Army of Shadows (1969)

An account of underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France.

Director:

Jean-Pierre Melville

Writers:

Joseph Kessel (novel), Jean-Pierre Melville (adaptation)

Stars:

Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel

4 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Lino Ventura	...	Philippe Gerbier
Paul Meurisse	...	Luc Jardie
Jean-Pierre Cassel	...	Jean François Jardie
Simone Signoret	...	Mathilde
Claude Mann	...	Claude Ullmann dit 'Le Masque'
Paul Crauchet	...	Felix Lepercq
Christian Barbier	...	Guillaume Vermersch dit 'Le Bison'
Serge Reggiani	...	The hairdresser
André Dewavrin	...	Colonel Passy
Alain Dekok	...	Legrain
Alain Mottet	...	Commander of the camp
Alain Libolt	...	Paul Dounat
Jean-Marie Robain	...	Baron de Ferte Talloire
Albert Michel	...	Gendarm
Denis Sadier	...	Gestapo's doctor

Storyline

France, 1942, under German occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is a French Resistance commandant. Denounced by a French collaborator, he is interned in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, and rejoins his network in Marseille, where he has the traitor executed. This movie reveals rigorously and austerely what life was like in the French Resistance: the solitude and fear of its members; their relationships with one another; the constant threat of arrest by the Gestapo; the Resistance command structure and the way its orders were carried out. Head writer Joseph Kessel and co-writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville were both veterans of the "Shadow Army".

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Plot Keywords:

french resistance | resistance | escape | nazi occupied france | underground | 

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Taglines:

Betrayal. Loyalty. Collaboration. Resistance.

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Genres:

Drama | War

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Rialto Pictures

Country:

France Italy

Language:

French German English

Release Date:

12 September 1969 (France)

Also Known As:

Army of Shadows

Filming Locations:

Bunker de l'armée, Saint-Cyr-l'Ecole, Yvelines, France

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$12,620, 30 April 2006, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$25,450, 31 December 2015

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Films Corona, Fono Roma

Technical Specs

Runtime:

145 min

Sound Mix:

Mono Dolby Digital (2006 restoration)

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Roger Deakins' favorite movie.

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Goofs

In the London WWII sequence, we see double yellow lines on the road. These were only introduced in the UK in 1956 and didn't become common until the 1960s. Same goes for a couple of the street signs, of a style not known before the 1960s.

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Quotes

Philippe Gerbier: See you later, Comrade.
Legrain: ...You're a communist?
Philippe Gerbier: No. But I can still have comrades.

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Connections

Referenced in Reservoir Dogs (1992)

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Soundtracks

L'Armée Des Ombres
Written and Performed by Orchestre Éric Demarsan

User Reviews

A masterpiece by the book

Never before (and after) a movie on French Resistance has been so "glamourless". Jean-Pierre Melville has been hailed as the father of the French gangster film. Certainly, his gangster films are probably the films for which he is best known (Le Doulos, Deuxieme Soufflé, Le Samourai, Le cercle rouge, Bob le flambeur) on par if not better than anything which Hollywood produced. Yet the world of the anonymous gun-toting hoodlum occupies only a part of his oeuvre.

'L'armee des ombres' (aka The Shadow Army) is Jean Pierre Melville 1969 masterpiece and does not deal with gangsters. The film is a mix of the director's war time experiences in the French Resistance and Joseph Kessel successful wartime novel. What is remarkable about this film is that Melville turned a mosaic of anecdotes that Kessel's novel is all about into a great, dark epic.

From the chilling opening shot of Germans marching down the Champs-Elysées to the final scene involving the fellow Resistant Mathilde (the great Simone Signoret) the film seems to demonstrate that fighting for an ideal often leads towards death and solitude. What Melville does successfully is to show those dead-ends the way they occur to their protagonist (very simply and minimalist), however more than showing them Mr. Melville managed to make these realities (death and solitude) an equally tragic experienced for the audience...

'L'armee des ombres' is Melville's most moving film, a monument to the spirit of the Resistance rather than its actuality. A poignant drama with a strong performance from not only Lino Ventura but also Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, Jean Pierre Cassel, Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet to name a few.

This is probably Melville's greatest cinematographic achievement and, when fiction becomes reality, when actors leave behind their egos to resurrect into heroes, when the colors of the film mirror the one of the soul and when silence becomes music, true cinema has been achieved… 'L'armee des ombres' is a terrible yet powerful experience in which the words duty, courage, abnegation get charged with meaning…