L'Armée des ombres
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L'Armée des ombres (Army of Shadows) is a 1969 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It is a film adaptation of Joseph Kessel's eponymous 1943 book–a recounting of Kessel's (and Melville's) memoirs as a member of the French Resistance, inventing characters drawn from real people who actually fought against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. The story narrates courage, self-sacrifice, friendship, and betrayal.
This film was released in the United States by Rialto Pictures in 2006 and is playing in a very small number of independent movie theaters across the country (140 minutes, in French with English subtitles).
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[edit] Synopsis
October 1942 in Nazi-occupied France. Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a distinguished civil engineer and the head of a Resistance network, has been arrested by Vichy French police and is placed in a camp. A man of few words and intense energy, he appears to be of another caliber than the other prisoners. A few days later, the French authorities hand Gerbier over to the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, and he is transferred to headquarters in Paris for interrogation. Gerbier manages a daring escape and makes his way back to Marseilles where his network is based.
Gerbier's right-hand man, Félix Lepercq (Paul Crauchet), has identified a young agent named Paul as the informant who betrayed him to the Vichy police. With the help of Guillaume Vermersch a.k.a. Le Bison (Christian Barbier), a burly French Foreign Legion veteran of unquestioning loyalty, Gerbier and Lepercq take Paul to a safe house to execute him. They are met there by Claude Ullmann a.k.a. Le Masque (Claude Mann), a young upstart eager to prove himself in an important mission. However, it is impossible to shoot Paul as planned because a family moved overnight into the house next door and would hear the shots. For want of other means, Gerbier orders Lepercq and Le Masque to help him strangle the traitor. As Le Masque falters at the idea of such a gruesome killing, explaining that it is his first execution, Gerbier rudely sets him straight and confides with a trace of emotion that it is his first too. Le Masque regains his composure and all three men complete the task.
Shaken, Lepercq goes to a bar for a drink after the execution and meets by chance a lost friend, Jean-François Jardié (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a handsome, risk-loving, yet trustworthy character. Upon Lepercq's offer, Jean-François joins the Resistance, more for the thrill of it than anything else, and successfully completes tasks of increasing importance. On his first mission to Paris, he meets Mathilde (Simone Signoret in a role loosely modeled after real-life Resistance hero Lucie Aubrac) who under the guise of a homemaker is one of the lynchpins of Gerbier's network, unbeknownst to her husband and daughter. His work done, Jean-François pays a surprise visit to his elder brother Luc Jardié (Paul Meurisse), a renowned philosopher who lives a detached, scholarly life in his Paris mansion.
Meanwhile, Gerbier and Lepercq have moved to Lyon and are preparing Gerbier's trip to Free French headquarters in London. He is to embark at night on a British submarine off the beach of a small town on France's Atlantic coast, along with a group of RAF aviators shot down over France. Jean-François Jardié and Le Bison are to handle security. At the last minute, Gerbier informs Lepercq that the Grand Patron (Big Boss), the head of all Resistance networks whose identity is a closely guarded secret, will make the trip too. After everyone else has boarded, Jean-François takes the Grand Patron to the submarine aboard a small rowboat in total darkness then returns ashore, never having seen the face of his passenger. Only when he sets foot in the sub's control room does it become clear that the Grand Patron is Luc Jardié.
In London, Gerbier receives additional logistical support for his network and Luc Jardié is decorated by Charles de Gaulle himself in a private ceremony. Gerbier must, however, cut his trip short when he learns that the Gestapo has captured Lepercq. He parachutes back to France and finds a new hiding place in a château near Annecy in the French Alps. Meanwhile, Mathilde has taken command after Lepercq's arrest and is proving to be an exceptionally gifted leader. She has learned that Lepercq is detained in a maximum-security Gestapo prison in Lyon and devises an audacious escape plan. Lepercq will need advance warning for the plan to succeed, but even Mathilde cannot find a way to do so. Jean-François, who has been sitting silently through the discussion of the plan, makes his decision. He writes a letter of resignation to Gerbier and mails an anonymous letter to the Gestapo to incriminate himself. His gamble is successful: after a brutal interrogation, he is placed in the same cell as Lepercq and delivers the warning. Lepercq has been repeatedly tortured and lies on his bunk in critical condition.
Mathilde, unaware of Jean-François' actions, convinces Gerbier to let her go ahead with the plan anyway. Dressed as a German military nurse, and accompanied by Le Masque and Le Bison wearing German uniforms, she arrives at the gate of the Lyon prison in a stolen German ambulance with a forged order for Lepercq's transfer to Gestapo headquarters in Paris. She parlays her way through the paperwork in flawless German and the ambulance is admitted into the prison yard, in full view of Jean-François. However, the prison doctor, though duped by the order, examines the moribund Lepercq and pronounces him unfit for transport. Mathilde had not anticipated that contingency and can only leave the prison empty-handed. Jean-François, who had smuggled several cyanide pills into his cell, gives Lepercq one and commits suicide too as any chance of escape is now lost.
On the run again after the Gestapo has discovered his Annecy hideout, Gerbier meets Mathilde in a Lyon restaurant for debriefing. To Mathilde who urges him to escape to London in view of the mounting danger, he replies that his continuing presence is indispensable to organize the growing Resistance activity in the area. They prepare to leave separately but just after Mathilde has departed, a happpenstance Vichy police raid of the restaurant for food rationing violations captures Gerbier. He is handed over to the Germans and, after a few days in prison, is taken with his cellmates to a long corridor where an SS officer explains the sadistic game that is about to begin. A machine-gun squad is in firing position behind the prisoners. Upon the officer's signal, the prisoners are to run as fast as they can towards the far wall. The officer will give them a head start before ordering fire; whoever reaches the wall alive will be eligible to repeat the game when the next batch of prisoners arrives. When the officer gives the signal, Gerbier first refuses to run, then changes his mind. As the shooting starts, Mathilde's team, who had been lying in wait on the roof of the corridor, throws smoke bombs into the line of fire to block the Germans' view, then throws a rope to Gerbier who narrowly escapes. Le Masque then drives Gerbier to an abandoned farmhouse deep in the countryside, where he is to await further orders.
After three weeks of solitude, Gerbier receives the unexpected visit of Luc Jardié who has come to seek his advice after Mathilde has been arrested. Despite Gerbier's earlier warning, Mathilde was carrying a photo of her daughter in her wallet when she was caught. The Gestapo offers her a choice: either Mathilde tells all about the network or her daughter will be sent to a brothel in Poland for German soldiers returning from the Eastern front. The Grand Patron has barely finished explaining the situation when Le Masque and Le Bison arrive. Jardié, wanting his presence to remain secret, hides in the back room while the two men hand over a coded status report. Gerbier decrypts the message to learn that Mathilde has been released the day before and that two Resistance men have been picked up the same afternoon. He orders Mathilde's immediate execution by any means necessary, but Le Bison refuses to carry out the order and swears to prevent Gerbier from killing her. As a fight is about to break out, Jardié emerges from the back room and defuses the tension by the sheer force of his personality. He convinces Le Bison that the only reason Mathilde acted the way she did—betraying only minor agents despite her photographic memory, convincing the Gestapo to release her under the pretext of leading them to her network—was to give the Resistance a window of opportunity to kill her, thereby sparing the network and her daughter. Le Bison reluctantly agrees to take part in the operation and Jardié announces that he too will be present as a final homage to Mathilde.
A few days later, Mathilde is walking the streets of Paris when Jardié and his men pull up next to her in a stolen Wehrmacht car. Seeing them, Mathilde freezes and keeps her eyes locked into Jardié's while Le Bison slowly pulls out a pistol and fires two fatal shots. The car speeds away, only to be caught at a German roadblock moments later. As the film comes to an end, silent text screens tell us the eventual fate of the four men: Le Masque will manage to swallow his cyanide pill in time, Le Bison will be beheaded in a German prison, Jardié will die under torture having betrayed no other name than his own—and Gerbier, sent back to the SS officer's corridor, will decide not to run this time.
[edit] Opinions
Melville's film is gripping in its contrasts: the force of conviction vs. the sparsity of words, heroism vs. human frailty, the warmth of human relationships vs. the stark cinematography of the film. The director of photography, Pierre Lhomme, renders a striking image: the gray clouds and faded blue-green tones of occupied France stand in contrast to the sunny skies and brighter colors of free Britain and are a perfect expression of the sentiment of the film.
Gerbier's first escape scene is typical of the unspoken, anonymous fraternity between Resistance members that permeates the story. While awaiting interrogation at Gestapo HQ, Gerbier is seated for hours next to another prisoner, presumably also a Resistance man. Not a word is exchanged until the German soldier guarding them leaves for a few moments. Gerbier then whispers an escape plan that requires both men to act together, but the guard returns before the man can answer. Upon a prearranged signal, the two men execute the plan without flinching, they run out of the Gestapo building, and Gerbier escapes. True to Gerbier's perspective and to the film's title, nothing is shown or said of the fate of the other man, a shadow whose name or voice are never heard.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the French news magazine L'Express repeatedly called L'Armée des ombres "perhaps the best French film ever made on the [French] Resistance."
[edit] Cast
- Lino Ventura - Philippe Gerbier
- Paul Meurisse - Luc Jardié
- Jean-Pierre Cassel - Jean-François Jardié
- Simone Signoret - Mathilde
- Claude Mann - Claude Ullmann a.k.a. Le Masque
- Paul Crauchet - Félix Lepercq
- Christian Barbier - Guillaume Vermersch a.k.a. Le Bison
- Serge Reggiani - The hairdresser
- André Dewavrin a.k.a. Colonel Passy - as himself
- Alain Dekok - Legrain
- Alain Mottet - Camp commander
- Alain Libolt - Paul Dounat
- Jean-Marie Robain - Baron de Ferté-Talloire
- Albert Michel - Gendarme
- Denis Sadier - Gestapo prison doctor
[edit] External links
| Jean-Pierre Melville |
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Vingt-quatre heures de la vie d'un clown (1945) • Le Silence de la mer (1947) • Les Enfants terribles (1950) • Bob le flambeur (1955) • Deux hommes dans Manhattan (1959) • Léon Morin, prêtre (1961) • Le Doulos (1963) • L’Aîné des Ferchaux (1963) Le Deuxième souffle (1966) • Le Samouraï (1967) • L'Armée des ombres (1969) • Le Cercle rouge (1970) • Un flic (1972) • |
