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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » _Army of Shadows_
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| Guest |
 Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 11:54 pm |
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Incredibly, the film finally opens where I live -- a full year
after the rest of the country has seen it (which is 30 years
after Europe has seen it, I guess). The opening 30 minutes
is so unlike typical Melville films. Melville's typical characters
are hardened professions (often criminals) who have a past
but no future; they meet their fate with the stoic inexorability
a machine part on a conveyor belt meets the mechanical
welder. There is very little talking (the classical Melville
signature being completely silent heist scenes). More myths
than men, they are seldom caught, but receive their deaths
by gunfire like a stylistic state of grace.
In _Army of Shadows_, the characters are all too human.
They grow into their roles as French Resistance
fighters and organizers. They stage their first gut-wrenching
executation of a traitor before our eyes. (Here it is hard to
avoid comparison with _The Wind that shakes the Barley_.)
There is a lot of talking, and voiceovers done by multiple
people as well. The film has multiple prison scenes, more
behind the scene tortures. Simone Signoret is sole classic
Melville (male) hero here. She is the consumate professional
who dies at the hands of her comrades. The ultimately
abortive venture into a Gestapo held hospital/torture center
is as bold and breath-taking as any heist scene in a Melville
film. The other male resistance fighters mostly receive
gruesome deaths after capture and torture, as we
are told in subtitles at the end of the film. Unusual for
a Melville film too. I'm not sure I care for the beginning but
the ending is so appropriate.
To think that some armed service members are conducting
unnecessary torture in my name ... so sickening. |
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