Claude Mann, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Lino Ventura
During a tragic period in humanity, Philippe Gerbier is an ordinary man who finds himself in the center of extraordinary events, alongside compatriots Mathilde, Luc Jardie, Francois, Le Masque and Fel...( read more
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DVD Release Date: May 15, 2007
Stats: 471 reviews
Jean-Pierre Melville, mostly celebrated for his stylish gangster pictures ("Bob le flambeur", "Le doulos", "Le samourai"), perhaps completed his masterpiece in 1969 with "Army of Shadows". Based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, who also was the scribe for "Belle de jour", later turne...( read more)
a great depiction of french resistance, melville blends substance with his usual stylistic approach. the film falters at many points with a lack of clarity and direction to the shifty plot, and the film is almost entirely without emotion, but it has striking images and flawless ...( read more)
I got a little lost watching this. Characters got mixed up, and I couldn't always tell what people were up to. I'm sure if I watched it again I'd figure it out, but it didn't inspire a second viewing.
Heroism to Melville isn't the pretty picture Hollywood gives us in its' sanitized war films. This is a grim film where those pursuing a noble cause don't have the opportunity to even enjoy it as they must be prepared for the possible worst.
Melville's filmmaking style is slow ...( read more)
The rarely seen L'armee des ombres is perhaps Jean-Pierre Melville's best film, right up there with Le Samourai. Typical of Melville, everything in the film is done meticulously and shot and framed beautifully. Melville keeps the film at an intimate level, focusing on the lives...( read more)
In ARMY OF SHADOWS, we learn that a group of French Resistance fighters, in Lyons, were just ordinary men and women who had to learn the details, as we do in the audience along with them, of resisting the Nazi occupation. They weren't born killers. But, they were born to resist t...( read more)
A devastating, tense film. Wonderfully restored, a refreshingly honest account of resistance heroism
The price of espionage troops.Ventura,Signoret,Meurisse,the all-star cast of Melville was ready to drum the front-line of A-class film-making,of which the remains of it some decades later are distant echoes,entangled subplots,why...I'll admit only Hitler was missing!
Great from the first second to the last one ... a pity this movie was probably only watched by french people ! It desserves a much larger audience for sure !
Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 tale of the French Resistance, and a film which explores courage without melodrama or hyperbolic heroics. The tone is set early, with the execution of a traitor; in its early days Resistance to German occupation is an amateur cause - survival, ne...( read more)
From the first sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe to a postscript that spells out the fate of characters whose moral confusion is all too real, Army of Shadows is a movie... full review
Deals with the French resistance during World War II, but it's nothing like any other French resistance film ever made. full review
The results bear witness to a time when sacrifice was bleached of everything but itself. full review
Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism. full review
[Those] with a weakness for dry heroism, dark-toned humor, and storytelling of pantherish pace and grace -- in short, lovers of cinema -- should reach for their fedoras, turn up the collars of their c... full review
Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows finally emerges from anonymity this April to assume its rightful canonical place alongside the French master's peerless Parisian noirs. full review
This board looks lonely. Be the first to talk about "L'Armée des ombres (Army in the Shadows)" !
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