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  read more... )ix, who are members of the Resistance. Among other notables like "Colonel Passy" -- one of DeGaulle's chief architects of the Movement -- the story follows these early French Resistance fighters, showing how they help the British during World War II.

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95% liked it

5,085 ratings

Critics

97% liked it

71 critics

Unrated, 2 hrs. 25 min.

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville

Release Date: September 12, 1969

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DVD Release Date: May 15, 2007

Stats: 471 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (471)


  • September 28, 2009
    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)d into a film by Luis Buñuel, "Army of Shadows" is a sort of tribute to the French Resistance of WWII. Melville himself was a part of the organization, which in turn makes this a deeply personal work - committing his own memories to film might have been too daunting, but committing someone else's, we can assume, might have been therapeutic.

    We're introduced to a middle-aged civil engineer, Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), who happens to also serve as a leader of the resistance network. He has been captured by the Vichy French police and is put into a camp. After being turned over to the Gestapo, Gerbier is able to succeed in an escape by knifing a Nazi guard to death. Fleeing to German-occupied Lyons, his first task is to figure out who the informer was.

    Together with his comrades - Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), François (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and Felix (Paul Crauchet) - Philippe learns the identity of the informant, and therefore the men must take him to a safe house to execute him. The neighbors next door would hear a gun shot, and nobody has a knife on them, so the death must come by way of asphyxiation. Many films don't take death too seriously. Few scenes get as deep into your skin as this one - it's a completely cerebral and haunting segment that stands on it's own as one of the most spectacular stretches of cinema in the history of the genre. It's also a significant scene in that it's telling that the French resistance is just as capable of killing, however they certainly don't take the same ruthless delight in it as their opposition.

    There are plenty of films about this war, and the Resistance in particular - but "Army in Shadows", in no way, glorifies the violence. This is not an action picture. There are exciting moments here and there, but it's mostly existential dread. When the Nazi guards tell prisoners to run for their lives, this isn't a scene meant to get the audience's adrenaline running. It's pathetic - a wretched sequence that shows both how far men will go to save their lives, and how little regard other's have for them.

    The plot is a bit complicated, and it'll be awhile before you can distinguish all of the significant players for one another. But, once you give all of yourself to this picture, it takes you places few films do. It's a touching, heart-breaking, and bleak look at the French resistance - a film that doesn't glorify the network in any way, but certainly represents them as the heroes they were.
  • March 10, 2009
    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)direction in its portrayal of horrific events. overall very good film.
  • October 17, 2008
    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.
  • July 24, 2008
    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)and deliberate giving the viewer an anti-heroic account of the early days of French resistance to the Nazi Occupation which is both restrained and terrifyingly tense.
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  • May 8, 2008
    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) and thoughts of French Resistence fighters, and just what it meant to be in the Resistence in France - to be anonymous. They use phony names, constantly on the move; many of them don't even know who the boss of their group is. Two brothers don't even know that they're both in the Resistence - they meet, and one flirts momentarily with the thought of informing his brother of his work in the resistence, only to change his mind.
    Men fight and die without ever giving their real names, knowing they do they will endanger their families and friends, and lest they die without the glory of a legacy of heroism.
    The film was thought to be unusable, as the film reels had turned pink with age, but it was restored digitally a couple years ago, and now its going to be available on Criterion.
    L'Armee Des Ombres is a great film, packing dead pan action meticulously into a slow artful picture; a deep and moving portrait of the sacrifices of the French Resistence.
  • October 23, 2009
    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)he oppressive ideology of a despicable enemy and not simply ignore it, or join the Vichy, like many of their countrymen did.
  • August 4, 2009
    A devastating, tense film. Wonderfully restored, a refreshingly honest account of resistance heroism
  • August 2, 2009
    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!
  • July 4, 2009
    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 !
  • April 22, 2009
    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)ver mind success, will depend on how quickly the amateurs can learn a dirty and dangerous profession. This is warfare without glory - its only victory is in living another day.

    The film opens with a triumphant German march past l'Arc de Triomphe as their propaganda machine publicises the surrender of France and Nazi occupation of Paris. Melville does not hide the fact that France had been humiliatingly defeated, nor that many in France would collaborate with the occupying forces. France was physically divided - part of it would be German occupied, the rest left under the control of the Vichy government (a collaborationist French regime), but France was also politically divided, most significantly between Left and Right.

    Melville's characters, throughout, are trapped, imprisoned in an environment controlled by the Germans. Betrayal is always possible, suspicion is the watchword. When the film's central character is taken to London for a briefing, Melville contrasts the French experience with the British one just a few miles away across the Channel: in Paris we see German uniforms everywhere, we see a handful of resistance fighters struggling against them ? and risking betrayal by their own people; in London, everyone is in uniform, everyone is in the fight against the Nazis - the Germans may be bombing the city, but the spirit of London and Londoners refuses to be broken.

    Melville was widely attacked in 1969 for showing the extent of collaboration in France - especially in demonstrating that the French police and French Fascists actively aided the Germans. The myth of the French nation solidly behind the Resistance was simply rejected by Melville - he knew many had collaborated unequivocally, he'd worked with the Resistance, he knew how dangerous it was, how few people could be trusted. The film, however, received a very chilly reception, and it was years before its quality was widely recognised - either in France or abroad.

    Dark, gloomy, stripped of any Hollywood glamour or bravado, Melville emphasises the moral nature of resistance, alludes to its intellectual roots (recognising that the Resistance brought together people from a wide spectrum of French politics - Communists, Socialists, Catholics, Gaullists, Republicans, even Monarchists). A courageous film in its refusal to glamorise warfare and its expose of the myth of the nation in resistance - finely acted, beautifully directed, and only lately winning a deserved reputation for its portrayal of wartime France.

    We follow the tale of Phillipe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), an engineer turned Resistance leader. His is an army of the shadows - they do not fight major battles, they do not wear uniforms, they seem to spend more time killing one another than attacking the Germans. They smuggle radios back and forth, they are constantly on the run, constantly on their guard against betrayal. It's claustrophobic, lacking in glamour, bleak, austere, and tinged with the depressing certainty that the Germans must get them in the end. Melville is demonstrating that it's the hopelessness of their position which makes their courage so extraordinary - and made collaboration so despicable.

    The DVD offers a fine combination of extras - a 35 minute newsreel shot by Resistance cameramen during the Paris uprising and liberation of 1944. Graphic, raw in its courage, and a must watch supplement to the film. And there's an excellent commentary by Ginette Vincendeau and an analysis of Melville's work, the film, his selection of shots, etc. Excellent value.

Critic Reviews


January 26, 2007
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

The glacial pacing can be an irritant as the film unfolds -- I repeatedly wanted to speed things up -- but Army of Shadows won't leave you alone after you've seen it. full review

January 18, 2007
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

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

June 23, 2006
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Deals with the French resistance during World War II, but it's nothing like any other French resistance film ever made. full review

June 16, 2006
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

The results bear witness to a time when sacrifice was bleached of everything but itself. full review

May 26, 2006
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism. full review

May 1, 2006
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

[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

February 13, 2006
Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

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

View more L'Armée des ombres (Army in the Shadows) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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