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January 2007
“Army of Shadows…is bleak and beautiful by turns, that rare work of art that thrills the senses and the mind…Melville's world is a world of broad shoulders and heavy burdens, shaved and grizzled faces, the civilized and the savage…You can get lost in the blackness of its heart and its shadows. You might never come back.”
“Any moviegoers with a weakness for dry heroism, dark-toned humor, and storytelling of pantherish pace and grace—in short, lovers of cinema—should reach for their fedoras, turn up the collars of their coats, and sneak to this picture through a mist of rain…For the first, and maybe the only, time this year, you are in the hands of a master”
“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.”
Watch the Trailer(cable or DSL connection recommended) Get the Flash Player to see this player. Synopsis
France, The Resistance: an escape from the Gestapo, so sudden and hair's breadth as to leave the toughest of tough guys gasping with the icy sweat of terror and relief; two brothers remain unaware, to the end, of each other's clandestine activities; patriots who, in relentless pursuit of traitors, must steel themselves to the most brutal of face-to-face violence. Lino Ventura (Elevator to the Gallows, Classe Tous Risques, etc.), aided by compatriots including maitresse of disguise Simone Signoret, goes underground in face of the German Occupation—but the price of heroism can be truly horrific. Precursor of the New Wave and legend of the French gangster film Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob Le Flambeur, Le Cercle Rouge, Le Samourai) realized the dream of a quarter century when he adapted “The Book of the Resistance,” written by Joseph Kessel (Belle de Jour) in the white heat of immediacy. Melville turned the detached, unblinking gaze of his film noir classics on these memories of his youth—he himself served for years underground—adding a jarring finale of his own, so stoically uncompromising as to reduce Kessel himself to sobs on his first viewing. But Army of Shadows shared in the general U.S. indifference to Melville's now-acclaimed-as-classic oeuvre and was never released here—until now. Original cinematographer Pierre L'homme personally supervised this superb new 35mm color restoration.
Written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville,
Advance tickets may be purchased at the following locations:
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