And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Hope
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.--
Erich Fromm
Melville, who had participated in the French Resistance himself, this tragic masterpiece, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, recounts the struggles and sacrifices of those who fought in the Resistance. Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret star as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime. Long underappreciated in France and unseen in the United States, the atmospheric and gripping thriller Army of Shadows is now widely recognized as the summit of Melville’s career, channeling the exquisite minimalism of his gangster films to create an unsparing tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" is about members of the French Resistance who persist in the face of despair. Rarely has a film shown so truly that place in the heart where hope lives with fatalism. It is not a film about daring raids and exploding trains, but about cold, hungry, desperate men and women who move invisibly through the Nazi occupation of France. Their army is indeed made of shadows: They use false names, they have no addresses, they can be betrayed in an instant by a traitor or an accident. They know they will probably die.
The film was adapted by Jean-Pierre Melville, a veteran of both the Resistance and the Free French Army, from Joseph Kessel's 1943 novel. Shot in 1959, this doom-laden movie of tragic grandeur celebrates the stoic heroism of the Maquis. It came just before French films about the Occupation took on a darker, more critical tone with The Sorrow and the Pity, Lacombe Lucien and, more recently, Jaques Audiard's Un Héros Très Discret.
This is not a war film. It is about a state of mind. Under the Vichy government of the World War I hero Petain, France officially permitted the Nazi occupation. Most Frenchmen accepted it as the price of immunity from German armies. DeGaulle runs the Free French movement from London but is a voice on the radio and commands no troops -- none except for those in the Resistance, who pose as ordinary citizens, lead two lives, spy on the Germans, provide information to the Allies and sometimes carry out guerrilla raids against the enemy.
Now we have the American premiere of perhaps his greatest film (I have not seen them all, but I will). When "Army of Shadows" was released in 1969, it was denounced by the left-wing Parisian critics as "Gaullist," because it has a brief scene involving DeGaulle and because it involves a Resistance supporting his cause; by the late 1960s, DeGaulle was considered a reactionary relic. The movie was hardly seen at the time. This restored 35mm print, now in art theaters around the country, may be 37 years old, but it is the best foreign film of the year.
It follows the activities of a small cell of Resistance fighters based in Lyons and Paris. Most of them have never met their leader, a philosopher named Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse). Their immediate commander is Philippe Gerbier, played by Lino Ventura with a hawk nose and physical bulk, introspection and implacable determination. To overact for Ventura would be an embarrassment. Working with him is a woman named Mathilde (Simone Signoret), and those known as Francois (Jean-Pierre Cassel), Le Masque (Claude Mann) and Felix (Paul Crauchet).
"Does your husband know of your activities?" Mathilde is asked one day. "Certainly not. And neither does my child." Signoret plays her as a mistress of disguise, able to be a dowdy fishwife, a bold whore, even a German nurse who with two comrades drives an ambulance into a Nazi prison and says she has orders to transport Felix to Paris. The greatness of her deception comes not as she impersonates the German-speaking nurse, but when she is told Felix is too ill to be moved. She instantly accepts that, nods curtly, says "I'll report that," and leaves. To offer the slightest quarrel would betray them.
The members of this group move between safe houses, often in the countryside. When they determine they have a traitor among them, they take him to a rented house, only to learn that new neighbors have moved in. They would hear a gunshot. A knife? There is no knife. "There is a towel in the kitchen," Gerbier says. We see the man strangled, and rarely has an onscreen death seemed more straightforward, and final.
To protect the security of the Resistance, it is necessary to kill not only traitors but those who have been compromised. There is a death late in the film that comes as a wound to the viewer; we accept that it is necessary, but we do not believe it will happen. For this death of one of the bravest of the group, the leader Luc Jardie insists on coming out of hiding because the victim "must see me in the car." That much is owed: respect, acknowledgement and then oblivion.
The film follows Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a stoic civil engineer and high-ranking Resistance leader. After escaping a Vichy internment camp and a Gestapo interrogation, Gerbier returns to his cell to continue the "shadow war."
The narrative is episodic, focusing on several key missions:
The Execution of a Traitor: A haunting sequence where the cell must strangle a young informer in a residential neighborhood because they cannot risk the noise of a gunshot.
The London Interlude: A surreal trip to London to meet General de Gaulle, highlighting the disconnect between the "diplomatic" war and the "underground" war.
The Failed Rescue: An attempt to save a captured comrade, Felix, which leads to a tragic sacrifice by Jean-François (Jean-Pierre Cassel).
The Mathilde Dilemma: The film’s climax involves the arrest of Mathilde (Simone Signoret), the group’s most efficient operative, and the impossible choice the cell must make when she is threatened with the safety of her daughter.
Themes: Existentialism and Fatalism
The Absence of Glory: There are no medals or cheers. Characters live in safe houses with false names, often unaware of who their superiors are. Their deaths are frequently marked only by a text on the screen detailing how they were eventually captured and executed.
The "Shadow" Identity: To resist, one must become a ghost. This involves shedding one's humanity—killing collaborators, abandoning family, and accepting that "hope" is a dangerous luxury.
Moral Ambiguity: The film suggests that to fight a monster, one must occasionally adopt its methods. The Resistance members spend more time killing French traitors than they do killing German soldiers.
Visual Style: The Melville "Blue"
Working with cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, Melville utilized a desaturated, monochromatic color palette. The film is dominated by cold blues, grays, and shadows.
Pacing: The film utilizes "languorous tension." Long, silent takes of characters walking or waiting build a sense of dread that is more effective than any action sequence.
Minimalism: Dialogue is sparse. Information is conveyed through glances, the lighting of a cigarette, or the sound of footsteps on wet pavement.
Historical Context and Reception
The 1968 Backlash
When released in 1969, the film was a critical failure in France. Coming just after the student protests of May 1968, the film was dismissed as "Gaullist" propaganda because it portrayed the Resistance as a unified, disciplined force under de Gaulle's shadow. The youth of '68 saw de Gaulle as an authoritarian figure, and any film honoring his era was viewed with suspicion.
The 2006 Resurrection
It wasn't until its 2006 restoration and U.S. release that it was recognized globally as a masterpiece. Critics realized that Melville wasn't making a political film, but a film about the spirit of resistance—the choice to fight even when victory seems impossible and the personal cost is total.
Deep Dive: Key Scenes
The Execution of Dounat
This scene is widely considered one of the most chilling in cinema history. The cell brings a traitor to a vacant house, only to realize there are neighbors next door. They cannot shoot him. The slow, agonizing transition from the intent to shoot to the necessity of strangulation removes all "cleanliness" from the act of war. It forces the audience to witness the physical labor and emotional horror of killing.
The Gestapo "Race"
When Gerbier is captured and told he will be executed, the Nazi guards offer him a "chance": if he can run to the end of a corridor before the machine gun fires, he lives. This scene highlights the cruelty of the occupation—not just the killing, but the psychological games used to strip men of their dignity before death.
Army of Shadows is not just a war movie; it is a film about the weight of memory. It serves as a requiem for a generation of men and women who vanished into the night so that France could reappear in the light. It remains the ultimate cinematic proof that the most heroic acts are often the ones that no one will ever know occurred.
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