Review: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows on Criterion Blu-ray

War films rarely allow their characters to collect themselves after battle, often pushing them into the next conflict without much pause. Not only does this approach speak to the genre’s need to propel a narrative forward, momentum that favors action over reflection, it proves the potential cost of allowing soldiers to contemplate that their deadly actions might be even more damaging to them, physically and otherwise, than any bullet or grenade.

Jean-Pierre Melville’s entrancing and enigmatic Army of Shadows, though, makes it a point to linger on the quiet aftermath of costly decision-making rather than delving into the incendiary rush of real-time battle, and the result is a wrenching examination of wartime survival. From its strangely romantic opening quotation, “Unhappy memories! Yet I welcome you…you are my long lost youth,” to the morally ambiguous climactic assassination, this account of the experiences of French resistance fighters during WWII creates a collective tension in the lengthy waiting game between escapes, captures, and rescues. The personal relationships, the interactions within this historical pressure cooker become intrinsically connected with the violence and subversive ideologies at play.

Melville, known for such masterfully restrained gangster films as Le Samouraï and Le Doulos, had a canny way of combining blunt imagery with small details of texture and character. This visual aesthetic defines Army of Shadows, and it’s very much on striking display in the opening shot of Nazi troops filling into the frame, the Arc de Triomphe behind them. As the procession marches down the Champs-Élysées and toward the camera, Melville freezes the image as the men salute, every inch of their iconic uniforms overwhelming us as the shot fades to black. Here, Melville downsizes a larger emblem of historical evil and giving it a disturbing immediacy. This building sense of panic and fear plays a role throughout Army of Shadows, and will invariably impact how characters of all types react after experiencing trauma.

Rebellious engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), who begins Army of Darkness handcuffed in the back of a prison bus, expresses how regret and pragmatism co-exist in the characters’ lives through his calm voiceover narration. These poetic musings reveal Melville’s appreciation for the moral complexities of war. When one of Gerbier’s French captors explains his allegiance to the Nazis, saying, “You do what you can in these crazy times,” Gerbier smiles and nods, then looks back down at his handcuffs with not an ounce of panic or judgment. It’s as if he completely understands why his desperate countrymen have betrayed France. But this calm façade hides a burning and ambitious desire to destroy Nazism, and by the time Gerbier stabs an unsuspecting guard in the throat and uses a fellow prisoner as a decoy to escape, this complex figure’s morality has become a vast and dangerous grey area.

Gerbier and his close-knit crew of underground agents, including brute killer Le Bison (Christian Barbier), handsome young courier Jean-François (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and master planner Margot (Simone Signoret), operate under constant threat of capture from the often faceless Gestapo. From the empty streets to dimly lit interiors, every inch of the film reverberates with doom. Melville shrouds almost every scene in a particularly haunting drab color scheme; everything from the dark blue brick wall of a prison cell to the black leather suits of SS officers to the off-green country landscapes conveys a feeling of deterioration. As characters pragmatically glide through these suffocating locales, it’s as if Melville is reimagining his familiar crime film iconography.

Army of Shadows follows each resistance fighter as they function within their movement, changing points of view as some are killed, captured, and rendered mute. To sustain a place in the hierarchical resistance, each is forced to make difficult decisions that ultimately deprive them of any chance at happiness. Throughout, Melville foregrounds bits of business that most war films rarely make room for. Physical violence is common here, but it’s the reaction to said violence, in shocking close-ups, that the filmmaker gives primacy to. And two moments speak most vividly to Melville’s concerns: The teary-eyed, frozen face of a Nazi mole strangled with a towel, and the battered, nearly deformed profile of Jean-François after he’s chained to a chair and tortured. Melville’s searing images announce these faces as battlefields.
In Army of Shadows, the merry-go-round of war isn’t about success or failure, loyalty or betrayal. “What a strange carousel,” Gerbier states late in the film, trying and failing to understand the patterns of violence and betrayal that inevitably drive people mad. Part of the film’s grace derives from the way Melville makes room for his doomed characters to simply remember their lives before uttering their last breaths, as in Gerbier glancing at a picture of Margot’s daughter, Jean-François’s noble decision to put a debilitated Felix out of his misery, or Le Bison defending Margot’s unflinching nobility despite her blatant treason.

Imprisoned late in the film because of bad luck, Gerbier is taken to a confined bunker where he and his fellow prisoners are forced to run down a long corridor while men fire at them from machine-gun nests. As bullets reign down on the men, Gerbier spots a dangling rope descending from an open spot in a wall, a literal life preserver from his friends, but also a symbolic image of salvation during what seems like an inescapable moment of dread. Taking this image as its crest, Army of Shadows documents a phase of human adaptation where the details of a specific moment reflect the grander picture of political and social experience, an idea that history isn’t made up of dates and events, but of close-ups of living and dying faces, the widescreen vistas of poetic locations, and the lucid memories of those grappling with the possibility of endless suppression.

Image/Sound

Banished to cinema obscurity for nearly 40 years, Army of Shadows finally found its way onto American shores via Rialto Films in 2006, then onto standard DVD in 2007 via the Criterion Collection. The 1080p Criterion Blu-ray transfer improves on the standard definition disc 10 fold, with each frame bursting with clarity and detail. Colors are all brilliantly balanced while the black levels are perfectly calibrated, making the many night sequences stand out even more than in a theatrical print. The shimmering metal of a passing train, the densely layered smoke during the aforementioned prison escape, and the blue glimmer crashing waves are just some of the stunning moments that make this Blu-ray a must have for cinephiles. The sound design is consistently excellent as well, with the original French mono soundtrack much more softer and subtle than the upgraded DTS HD-MA version. Each affords a unique way to experience Jean-Pierre Melville’s crisp attention to sound cues and the minimalist musical score.

Extras

“One becomes a fighter, a warrior, very quickly. It takes much longer to stop being one.” This wonderful quote by Melville anchors a 1969 short television program called “Jean-Pierre Meville, Filmmaker,” both a puff piece and an interesting window into the director’s relationship with actors. There’s also a plodding behind-the-scenes featurette called “L’Invite Du Dimanche” that provides 30 minutes of archival footage and interviews with key cast members. There are also two revealing interviews with cinematographer Pierre Llhomme and editor Francoise Bonnot. Llhomme, charged with restoring the film for Criterion’s 2006 transfer, has some particularly fascinating memories of the “authoritarian” Melville. Le Journal de la Resistance, a rare 1944 British documentary narrated by Noel Coward, provides more context to the real-life struggle within Army of Shadows. Finally, surviving cast and crew, along with some contemporary filmmakers discuss the lasting impact of Army of Shadows in “Jean-Pierre Melville et L’Armee des Ombres,” a 30-minute collection of interviews that simply reinforces the film’s influence on many circles of film studies. The disc’s one audio commentary by historian Ginette Vincendeau gets tedious fast, something akin to listening to an interesting but dense lecture from a monotone academic. Her well-researched points grow tiresome after only a few minutes. Finally, the accompanying booklet for this disc is another stunning collection of essays, especially the one by Film Comment critic Amy Taubin, who extended her 2006 essay on the film for the Blu-ray release.

Overall

“Jean-Pierre Melville cherishes paradox and free thinking,” and both elements are on beautiful display in his masterpiece Army of Shadows, now out in a ridiculously stunning Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection.