Army of Shadows

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

1969 / 145min / 35mm

Melville, himself a veteran of the French Resistance, brings a laserlike precision of vision to his somber, entirely absorbing adaptation of fellow former insurgent Joseph Kessel’s 1943 book of the same name, describing the cloak-and-dagger activities of ordinary men and women inspired to risk life and limb to throw off the yoke of the German occupation. Infused throughout with the solemn hush of a conspiratorial meeting, cloaked in the dun colors of wartime scarcity, Army of Shadows achieves and sustains a white-knuckle tension scarcely ever found in bombastic action extravaganzas—and having Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Paul Meurisse, and Serge Reggiani along for the ride certainly doesn’t hurt.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Fugitive Days