Army of Shadows

For the book by Hillel Cohen, see Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948.

Army of Shadows
2006 theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jean-Pierre Melville
Produced by	Jacques Dorfmann
Written by	Jean-Pierre Melville Joseph Kessel (novel)
Starring	Lino Ventura Simone Signoret Paul Meurisse Jean-Pierre Cassel
Music by	Éric Demarsan
Cinematography	Pierre Lhomme Walter Wottitz
Editing by	Françoise Bonnot
Distributed by	Rialto Pictures (2006)
Release date(s)	September 12, 1969 (France) October 6, 1970 (Italy) 1978 (UK) April 28, 2006 (US)
Running time	139 minutes
Country	France Italy
Language	French

Army of Shadows (French: L'armée des ombres) is a 1969 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It is a film adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1943 book of the same name, which blends Kessel's own experiences as a member of the French Resistance with fictionalized versions of other Resistance members. Army of Shadows follows a small group of Resistance fighters as they move between safe houses, work with the Allied militaries, kill informers, and attempt to evade the capture and execution that they know is their most likely fate. While portraying its characters as heroic, the film presents a bleak, unromantic view of the Resistance.

At the time of its initial release in France, Army of Shadows was not well received or widely seen. In the wake of the events of May 1968, French critics denounced the film for its perceived glorification of Charles de Gaulle. At the time American art-film programmers took their cues from Cahiers du cinéma, which had attacked the film on this basis, and so it was not released in the United States for almost forty years. In the mid-1990s Cahiers du cinéma published a reappraisal of the film (and Melville's work in general), leading to its restoration and re-release in 2006. The film was greeted with critical adulation in the U.S., appearing in many critics' year-end top ten lists.

Synopsis

The film begins in October 1942 in Vichy France. Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a distinguished civil engineer and the head of a Resistance network, is arrested by Vichy French police and imprisoned in a camp. After a short time, the French authorities hand Gerbier over to the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, and he is transferred to its headquarters in Paris for interrogation. However, Gerbier manages a daring escape after killing a guard and makes his way back to Marseille where his network is based.

Gerbier's right-hand man, Félix Lepercq (Paul Crauchet), has identified a young agent named Paul Dounat as the informant who betrayed Gerbier to the Vichy police. With the help of Guillaume Vermersch a.k.a. Le Bison (Christian Barbier), a burly French Foreign Legion veteran, Gerbier and Lepercq take Dounat to a safe house to execute him. They are met there by Claude Ullmann a.k.a. Le Masque (Claude Mann), a young man eager to prove himself. The execution cannot be carried out as planned, by shooting, because of the presence of a family in close proximity next door, and in the end the traitor is strangled.

Lepercq happens upon an old friend in a bar, Jean-François Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a handsome, risk-loving, former pilot. Upon Lepercq's offer, Jean-François joins the Resistance. On his first mission to Paris, he meets Mathilde (Simone Signoret) who in the guise of a housewife, and unbeknown to her family, is one of the linchpins of Gerbier's network. His first mission accomplished, Jean-François pays a surprise visit to his elder brother, Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), a renowned philosopher who lives a detached, scholarly life in his Paris mansion. (The character of Luc Jardie is partly based on the philosopher/resistance leader Jean Cavaillès.)

Gerbier travels to the Free French headquarters in London in a British submarine. On the submarine, Gerbier meets Luc Jardie, who is actually the Grand Patron (Big Boss), the head of all Resistance networks whose 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 himself. Gerbier takes shelter from an air raid in a night club. However, Gerbier is forced to cut his trip short when he learns that the Gestapo has captured Lepercq. He parachutes back into France and finds shelter in a château near Annecy in the French Alps. Meanwhile, Mathilde has taken command after Lepercq's arrest. Learning that Lepercq is detained in a maximum-security Gestapo prison in Lyon, she devises an audacious escape plan. Jean-François, who has been sitting silently through the discussion of the plan, makes his decision. He writes a letter of resignation to Gerbier and mails an anonymous letter to the Gestapo to incriminate himself. His gamble is successful: after a brutal interrogation, he is placed in the same cell as Lepercq. Lepercq has been repeatedly tortured and lies on his bunk barely alive.

Dressed as a German military nurse, and accompanied by Le Masque and Le Bison wearing German uniforms, Mathilde arrives at the gate of the Lyon prison in a stolen German ambulance with a forged order for Lepercq's transfer to Gestapo headquarters. However, the prison doctor, though duped by the order, examines the dying Lepercq and pronounces him unfit for transport. Mathilde had not anticipated that contingency and can only leave the prison empty-handed. Jean-François, seeing that any chance of escape is now lost, tells Lepercq that he has several cyanide pills and offers him one (hiding from him the fact that he actually has only one pill).

On the run again after the Gestapo has discovered his Annecy hideout, Gerbier meets Mathilde in a Lyon restaurant for debriefing. Mathilde urges him to escape to London in view of the mounting danger; she has seen his face on a wanted poster on the wall of the Lyon prison. Mathilde departs, but an unexpected Vichy police raid of the restaurant over food rationing violations results in the capture of Gerbier. He is handed over to the Germans and, after a few days in prison, is taken with his cellmates to a firing range where an SS officer explains a sadistic game in which the prisoners are to race to the far end of the room as a machine gun firing squad fires on them. As the shooting starts, Mathilde's team, who have been lying in wait on the roof of the corridor, throw smoke bombs into the line of fire to block the Germans' view, then throw a line to Gerbier who narrowly escapes. Le Bison then drives Gerbier to an abandoned farmhouse deep in the countryside, where he is to wait for the situation to cool down.

After one month of solitude, Gerbier receives an unexpected visit from Luc Jardie who has come to seek his advice following the arrest of Mathilde. Despite Gerbier's earlier warning, Mathilde was carrying a photo of her daughter in her wallet when she was caught. The Gestapo offers her a choice: either Mathilde tells all about the network or her daughter will be sent to a military brothel in Poland. The Grand Patron has barely finished explaining the situation when Le Masque and Le Bison arrive. Jardie, wanting his presence to remain secret, hides in the back room while the two men hand over a coded status report telling that Mathilde has been released the day before and that two Resistance men have been picked up the same afternoon. Gerbier orders Mathilde's immediate execution, but Le Bison refuses to carry out the order and swears to prevent Gerbier from killing her. As a fight is about to break out, Jardie emerges from the back room and defuses the tension. He convinces Le Bison that the only reason Mathilde acted the way she did — betraying only minor agents, and convincing the Gestapo to release her under the pretext of leading them to her network — was to give the Resistance a window of opportunity to kill her, thereby sparing the network and her daughter. Le Bison reluctantly agrees to take part in the operation and Jardie announces that he too will be present as a final homage to Mathilde. Later, however, Jardie reveals to Gerbier that the argument he presented to Le Bison is purely speculative.

A few days later, Mathilde is walking the streets of Paris when Jardie and his men pull up next to her in a stolen Wehrmacht car. Seeing them, Mathilde freezes and keeps her eyes locked into Jardie's while Le Bison pulls out a pistol and shoots her twice, after which the car speeds away. As the film comes to an end, silent text screens reveal the eventual fate of the four men: Le Masque will manage to swallow his cyanide pill in time, Le Bison will be beheaded in a German prison, Jardie will die under torture having betrayed no other name than his own — and Gerbier, will decide not to run this time.

The final shot is a POV from within the car, the Arc de Triomphe prominent in the windshield, until a soldier literally waves them away.

DVD releases

Army of Shadows was released on DVD in Region 2 by the British Film Institute in November 2006 and in Region 1 by the Criterion Collection in May 2007.

Cast

• Lino Ventura – Philippe Gerbier
• Paul Meurisse – Luc Jardie
• Jean-Pierre Cassel – Jean-François Jardie
• Simone Signoret – Mathilde
• Claude Mann – Claude Ullmann a.k.a. Le Masque
• Paul Crauchet – Félix Lepercq
• Christian Barbier – Guillaume Vermersch a.k.a. Le Bison
• Serge Reggiani – The hairdresser
• André Dewavrin a.k.a. Colonel Passy – as himself
• Alain Dekok – Legrain
• Alain Mottet – Camp commander
• Alain Libolt – Paul Dounat
• Jean-Marie Robain – Baron de Ferté-Talloire
• Albert Michel – Gendarme
• Denis Sadier – Gestapo prison doctor

Critical reception

When it was originally released in France in 1969, the movie, coming shortly after the events of May 68, had a poor critical reception because of the political context: De Gaulle was rather unappreciated at the time, and the glorification of the resistance had become taboo during the Algerian War. As a result of the poor reviews, the film was not distributed widely outside France, though it was very well received in the late seventies on its British release. American audiences were only able to discover the movie in 2006 when it was reissued, after which the film appeared in many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2006.

• 1st – David Ansen, Newsweek
• 1st – Ella Taylor, LA Weekly
• 1st – Glenn Kenny, Premiere
• 1st – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
• 1st – Scott Foundas, LA Weekly
• 1st – Stephanie Zacharek, Salon
• 2nd – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader (tied with Statues Also Die)
• 2nd – Michael Sragow, The Baltimore Sun
• 2nd – Nathan Lee, The Village Voice
• 2nd – Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe

• 3rd – Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post
• 4th – Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
• 4th – Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
• 5th – Marjorie Baumgarten, The Austin Chronicle
• 7th – Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter
• 7th – Richard Schickel, TIME magazine
• 8th – Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

General top ten

• Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer
• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

Its score on the review site Metacritic is 99/100.

External links

• Army of Shadows
• Army of Shadows at AllRovi
• Army of Shadows at the Internet Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Amy Taubin