Melville's Bad Memories: Army of Shadows

ARMY OF SHADOWS / L'Armée des ombres
(Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1969, 35mm, 145 minutes)

"Bad memories! I welcome you anyway...you are my long-lost youth."
--Georges Courteline quote which opens Army of Shadows

Though I caught a screening a month ago, I've been putting off writing anything about Army of Shadows. In fact, I was thinking about taking a pass altogether--until guilt got the best of me. Just as it's possible to be intimidated by a person, it's possible to be intimidated by a film. I love Jean-Pierre Melville. I love this film. There's no way I can do it justice.

I'm not alone. Author Rui Nogueira, who edited 1972's out-of-print Melville on Melville, proclaims Army of Shadows "a masterpiece." He's joined by Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, Stephanie Zacharek of Salon, and numerous other film critics. As such, I wouldn't want to oversell it.

After all, the film doesn't move as quickly as Melville's 1962 Le Doulos, nor is it as stylish as 1967's Le Samouraï. Plus, it's even longer than the uncut 1970 Le Cercle Rouge. Heck, it isn't even a gangster film. Or a war film. It's a Resistance film. Adapted from the 1943 novel by Belle de Jour author Joseph Kessel, Melville also draws on his own Free French experience. It still looks and feels like his work, but packs more of an emotional punch--no, make that a wallop--than usual.

Never before released in the United States, this beautifully restored version is meant to be experienced on the big screen. The restoration was personally supervised by César Award-winning cinematographer Pierre Lhomme (The Mother and the Whore, Camille Claudel). Nonetheless, some prospective viewers may be waiting for the inevitable DVD release. If you have any interest in this film or this filmmaker, you really shouldn't.

In purely visual terms, Army of Shadows is Melville's darkest film. Most sequences take place at night, at dusk, and at dawn. Further, the palette consists primarily of deep blues and steely greys. Unless you're blessed with a theater-sized television screen, you may miss crucial details. And Melville is nothing if not a scrupulous, detail-oriented filmmaker.

In fact, I hadn't made the connection until I read Sean Axmaker's GreenCine review, but his filmography was probably a big influence on the meticulous Mr. Michael Mann, whose Miami Vice is one of the year's other big dark-palette pictures. Then again, if Mann doesn't consider Melville an influence, I would still describe him as one of the French filmmaker's spiritual heirs. Both care deeply about men and their work.

And Army of Shadows, like most Melville films, is very much about men and their work. That said, there's one woman who's part of Lino Ventura's crew and that's quick-change artist Mathilde (Simone Signoret). She's just as tough as the guys, the rest of whom are portrayed by Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet, Christian Barbier, Paul Meurisse (Diabolique's unfortunate husband), and Jean-Pierre Cassel, the father of actor Vincent "La Haine" Cassel.

 

She's also a little more sentimental and, yes, she'll pay for that. But it isn't presented as a feminine quality--it's just a quality. Signoret's significant other, Yves Montand, was part of Le Circle Rouge's esteemed ensemble, while Ventura previously starred in Melville's Le Deuxième Souffle.

Instead of describing the plot, which took inspiration from actual events, I'll just note that the complex story line continues in the suspenseful, surprising vein of Le Cercle Rouge, while prefiguring Fred Zinneman's 1973 Day of the Jackal, which I caught up with a few months ago. Just imagine several Jackals. Several--mostly--sympathetic Jackals. All dressed in thick overcoats and gunning for the Nazis occupying France. In the dark.

Army of Shadows opened in Seattle on August 11. As with most other repertory films, I figured it would be gone within the week, but two more weeks have passed since then, so it must be attracting an audience. I'm thrilled about that as this is one of the cinematic events of the year. 

 

It may not be perfect, which is to say that the film does have its longeurs, but the way the disparate threads come together at the end is downright breathtaking--plus, I don't believe there's such a thing as a "perfect" film anyway. Believe the hype: Army of Shadows is, indeed, a masterpiece.

Jean Seberg: What is your greatest ambition in life?
Jean-Pierre Melville: To become immortal...and then die.
--Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)

 

Rialto Pictures will re-release Le Doulos next year. They plan to follow up with 1961's Leon Morin, Prêtre, also with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Army of Shadows completes the wartime trilogy Melville began with 1947's Le Silence de La Mer, which is not available on DVD, and Leon Morin. The film is currently playing at the Harvard Exit (807 East Roy). For more information, please click here or call (206) 781-5755. Images from The Criterion Collection and eBay (The Ryerson Press, 1944 second edition, Canada), and notreCinema (Simone Signoret and Lina Ventura).