Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 253: Tue Sep 12

The Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.20pm


This film, part of the Jean-Pierre Melville season at BFI Southbank, is also being shown on September 2nd and 30th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Pierre Melville's film on the French Resistance, L'armee des ombres (1969), drawn from a novel by Joseph Kessel. Melville is best known for his philosophical pastiches of American gangster films (Le samourai, Le doulos), and some of their distinctive rhythms—aching stillness relieved by sharp flurries of action—survive here. The film is long and episodic, strangely divided between art-house enigmas and melodramatic payoffs for the matinee crowd. The unifying theme is one of perverse nostalgia for the good old/bad old days. With Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, and Jean-Pierre Cassel.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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