Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel
Made, between Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge, at the peak of Melville’s powers (though he’d been planning a film of Joseph Kessel’s book for 25 years), Army in the Shadows is one of the director’s very finest achievements.
Melville was able to draw on personal memories of people, places, events and, most importantly, the strategies and methods of the underground; for, as he chronicles a four-month period in the lives of a group of freedom-fighters led by Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), depicting their furtive battles against the occupying Nazis (first shown, famously, marching on the Champs-Elysées), collaborators and, most dangerously, traitors in their own camp, the film is imbued not only with the authenticity of history but with the truth of first-hand remembrance.
This, in turn, means that the movie in many ways feels very like Melville’s crime thrillers, both in his masterly ability to create suspense and in his focus on questions of honour and courage, loyalty and betrayal. The world depicted is one where trust, in such short supply, is all-important; it’s impossible to know not only how far others may be depended on, but even how far you yourself might act under torture and threat of death.
Melville’s response to such dilemmas is typically unsentimental and intelligent; there’s even wit – et comment! – among the tragedy. A film, in short, of extraordinary restraint and power.
Geoff Andrew, NFT
