Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

From the wartime novel by Joseph Kessel, Jean Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows traces the harrowing feats of a small band of Resistance fighters operating during the German occupation of France in World War II. Avoiding acts of spectacular heroism, Melville presents a twilight world, where the clandestine freedom-fighters seek to avoid capture and are forced to eliminate informants from their own ranks.

When L'Armée des ombres was originally released, a French critic wrote that "this Resistance epic was, in the end, a sublime thriller". We see Melville handle the suspenseful set-pieces with his usual consummate cinematic mastery, so the film finally resembles one of the director's own gangster pictures.