Rated 4.5 by the press, “The Army of Shadows”, a cult film starring Lino Ventura, is released in cinemas on June 5. Not without a first detour to the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Cannes Classics section.
“With Melville, we have the impression that if you love cinema, if you love it passionately, you can only make one good film, it’s fantastic.e”… We owe this quote to Quentin Tarantino, who counts a certain Jean-Pierre Melville among his favorite directors!
After the re-release of Samurai last June, one of the filmmaker’s best-known thrillers, it is the turn of Army of Shadows to benefit from a re-release, with 4K restoration.
It is the publisher Carlotta who accompanies this re-release, dated precisely June 5, 2024. Beforehand, the film with Lino Ventura, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Paul Meurisse and Simone Signoret will make a detour through the Cannes Festival, within the section dedicated to heritage films, Cannes Classics.
Rated 4.5 by the press
Army of Shadows is an adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kessel, published in 1943. The film was initially released in September 1969. In 1969, the film had recorded 1.4 million admissions (according to CBO Box -office). It has already been released twice in theaters, in 2005 and 2015.
During a previous release, the film was praised by the press, receiving a rating of 4.5. For Les Inrockuptibles, the film shows “the Resistance in its most appalling banality. By the great Melville.”
For Zurban, “far from the pontificating reconstruction, Melville adapts the testimony of Joseph Kessel but also a page from his own past as a resistance fighter, with a deadly and heady melancholy like the music of the film (…).“
What is it about ?
France 1942. Gerbier, engineer of Bridges and Roads, is also one of the leaders of the Resistance. Denounced and captured, he was incarcerated in a prison camp. As he prepares his escape, he is picked up by the Gestapo…
On the occasion of a file devoted to France at war on AlloCiné, we indicated that Jean-Pierre Melville’s film refers to his own memories of resistance and to the action of Lucie Aubrac (whose life will be subject of a film by Claude Berri, Lucie Aubrac, in 1997).
An era that had a profound impact on my generation
The Army of Shadows also stands out from the traditional image of a heroic resistance supported by a majority of French people. As Jean-Pierre Melville himself, its director, indicated: “In this film, I showed for the first time things that I saw, that I experienced. However, my truth is, of course, subjective and certainly does not correspond to the actual truth. From a sublime story, a wonderful documentary on the Resistance, I had a retrospective reverie; a nostalgic pilgrimage to an era that had a profound impact on my generation“.
Army of Shadows is considered by many to be the greatest film about the Resistance ever made.