emotional implications of both setting and plot become cloying. A scene in which a fat hag tearfully recalls her past success on the stage turns maudlin, while the murder of an informer has all the qualities of an old time serial...
...used reality to supplement melodrama. Although opportunities for exaggeration and heroic scenes are available, Mireille Balin as Gaby, and Line Noro as the jealous native Ines, help preserve the film's subdued brutality not only in their acting, but in their hard, brittle appearance. The result is the original Casbah adventure, still perhaps the most exciting in a long series of copies...