Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece
True story or fiction? Fiction, adapted from the novel by Joseph Kessel The Army of Shadowspublished in 1943. But Joseph Kessel, and Jean-Pierre Melville himself in the film of the same name, both resistance fighters during the Occupation, speak well, with their personal inspirations and a firm intention of truthfulness, of the reality of ‘a terrible period in history.
Today, The Army of Shadows It is considered a great film in the history of French cinema, the best film about the Resistance ever madewith some of the best performances by Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret. Shocking for its ambiguous emotion – it is about declaring war on the Nazi occupier as well as on the traitors of one’s own camp -, The Army of Shadows tells the story of a network leader and his men and women of resistance. With his betrayals, his executions and his escapesJean-Pierre Melville beautifully captures the heroic and deadly atmosphere of the Resistance, made up of individuals who sacrificed everything, even their own lives, ready to kill each other to save their community and resist Nazi barbarism.
The story of Philippe Gerbier, the main character of the film, is not true. But it is the composition of several facts and several characters of the Resistance. In this role, despite a coldness between him and the director following their collaboration on The Second WindLino Ventura shines. In the cast he is surrounded in particular by Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse and Jean-Pierre Cassel.
When will the United States abandon the exit from The Army of Shadows
When The Army of Shadows released in September 1969 in France, the review is mixed. If one praises his expert classicism, as well as the performances of his casting, one discovers it in the political context of the post-May 68 era. At this time, in the context of the Algerian war and while the New Wave has upset the codes of contemporary cinema, this praise of the Resistance and therefore of the Gaullist ideology does not pass. Especially on the side of the influential The Cinema Notebookswhich presupposes a more critical political discourse and then delivers it a very negative review.
Army of Shadows’s negative reviews, despite its commercial success with 1.4 million French viewers, cooled American distributors who decided not to screen it in theaters across the Atlantic. But once the film was re-evaluated by French critics starting in the mid-90s, and its fame grew, it was finally released for the first time in theaters in the United States in 2006. It was a huge critical success at the time, with Roger Ebert notably writing:
This restored 35mm print, now playing in arthouses across the country, may be 37 years old, but it’s the year’s best foreign film.
On Rottent Tomatoes, it displays a critical score of 97%and a public score of 94%. It entered the prestigious Criterion Collection in 2007, was out of print in 2010, and was reissued in 2020. The very definition of sleeper shot !
Source: Cine Serie
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