Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection

Director: Jean-pierre Melville
Actors: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann
Studio: Criterion Collection
Category: DVD

List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $28.36
You Save: $11.59 (29%)


New (42) Used (8) from $28.36

Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars 24 reviews
Sales Rank: 12532

Format: Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 145 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6

MPN: IMEDCC1693D
UPC: 715515023726
EAN: 0715515023726
ASIN: B000NOK0HG

Theatrical Release Date: 1969
Release Date: May 15, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW AND FACTORY SEALED
Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection

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Customer Reviews

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5 out of 5 stars Melville's masterpeice    January 8, 2009
me (Raleigh, NC)
it really is, the suspense is carried throughout the film without a second to catch your breath. by far the best Melville film i've seen yet! and yes i've seen Le Samourai


2 out of 5 stars OK movie but not worth the price    November 6, 2008
nobody ya know (fiji)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful

Not a bad movie, but it's overly hyped and it's a let down.
The package is first class quality with other bonus disk.
Am not sure if that's really worth the money.


5 out of 5 stars C'est la Guerre    June 14, 2008
Randy Keehn (Williston, ND United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

For me, "Army of Shadows" was a great film that, if anything, is under-rated. The subject matter lets us know that there will be intrigue and suspense and it delivers. However, despite the action that does take place in "Army of Shadows", this is not an action film. Instead, it is a drama in 5 acts. Indeed, this film could easily have been brought to the stage (and maybe it already has been). It is the characters, their relationships to each other and their dedication and motivation that is the essence of the movie. Indeed, so much so that one is left wondering what the French underground did besides recruit, execute their traitors, and help others escape. I mean...what exactly was their mission? Other than helping a few allied flyers escape back to their units, we don't see the Resistance carrying out any missions against the enemy. I thought about that for a while after I saw the film and decided that that stuff was for another movie. What I saw in "Army of Shadows" was a focus on the individual fighters; what they risked and what they conceded. The strength of the character development in this movie will enhance, for me, the characters I see in future French WWII movies. It may seem a bit over-dramatic at times but I guess you had to be there. "Army of Shadows" does as much as any film I've seen to let you sense that you actually were there.


5 out of 5 stars 2006 movie of the year    April 29, 2008
David J. Richardson
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is a five star film, an absolutely important, necessary film with flawless acting and directing. Fans of Melville will enjoy a movie with his signature precision and history buffs will respect a film so honest in its portrayal. I can't think of a director more fitting to tell its tale. Melville gave credibility, accuracy and respect for those who lived through this terrifying time. This is one unique gem of a movie, a film that I feel blessed to have seen and absolutely deserving of movie of the year for its American release in 2006.


5 out of 5 stars "Jackasses."    April 3, 2008
J from NY (New York)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Jean-Pierre Melville's "Army of Shadows" is a brilliant, slow-moving, and crushing cinematic treatise on morals and basic decency in a time where both have become obsolete.

The French Resistance of WWII has long been a subject of historical debate (who really was a Resistance fighter against the Third Reich and who merely claims to have been? why have the numbers inordinately increased since the end of the war?) and rightly so, but Melville doesn't get into the politics of legacy: he simply presents the grim story of five people who are doing the right thing despite all the attendant dangers because they know they should.

Set in 1942, the "hero" of the film is a small, unassuming civil engineer who looks every inch the average man: played by the stout, short and slightly obese Lino Ventura, Phillipe Gerbier looks like the sort of character who would be happily working on production line and staying clear out of the Gestapo's way. He isn't. Leader of the French Resistance in France, Ventura's Gerbiere is practical minded, steely as they come, and ruthless with respect to occupying German soldiers and his fellow conspirators. Making a ferocious and very fortunate escape from torture and death at the hands of the German police by stabbing a Wermacht soldier in the neck, hiding in a barbershop to change his appearance, and then promptly having the man who betrayed him garrotted, we learn that he is not a puffy idealist about to be misled by the best of intentions.

The resistance clique know each other only so well and are as different as can be, which makes the undying bond against Hitler's government even more puzzling. One is a wild, cowboyish French soldier on leave who agrees to Resistance activity because it mighr provide him with some excitement and also, on a more distant level, because he despises the Nazi Regime. Another is a very calm, cool French clerk who wears an ironic grin on his face in nearly every scene because he is aware that doom is imminent. Then there is the most crucial of them all along with Gerbiere: Mathilde, played by Simone Signoret, is practically a living advertisement for feminism--going so far as to attempt a rescue of her two fellow resisters by dressing up as a Gestapo nurse. (British agents and presumably French resisters actually pulled stuff like this off.)

The choices one has to when facing the reality of institutional evil is the chief subject of Melville's masterpiece: these five have to make choices that would render almost anyone paralyzed. Most of these choices are about the fate of one another, which makes it even worse. The ending is unforgettable. This is by no means a happy film or even one I'd want to watch again, but it is great in the same way that an epic of Camus or
Marcel hits the reader: it reminds us that we as men and women we have choices in even the worst situations, whether we decide to face that inconvenient fact or not.