The Battle of Chile/La batalla de Chile is political, passionate and cited as among the best documentaries ever done. Other films still beg to be made about the perilous making of this one -- Argentine journalist Leonardo Henricksen captured on camera his own absurd murder; about its journey to world screens -- footage was hidden in different places, smuggled out in diplomatic pouches, spliced with footage by French Chris Marker and edited in France to be then gathered into release form (1975, ’76, ’79) in Cuba; and about the filmmakers -- five fled Chile one by one and the sixth, Jorge Müller Silva, was “disappeared” for good by DINA secret police.

The restored 262 minutes (earlier prints run 202) is released on an Icarus Films DVD and fittingly screened complete on September 11 and 12 -- Parts I and II only, on the 10th -- during “Documentaries in Bloom” at intimate, donation-only-requested Maysles Cinema.

It is no wonder Patricio Guzmán’s (also co-scripted and executive produced) record is little known and little shown. As is true with twice-the-length Shoah, audiences will not sit still so many hours -- the Maysles billing is “Marathon” -- and there is a good deal of cuttable repetition in emphasizing and re-emphasizing docuprop points. Even given today’s surge of non-fiction, story has always trumped successions of isolated if related talkers. Witness the accessibility and acclaim of The Battle of Algiers, Roots, Holocaust, Under Fire, The Killing Fields, Mississippi Burning and of course Missing, as compared to, on this subject, Compañero (the grief of Victor Jara’s English widow is near unwatchable), General Report from Chile, Pinochet’s Children and Calle Santa Fe.

A second factor is that Americans are uncomfortable with their guilt feelings over CIA and US governmental and corporation (ITT, for example, funded covert sabotage to the tune of one million dollars) complicity, similar to conflicted emotions about a fascist victory thirty-four years earlier. Spain is as a matter of fact instanced during BC, as a parallel example (noted by George Orwell) of infighting on the divided left that facilitated the triumph of a more unified conservative military, industrialists and bourgeoisie -- here continually referred to as “mummies.”

Understandably the welter of acronymic parties, politicians, chants and slogans, demonstrations and counter-marches, strikes and organizations, remains confusing to anyone without prior familiarity. What is clear, and distressing, is the seeming unavoidable outcome once events are in motion, an accelerating vortex with a will of its own. Power, as Orwell wrote elsewhere (in 1984), is end not means, and revolutions come about to establish dictatorship, as Part I, The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie, traces rightists’ escalating agitation through violent street confrontation and a paralyzing truckers’ strike to create chaos and destabilize a popular government and its policies.

Pinochet as yet not a blip on the screen, the central, unwavering and yet Hamlet-like indecisive figure is of course minority-party coalition leader Salvador Allende Gossens, “my great comrade” to Pablo Neruda and uncle of 1973 exile Isabel Allende.

The world’s first-ever Marxist president was dogged every step of the way on “the Chilean road to Socialism,” by opposition-controlled congress and judiciary, by foreign governments and a U.S.-engineered blockade of money and products, a dicey military that put down an attempted coup in June 1973 only to spring the decisive one of September, and an array of competing interests. Demonstrators and riot police, barricades and armored vehicles clog Santiago streets from which tear gas rises to a movie marquee announcing Charles Bronson in Ciudad violenta (another cinema has Adios, Mr. Chips). Part II, The Coup d’Etat, concludes with that memorable 9/11, planes bombing Presidential Palace La Moneda, in flames and defended by a helmeted Allende and two score loyal civilians, followed by that night’s television pronouncements of the four-man junta which the naïve expected to restore constitutional government.

A physician by training, in the thick-rimmed eyeglasses favored by his countrymen, scholarly stiff Allende does not come across as charismatic in official appearances and speeches, but his last, heroic moments are the stuff of legends, of the garlanded “Allende vive”--“Allende lives”-- statue today fronting that place of his death.

The Power of the People is Part III, earlier in time and the shortest, devoted to many brief interviews with the workers and peasants and to local councils set up to organize, distribute supplies, run collectivized farms and factories, and provide social services. Reminiscent of Soviet film of the era, with spare but subjective narration by Abilio Fernández, music oddly like “Red River Valley,” and handheld sound mikes visible, it is repetitious as almost entirely non-indigenous males -- some of them also in the earlier parts -- voice opinions pro and con that basically inform workers’ faith in their president and his goals.

The infamous seventeen-year dictatorship is for obvious reasons not considered, nor is Pinochet’s peaceful end in 2006. The Battle of Chile is concerned, rather, with one crowded fateful year. If the full length were boiled down, resonance among the general public would be greater; as it is, if your interest is no more than casual, try just Part II.

(Released by Icarus Films; not rated by MPAA.)