When watching Army of Shadows recently, I could not help comparing it to Inglourious Basterds. It might not be fair to compare Army of Shadows’s realistic portrayal of the French Resistance to the Nazi-killing fantasy, but let’s do it anyway.
There was something disorienting about the way that Quintin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds glorified violence while also portraying the enemy as a regime that glorified violence. The movie is supposed to be fun, and I understand that. I love some of Tarantino’s violent movies, like Pulp Fiction. And Inglourious Basterds had some excellent scenes, with Tarantino doing an outstanding job of portraying building tension in the opening farmhouse scene and in the scene in the bar.
But I just could not fully enjoy a movie where we were supposed to root for a sadistic character (played by Brad Pitt) against sadistic Germans when it almost seemed the Pitt character would have fit just as well in a Nazi uniform instead of a U.S. uniform had he been born in Germany.
By comparison, one cannot imagine the “heroes” of Army of Shadows working for the Nazis, even though we see those characters doing acts of violence in a much darker movie. Army of Shadows portrays members of the French Resistance in day-to-day activities to survive and continue the movement.
This film seems to show what it was really like to resist a totalitarian powerful authority like the Nazis. The individual’s struggle is to keep the resistance alive in the shadows while betrayal lurks around every corner.
There is no large-scale successful destruction of Nazis in Army of Shadows, and, in fact, you do not see any successes toward stopping the government. But the main characters are still heroic in their existential struggle to continue in spite of the appearance that everything is doomed.
In the movie, Resistance leader Phillipe Gerbier (played by Lino Ventura) speaks of facing death but might as well be speaking of the movement itself when he says, “It’s impossible not to be afraid of dying. But I’m too stubborn, to much of an animal to believe it. If I don’t believe it to the very last moment, the last split second, I’ll never die.”
The 1969 movie is directed by famed French director Jean-Pierre Melville and based upon a 1940’s novel by Joseph Kessel, which in turn was based on Kessel’s experiences in the Resistance. The book appears to be out of print, and the movie only made it to the U.S. a few years ago.
When the movie was released in 1969, French critics campaigned against it. They believed it glorified the Resistance and Pres. Charles de Gaulle (although the movie is not about de Gaulle) during a time when the president was not popular due to his reaction to a 1968 student uprising. So the film did not do well in France, and it was not released in the U.S. until 2006.
More than five million viewers have watched the trailer of Inglourious Basterds on YouTube while viewers have only seen the trailer there for Army of Shadows less than 35,000 times. After more than 40 years, it’s time to see this excellent movie you might have missed.
Bonus Subtitle Note: Yes, for you non-French speakers, Army of Shadows is in French with subtitles, and I understand the “resistance” to foreign movies. You cannot type on your computer or play with your iPhone while reading subtitles. I understand. When I put a foreign movie in my Netflix queue, I often move it down the list as it makes it way toward the top. But do not miss out on great movies like this one just because you have to read a little, and if you saw Inglourious Basterds, you made it through the German subtitles at points. If you want to read more about Army of Shadows, the Onion AV Club has a good discussion of the movie here.
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