Ballarat Film Society – Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville is the ultimate cult auteur in the French cinema, acknowledged as a key influence on directors such as Godard, Scorsese, and Tarantino. With Army of Shadows, the master of the philosophical, gangster film, drops the metaphor of the criminal underworld and deals directly with his experiences as an underground soldier of the Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France.

This atmospheric and gripping thriller is now widely recognized as the summit of Melville’s career, channelling the exquisite minimalism of his earlier films to create an unsparing tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. “Lovers of cinema should reach for their fedoras and sneak to this picture through a mist of rain. You are in the hands of a master.” – Anthony Lane, The New Yorker. Studiocanal.

France, 1969, 140 mins. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.