L'armée des ombres

Plot synopsis:
Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), the head of a Resistance network, is arrested by Vichy French police on suspicion of resistance activity. Acquitted for lack of evidence he is nevertheless interned in a camp. He and a young communist begin to work on an escape plan, but before it can come to fruition he is transported to Paris for questioning by the Gestapo. He manages to kill a guard and make his escape.
Gerbier manages the resistance network in Marseille. He and three of his men, Félix Lepercq (Paul Crauchet), Guillaume Vermersch, a burly veteran known as Le Bison (Christian Barbier), and Claude Ullmann, a young recruit known as Le Masque (Claude Mann), need to execute one of their own members, a young agent named Paul Dounat, for having betrayed Gerbier. They find the house next door to that they are using occupied, meaning they cannot use their guns. Lacking a decent knife, they strangle him.
Lepercq recruits an old friend in a bar, Jean-François Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a handsome, risk-loving former pilot. On his first mission to Paris, Jardie meets Mathilde (Simone Signoret), a housewife who is one of the linchpins of Gerbier's network, and visits to his older brother, Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), a renowned philosopher who lives a detached, scholarly life in his Paris mansion.
Gerbier travels to the Free French headquarters in London in a British submarine. On the submarine, Gerbier meets Luc Jardie, who proves to be the head of all Resistance networks. His identity is a closely guarded secret.
In London, Gerbier organises additional logistical support for the resistance and Luc Jardie is decorated by Charles de Gaulle. Whilst he is there Lepercq is arrested by the Gestapo. When Gerbier learns of this he cuts his trip short and parachutes into France.
Mathilde, in command after Lepercq's arrest, devises an audacious plan to rescue Lepercq, who is being tortured in a maximum-security Gestapo prison in Lyon. Jean-François Jardie, after hearing the details of the plan, writes Gerbier a letter of resignation and incriminates himself with an anonymous letter to the Gestapo so that he will be arrested and jailed with Lepercq. They share a cell, Jardie badly beaten and Lepercq now barely alive after being tortured repeatedly.
Disguised as Germans, Mathilde, Le Masque, and Le Bison use forged papers ordering Lepercq's transfer to a different detention facility as a ruse to rescue him. Their plan fails when the prison doctor pronounces Lepercq unfit for transport. When Jean-François sees that the rescue has failed, he gives Lepercq his one cyanide pill.
Having seen during the rescue attempt that the Gestapo are displaying his photo as a wanted man, Mathilde urges Gerbier to escape to London, but he refuses, saying that there is no-one to take his place in the growing Resistance. Shortly afterwards Gerbier is swept up in a raid by Vichy police and handed over to the Germans. He and his cellmates are due for execution, but subjected to an SS officer's sadistic game: they will live a little longer if they can run to the far wall of the room before being killed by the machine gunners. As the shooting starts, Mathilde's team toss smoke bombs to block the Germans' view, then throw a line to Gerbier who narrowly escapes.
Gerbier spends a month alone in an abandoned farmhouse deep in the countryside. Luc Jardie arrives to seek his advice following the arrest of Mathilde. They fear she has been forced to reveal the identities of her confederates because the Nazis have threatened her teenage daughter. Luc Jardie hides when Le Masque and Le Bison arrive. Gerbier orders Mathilde's immediate execution, but Le Bison refuses to carry out the order and swears to prevent Gerbier from killing her. Jardie emerges and convinces Le Bison that Mathilde is incapable of suicide but expects them to kill her. Later, Luc Jardie reveals to Gerbier that the argument he presented to Le Bison is purely speculative. Jardie and his team pull to a stop on a Paris street where they have located Mathilde. Le Bison shoots her twice. As the film ends, text screens reveal the eventual fate of the four men, dead by suicide or killed by the Nazis.
(The character of Luc Jardie is partly based on the philosopher/resistance leader Jean Cavaillès.)

Tags: intrigue, murder, flashback

Review:
Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" is a sombre film about the French Resistance during WWII.
Melville gives the film an authentic look -- only some scenes set in the London blitz and on an aircraft carrier have a studio set look to them.A shot of the Arc di Triomphe both opens and closes the film: a symbol of the France that would eventually emerge from the dark days of WWII, or an ironic jab at a country that can't take much credit for fighting off the tyranny of fascism?
Based on truth, the Army in the Shadows takes the French men and women of the Resistance as its theme, at a point near the end of the war when the Resistance movement and Nazi intelligence about its work and staff are both firmly established.
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.
"L'Armée des ombres" (1969) was shown in the U.S as "Army of Shadows." The film is co-written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.The time is 1942 and the setting is France.
No meeting is safe, and no relationship is safe either--how many people can remain silent under savage tortures that go on for days?Although Ventura is excellent in the role, the movie is dominated by Simone Signoret as Mathilde--tougher and braver than any of the men, but possessing one terrible weakness.This movie is different than most films about the French Resistance.
If you have any interest whatsoever in French cinema, World War II, moral ambiguity, or Simone Signoret, see this film.Filmed in a cold, documentary-like style, the "Shadow Army" tells the intertwining stories of several members of the French resistance.
The French Resistance "heroes" in the story are never shown conducting sabotage or planned attacks against the Germans, as one would get in a traditional World War II movie.
Melville shows us their doubts and questions as they deal with betrayal, cowardice, and the murky ethics of killing their own to preserve the larger good.Every episode in the film seems to lead to a darkly ironic conclusion, and the meaninglessness of their efforts becomes almost overwhelming, except that, somehow, these ordinary people continue to offer resistance in the face of death, so that their heroism lies not in the ability to stop the Germans but in taking action at all while facing the abyss.While the acting is excellent all around, Lino Ventura's performance as Gerbier deserves special attention.
_L'Armée des ombres_ ultimately moves beyond a story of the French Resistance in World War II and serves as a powerful existentialist epic, with Ventura's performance responsible for much of the film's dignity and humanity.As with _Léon Morin, prêtre_ (1961), another story set during the war, Melville seems more emotionally present in _L'Armée des ombres_ than he does in his policiers or noir pieces, and after seeing the film, his overall body of work suddenly seems much heftier.
I do know there is no audience for a genuine film detailing the lives and works of a genuine underground resistance like that of the French during the German Nazi occupation.This might be the most mundane, matter-of-fact war movie since Robert Montgomery's overlooked masterpiece The Gallant Hours.
Jean Pierre Melville, writer/director of Army of Shadows, has said in interviews that the book of which he based his movie from is considered THE book on the French resistance in the second world war.
Even as a couple of parts in the middle seem to shake with the deliberate pace Melville sets a couple of times, the main core of the story and the characters is remarkable, and honest in a dark, bleak way.Lino Ventura is at his best as Gerbier, a main man in the French resistance movement, who gets more involved in the proceedings following a brief prison-camp stint (the escape from which is one of the most daring in any film).
The film is fairly episodic, however encompassing a group of the resistance people, including Mathilde (Simon Signet, very good as always), Le Masque (Claude Mann), and Jean-Francois (Jean-Pierre Cassel, at a peak as well in his own way).Some of their operations are simple, like retrieving weapons or finding more support through certain channels.
At the same time, there are some scenes like a short scene on a beach (all blue) or a few others at night or in different lighting modes that are the best Melville's done in the midst of a color scheme used perfectly to correspond with the mood; it works just as well if not better than how he uses it for his crime films.
Intelligent film about French Resistance , being deliberately shot by the great Jean Pierre Melville.
He manages to getaway , and joins other leaders and freedom fighters (Paul Meurisse , Jean-Pierre Cassel , Paul Crauchet ,Simone Signoret) at Marseilles , where he gets the traitor to be executed by his colleagues .This is an interesting and thought-provoking account of underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France , 1942, during the occupation .
His movies and singular talent are very copied and much-admired by contemporary directors, specially the 'Polar' or noir French cinema, such as, 'Le samurai', 'Second breath', 'The red circle', 'Dirty money' and 'Army of the shadows' resulted to be one of the best films .
The gangster codes he adopted for many of his films were based largely on the codes of the French resistance and his own experiences during the German occupation (not the other way round as some people suggested).Melville must be the most celebrated French director at this point in the U.S, after the re-release of "Army in the Shadows" in 2006, that was almost universally applauded by the critics as a work of genius or a forgotten masterpiece.
Perhaps it's the clinically almost surreal interaction between the characters, that worked so well in Melvile's gangsters film, but here he is depicting (admittedly his own ) reality and very much his personal take on French resistance, where "real life" plays a much greater part than in the surreal settings of many of his gangster films, but it doesn't feel that way when watching this.
Along the months the group operates until the day one member is captured by the Germans and becomes a threat to the others and shall be executed."L'armée des ombres" is another long movie directed by Jean-Pierre Melville about members of the French Resistance in the World War II.
"L'armée des ombres" was made in 1969 to tell the true story of part of the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of World War II.
To my mind, Jean-Pierre Melville's meditation on the French Resistance needed no preface since its subtext was one of existential angst, the backdrop of occupied France merely serving as a backdrop.However, as one reviewer complained, the primary characters in 'Army of Shadows' spent the bulk of their time in self-preservation rather than actually fighting the Germans.
Incidentally, it is noteworthy to make mention of the fact that unlike a good number of other war movies (in which the participants are dyed in the wool believers in the cause and therefore beyond introspection), here our protagonists often openly and plainly question themselves and each other, and whether their desired ends really do justify the means they use to get them.As for the acting, the quiet desperation so elegantly displayed by Jean-Pierre Cassel as well as the stoic pragmatic hopefulness portrayed by Simone Signoret are two tours de force.
This, despite the fact that most of the French who saw it were dismayed at the mistakenly perceived heroic appearance of Charles de Gaulle who had recently been colored a villain for his treatment of the Paris Commune (though in the film he's portrayed as ironic, pinning useless medals on the chests of our 'heroes,' who obviously view them with contempt).At any rate, I would suggest any reader of this review to not just see this movie but really watch it.
It follows the exploits of a half-dozen Resistants during six months of German occupation in France between October 1942 and February 1943, and Melville deliberately purges the story of any heroic romanticism, playing up its merciless survivalist elements (like killing one of their own to ensure the movement's survival, or maintaining one's real identity secret) and depicting the courage and heroism of the Resistant more as a routine burden.
The fact that the film ends on a downbeat note is not exactly casual, since it only underlines the high cost that the Resistance paid for its stand for freedom; Melville's emphasis on the honour codes of loyalty that were integral to his masterful thrillers like "Le Samouraï" or "Le Cercle Rouge" is put to good use here, especially since their use in crime stories descended precisely from the Resistance codes.
It's fascinating to see how in Army of Shadows Melville applied his style to an experience he knew first hand -- the French resistance during the Nazi occupation.
The point is made: this is the occupation, the time of Maréchal Pétain and the Vichy collaborationist government, of paranoia, guilt, betrayal, and pinched kitchens; a time of German voices and signage heard and seen everywhere; of ever-present oppression.We begin with a man named Philippe Gerbier who's at the center of a small cadre of resistance leaders, though their chief, a writer on technical philosophy in peacetime and unknown to the rank and file, Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse) emerges only later.
For me, his is my favorite of these directors--making simple and darn good movies...period.ARMY OF SHADOWS is a very simple story of a man who was one of those in charge of the French Underground during WWII.
He saw Army of Shadows as a statement of his values.Those who come to the film with assumptions of idealistic heroes and audacious action sequences that come to a head in beautifying endings will be baffled and disenchanted by Melville's exacting concentration on tension instead of release and by the dim view that palliates his characters as individuals and militaristic compatriots.
"Army in the Shadows" or "Army of Shadows" is Jean-Pierre Melville's film about the French resistance during World War II.
A prime example is Lino Ventura's excellent performance as Philippe Gerbier, who is quiet and reserved but proves capable of heroic deeds and occasionally allows the audience to penetrate into his inner thoughts.This film is not a fast paced thriller, but a well-considered and touching portrait of the resistance.
Most of all they like their resistance films to depict courageous, patriotic men and women putting their lives on the line for the cause and paint a picture that practically everyone in France was a member of the resistance.Of course this isn't true.
A wonderful film that doesn't allow the French to hide from the cowardice and treachery shown by many of their countrymen during the occupation.None the less it also revels (quite rightly) in the heroics and bravery of the men and women who also risked and gave their lives to resist the Nazi machine.
Though Jean-Pierre Melville's "L' Armée des ombres" is a film from 1969, apparently it was released in the States as "Army of Shadows" recently in 2006.
Through his eyes we see the workings of the French Resistance - the day-to-day operations, the intrigue and espionage, the constant threat of being captured by the Germans, the camaraderie, the danger and the tough decisions that need to be taken.Enthralling, edifying, gritty war drama, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville.
Melville has extracted excellent performance from all actors but it is nice to watch two of French cinema's greatest actors Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret as resistance fighters.
In this hearth breaking picture the people who lived on the "dark side of the moon" can see what has happened after the war, in that picture is showed the story of Jean Moulin, the chief of French Resistance, tortured to death in Lyon by Klaus Barbie, called the Lyon butchers, but the butchers of Lyon are right to protest they are meat workers non thugs), after the war Barbie flew in Bolivia helped by CIA, became a weapons merchant, and only at the end of 80 years (the Berlin wall was fallen) he was arrested and died in a french jail.
I understand that they were trying to portray the stoic attitude of the resistance fighters, but the wooden acting coupled with the slow pace and the poor character development just sucked every bit of life out of this movie.I would recommend Army of Shadows only if you are interested in finding out information about the ugly details of the French resistance and then only on DVD..no need to waste seven bucks..
There are no great action sequences such as you would expect in a regular war movie (ironically the closest we get produces one of the few weak moments in the film) and instead the resistance is about communication and supporting Allied efforts in small but meaningful ways.Based on reportedly the definitive text on the subject by Joseph Kessel, this film has a very authentic feel to it throughout and I can understand why some feel it is too long and too slow, because it is long and it is slow.
The writer and director, Jean-Pierre Melville, conducts his film with the feeling he wants to share with the world about the French Resistance: ambiguity.
Army Of Shadows, you could say, is an interesting counterfoil to Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds", both of them dealing with underground French Resistance to the Germans during the war.
L'Armee Des Ombres recounts the heroic yet matter of fact experience of a group of Maquis, going about their dangerous resistance to the German occupation of France, a period during which few can be trusted and one person's carelessness or betrayal can topple the cell like colliding dominoes .
This movie shows a short period of time in the lives of a handful of resistance people in WWII German occupied France.
A grim, austere masterpiece of the French resistance during World War II, by Jean-Pierre Melville.
In Jean- Pierre Melville's austere, somber Army of Shadows, we follow what happens to Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and a handful of others, primarily Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), a weak-seeming intellectual who turns out to be the head of resistance in France; Jean François Jardie (Jean- Pierre Cassel), Luc Jardie's younger brother; and the remarkable Mathilde (Simone Signoret), resourceful with icy nerves, a woman, Gerbier tells us, who is "strong-willed, methodical and patient.
Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of the Shadows attempts to portray the harsh existence of the French Resistance members in Nazi-occupied France.
Army of Shadows follows a group of resistance fighters, but to say this film, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, is about the French Resistance is like saying Raging Bull is about boxing.
The film gives a gloomy and austere picture of the Resistance, a group of people who don't talk much, keep to themselves, we see little of their heroic acts and at the end have to painfully witness the assassination of Mathilde ( Signoret ) who is being blackmailed by the Nazis as regards her daughter.
"I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck." - Stanley Baldwin Set in Nazi Occupied France, Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" finds a group of high ranking French Resistance fighters waging an underground war against the German Army.
Shot almost exclusively in dark greys and blue tinged blacks - the film looks like wet, moonlit cement - "Army of Shadows" marries the austere existentialism and procedural-like narratives of Melville's earlier films ("Le Doulous", "Le Samouri"), to an almost overwhelming sense of defeatism.The film's main characters are Mathilde, a brilliant woman who habitually risks her life for the Resistance but swiftly betrays them when her daughter is captured and threatened by the Nazis, and Gerbier, a middle aged resistance leader who amputates "infected" members of his cell.
Melville, who specialized in gangster films during most of his career, creates a real classic with this take on French Resistance fighters during WWII.
A good recent example of this comes from the 2006 American release of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 film on the French Resistance during World War Two, Army Of Shadows (L'Armée Des Ombres).Simply put, the film is a good, sometimes very good, film.
Is this merely a Melville film which says more about the director than about the war and the French Resistance?