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Army of Shadows
Universal acclaim
Based on 24 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 52 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign | War
Written by:
Jean-Pierre Melville
Joseph Kessel (novel)
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Melville
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 28, 2006
DVD: May 15, 2007
Running Time: 145 minutes, Color
Origin: France / Italy
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann, Paul Crauchet, Christian Barbier, and Serge Reggiani
Making its U.S. debut, Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 Army of Shadows is an intimate epic of the French Resistance in WWII.
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Bob Le Flambeur Le Cercle Rouge
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
New York Daily News Jami Bernard
It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Not just one of the great films of the '60s but one of the great films, period -- and the chance to discover it at the beginning of the 21st century, in an era when we think we've seen it all, is an unquantifiable privilege.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
For the first, and maybe the only, time this year, you are in the hands of a master.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
The result is a brilliant and relentless thriller, painted in Melville's trademark shades of charcoal and midnight blue, marked by daring escapes, unimaginable moments of self-sacrifice and unconscionable acts of betrayal.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
It's a strange enough film, yet weirdly great. No movie has quite gotten the clammy weight of fear, the sense of hopelessness that would necessarily haunt underground workers. To see it is to sweat through your underclothes. It'll melt the pep out of your weekend.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
As someone who was part of the Resistance, Melville knew enough to neither melodramatically glorify nor cynically devalue the heroism he presents. This is people doing what needed to be done, Army of Shadows says, this is the way it was.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The picture was made in 1969 and is only now being released in the U.S., in a beautiful restoration supervised by original cinematographer Pierre Lhomme.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
A film masterpiece, restored more than three decades after its French release, "Army" remains a superb, coolly accurate portrait of a living hell recalled by two men who knew it well and record it truly, Melville and novelist Joseph Kessel.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
A great film but also one of the most upsetting films I know.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
This restored 35mm print, now in art theaters around the country, may be 37 years old, but it is the best foreign film of the year.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The results bear witness to a time when sacrifice was bleached of everything but itself.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
Infused with the bleak romanticism of Melville's gangster movies ("Le Samouraï," "Bob le Flambeur"), and deepened by his own experiences in the Resistance, this hard-bitten tribute to freedom fighters makes most current movies look flabby and undisciplined. Don't miss it.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
Composed of relatively few events and scenes, it's often excruciatingly tense and never less than heartbreakingly human. And as much as I admire "Munich," Shadows leaves Spielberg's film in the dust in the moral-ambiguity department. Never before seen in the States, it's already on my year's ten-best list. (April 2006 Premiere)
Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
The protagonists have subsumed their identities to the collective, and they rise and fall in their hearts as the collective prospers or suffers. Their effort is absurd, but their intent is pure. Watching it evokes a combination of pity for their naive idealism and awe at Melville's uncanny brilliance.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
The film is a hugely compelling tribute to the French Resistance movement in World War II, staged with a genuine epic flair but in the icy, downbeat, film-noir style of the director's celebrated policiers.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
Although made in 1969, this French masterpiece is receiving its first stateside release with a new print struck for the occasion.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
From the first sight of German soldiers goose-stepping past the Arc de Triomphe to a postscript that spells out the fate of characters whose moral confusion is all too real, Army of Shadows is a movie of its time -- and ours.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
This film, which was never released in America and will now be making its way across the country in limited release, has been immaculately restored and features new subtitles. You can get lost in the blackness of its heart and its shadows. You might never come back.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Rob Nelson
Deeply engrossing and deep in numerous other ways that one scarcely encounters at the movies anymore.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
One particular bit of luck for this reissue is the fact that Melville's cinematographer, Pierre Lhomme, was on hand to help with the restoration of this thirty-five-year-old film. The result is a paradoxical beauty. Very many of the scenes are in sunlight--Melville avoided such facile stuff as shadows for suspense--yet they are chilly. The seasons vary, but the general effect is of a bright winter day that is freezing.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
It's here that Melville fully achieved his notion of the sublime, applying "Le Samouraï's" "empty" compositions and near theatrical blocking, as well as its methodical suspense, cosmic fatalism, and sense of grim solitude, to a subject far closer to his heart, namely his own World War II experiences.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Everything Melville shows us, he shows us for a reason, and these reasons are never obscure but are rather pertinent to the action and to the moral movement of the world and the characters.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Lino Ventura is grand as a solemn resistance leader. He's backed by a knockout cast that includes Simone Signoret.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.1 (out of 10) based on 52 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Clay C gave it a10:
A truly great film. Your users that have given ARMY OF SHADOWS poor reviews seem not just ignorant of cinema, but, especially, ignorant of history. (They actually seem to be just plain ignorant, and very full of themselves.)
Gary D gave it a4:
Beautiful, but frankly a bit of a snooze. I didn't find it an exercise in tension as many claim, but more an exercise in endurance.
Tom P gave it a5:
I find it unfair for you to say that we do not know cinema. Maybe those who do not understand this movie simply don't understand cinema at the time of this movie's production, because by modern standards, there is very little drama or emotion, character development, or any character/ personality at all, excepting the men he meets at the beginning of the film in the concentration camp. Whether you'd like to admit it or not, it does move at an excruciatingly slow pace. We don't need to see people that we have no real feelings towards walking for overextended periods of time, because it is NOT building any sort of suspense. Also, the almost constant absence of music is unbearable, although you might not believe so until you actually see it. That, and the story itself is quite unremarkable. For it's time I can see what makes it great, by today's standards is is simply...good. No more.
Julian T. gave it a10:
If you like cinema just as much as I do, you can do nothing but admit that this is probably one of the greatest movie ever... I don't get annoyed by those saying that this was too "slow" or so on... they don't have a clue about what "Cinema" really is. Thank you so much mister Melville.
Andrew H. gave it a4:
Would have been bearable if not for the extremely slow pace. I'd rather be "entertained" by Hollywood trash than to sit through something like this.
Jose S. gave it an8:
This is a very good film, and quite well filmed, but its a little slow and perhaps too long. The 99 avg from critics is way too high, but its still very good for its time and marks Melville as a major director; I want to see more of his.
Jean N. gave it a10:
Simply the best film I have ever seen.
