ARMY OF SHADOWS
synopsis
France, 1942, under German occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is a French Resistance commandant. Denounced by a French collaborator, he is interned in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, and rejoins his network in Marseille, where he has the traitor executed. This movie reveals rigorously and austerely what life was like in the French Resistance: the solitude and fear of its members; their relationships with one another; the constant threat of arrest by the Gestapo; the Resistance command structure and the way its orders were carried out. Head writer Joseph Kessel and co-writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville were both veterans of the "Shadow Army".
international title: | Army of Shadows |
original title: | L'armée des ombres |
country: | France, Italy |
year: | 1969 |
genre: | fiction |
directed by: | Jean-Pierre Melville |
film run: | 96' |
release date: | FR 12/09/1969, IT 06/10/1970, NL 12/11/1970, FI 02/04/1971, SE 05/12/1971, ES 19/06/1972, DE 20/01/1978, UK 23/06/1978, DD 18/02/1988 |
screenplay: | Jean-Pierre Melville |
cast: | Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel |
cinematography by: | Pierre Lhomme, Walter Wottitz |
film editing: | Françoise Bonnot |
art director: | Théobald Meurisse |
costumes designer: | Colette Baudot |
producer: | Jacques Dorfmann |