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53
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Moondance Alexander
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Army of Shadows
Rialto Pictures LLC
FILM:
MPAA 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.
| GENRE(S): |
Drama
|
Foreign
|
War
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jean-Pierre Melville
Joseph Kessel (novel)
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jean-Pierre Melville
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: May 15, 2007
Theatrical: April 28, 2006
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
145 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / Italy |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French (with English subtitles) |

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...
100
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.

100
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.

100
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
For the first, and maybe the only, time this year, you are in the hands of a master.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

100
Chicago Reader
Jonathan Rosenbaum
A great film but also one of the most upsetting films I know.

100
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.

100
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
The results bear witness to a time when sacrifice was bleached of everything but itself.

100
Newsweek
David Ansen
Infused with the bleak romanticism of Melville's gangster movies ("Le Samouraļ," "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.

100
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)
100
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
A masterpiece.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

100
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.

90
Dallas Observer
Rob Nelson
Deeply engrossing and deep in numerous other ways that one scarcely encounters at the movies anymore.

90
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.

90
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
It's here that Melville fully achieved his notion of the sublime, applying "Le Samouraļ'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.

75
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.

75
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.


The average user rating for this movie is 8.4 (out of 10) based on 40 User Votes
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