Jean-Pierre Melville’s ‘Army of Shadows’
The French director and writer Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) is mostly known for gangster movies: Bob le flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samouraï, Le Cercle rouge, Un Flic, movies inspired by American film noir, so much so that sometimes the characters have American-sounding names (Bob, Jef, Corey), and in the case of Un Flic (A Cop), even an American lead actor (Richard Crenna). But these films are also French to the bone, and unique; they lack the easy sentimentality and moralism of so many American noirs and the acting is stripped down, monotone, laconic, and classic. If you haven’t seen them, go rent them. Melville adored American films above all others, and it occurs to me that just as Melville made the quintessential American noirs, except they were French, so many of the best American noirs or crime movies were made by transplanted Europeans: Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder, Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur, The Big Heat by Fritz Lang, Night and the City by Jules Dassin, Detective Story by William Wyler (like Melville, an Alsatian Jew).
Melville’s L’Armée des ombres (Army of Shadows), from 1969, based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, has just come out in a superb Criterion two-disc edition. Its subject is the French Resistance in World War II. Now American war movies tend to be about nobility and heroism, and they have a tendency to hit you over the head with the nobility and heroism just in case you’re not getting it. I don’t want to slam on Steven Spielberg, but I’ll give two examples from his work: Liam Neeson as Schindler breaking down in uncontrollable tears in his last scene in Schindler’s List; Tom Hanks giving his “I’m a schoolteacher†speech in Saving Private Ryan. These scenes are made to bring the tears to your eyes and it’s pretty hard not to have the tears spring to your eyes when you watch them, especially for the first time, but they’re not really true. They’re over the top and they’re telling the audience what to feel. There are no scenes even remotely like these in Army of Shadows. Melville, who served in the Resistance and in the Free French army, keeps the emotions of his great actors behind and inside their eyes, not boiling out all over the scenery. They speak quietly, and they speak rarely. He holds the camera on silences, on faces, he doesn’t tell you what to feel, he makes you feel. The actors in this film are among the best: Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Jean-Pierre Cassel (father of the equally talented Vincent Cassel), Paul Meurisse. The DVD special features tell us that Ventura and Melville didn’t get along, and that the star and director didn’t speak to each other throughout the filming. This doesn’t matter; Ventura gives a brilliant performance, but not a Hollywood-style bravura performance; he says the unsayable, with his slow stolid body, with very few and quiet words, with his face, and with his eyes.
I was lucky enough to watch this movie without having read any of the usual recount-the-plot reviews, and I’d like you to have the same experience. I’m not going to talk about the plot or specific scenes because I want you to take in this movie cold. And that’s all I’ll say now.
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One thing I can safely mention (because I still want our readers who haven't seen the movie to be able to see it without knowing the plot and the events ahead of time): on the special features of the DVD set they had a TV interview with Melville and a resistance leader named André Dewavrin whom Melville had gotten to play a small part. The host asked Dewavrin how he dealt with the memories (they'd been talking about all the comrades who had died). He said he tried not to think about it, and just to live his life. And that when he had to talk about it (like at that moment) he tried to keep his sense of humor, because you need a sense of humor to live. And this reminded me of my father, who lost his leg in the battle of the Bulge, and yet who, if he ever said anything about his army days, and he didn't often, had a great sense of humor about it all.
(I remember my dad telling me that some of the orderlies in his hospital were German POWs, veterans of the Afrikakorps. They were allowed to keep their corps insignia. Those were the days, treating prisoners fairly and with respect.)
Oh, and that opening pre-credits shot by the Arch of Triumph: Melville's editor Françoise Bonnot told a great story on the features about how they went back and forth putting that scene in the beginning and at the end of the movie. Finally opened the movie in six theatres in Paris with the scene at the end. Next day Melville changes his mind, calls up Bonnot and they drive to each theatre and splice the scene back into the opening.
Now my comment on your comment is almost as long as my original piece!
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Here is a quote about Melville for you, from Volker Schlondorff:
"He begged us to turn our backs on what he considered to be misguided works like Johnny Guitar, and to look instead to the American classics for inspiration. Biased as he was, he contended that only two--at that time, disdained--directors counted for anything at all; William Wyler and Robert Wise."
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