Army in the Shadows
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
France, Italy
1969
145 mins
This recently released and restored classic from Jean-Pierre Melville is an adaption of Joseph Kessel’s wartime novel. This is the haunting and sombre account of a group of mainly middle aged resistance fighters in Occupied France during World War Two. It spans a four-month period in the activities of a underground cell headed by engineer Phillipe Gerbier. Without melodrama, Melville depicts the fears, rigours and austerity of the residence where they struggle to avoid capture and eliminate informants in their own ranks. Both Melville and Kessel belonged to this “Army of Shadows”. In French with subtitles.