Of the course of 2 and a half fascinating hours, Melville examines the lives of a few hopeful radicals navigating the treacherous and chaotic landscape of Vichy France. Though most of the action focuses on the career of former civil engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and his assistant Mathilde (Simone Signoret), Army of Shadows unfolds almost like an anthology film. Individual set pieces, missions and adventures coalesce into a portrait of an underground movement struggling to do some good while spending most of its time evading capture.
Melville is mainly known for outstanding crime and gangster films, like the smooth and quietly riveting Le Samourai. Though he switches genres with Army of Shadows, he brings most of his favorite techniques and characters with him. Instead of sketching the world of Parisian criminals through the point of view of a detached outsider, he examines the shadowy, uncertain world of the French Resistance with a relaxed, stoic demeanor. His cool style, defined by long takes and graceful tracking shots, perfectly matches the reserved calm of his characters. To pass unharmed and unsuspected through Occupied France, one must try to blend in whenever possible.
So well hidden are the Resistance members, many do not recognize one another as compatriots in regular society. Jean-Francois (Jean-Pierre Cassel) takes a moment off from a mission to Paris to drop in on his reclusive, academic brother Luc (Paul Meurisse) without ever realizing his sibling is the chief of the entire organization. Moving around between safehouses becomes a neccessity to evade capture. Even that does not work for long - almost every character will be caught by German or French soldiers during the course of the film. Many are tortured, some die and all are instructed to bring along cyanide capsules, just in case.
Though these are horrific, lamentable circumstances, Melville doesn't treat the film as some sort of austere remembrance of the lives lost during the war. Instead, he has made a carefully-absorbed and richly-detailed suspense picture. The individual stories that make up Army of Shadows typically have an element of intrigue and even adventure, like little mini-spy movies with a great amount of build-up and then a modest or non-existent payoff.
One relatively brief, outstanding sequence finds Gerbier and a compatriot held by German soldiers in a police station. Almost wordlessly, they devise and execute a plan of escape. Gerbier races down the street away from the station and ducks into a barbershop, where he asks for a shave from a barber who appears to have Vichy sympathies. The entire time he's being groomed, Gerbier hears the sounds from the street of Germans looking for him. Will the man give his location away? Will the soldiers think to come in the barbershop? Melville doesn't rush the sequence, preferring to take his time and let the anxiety build gradually before jumping right into the next sequence.
Following his escape from the police station, Gerbier will go to London on a quest for increased British military support. When called back to France for an emergency, he will have to parachute out of an airplane. Melville films the entire adventure in stark, matter-of-fact terms. Gerbier tries to sleep on the plane, propped up against the wall wearing his parachute and his glasses taped to his face. He hesitates for a quick moment after told to jump, staring down into the black whirl of space below. Though he's told to roll upon landing, Gerbier slams down hard on the ground feet-first. Then he packs up his gear and tosses it into a lake. Most directors would be tempted to amp up the action here, to raise the stakes in some way, but Melville has the confidence to let the sequence unfold naturally. This is a normal man who has been called upon to tackle far more danger and responsibility than most heroes could manage, and he does so without James Bond theatrics or posturing.
Because of the nature of this unconventional, multi-layered story, Army of Shadows isn't a film about traditional set-up and pay-off. The word "army" is right there in the title, but there's no war-style action to be had. The Resistance couldn't face off against soldiers - their numbers and supplies woulnd't allow for direct, open action. They had to hide out, plot quietly, execute only when they were guaranteed some kind of victory, pyrrhic or otherwise.
Most of Gerbier and his immediate partner's work concerns organization and diplomacy. On those rare occasions when violence will be involved, the agents seem reluctant, even repulsed. What seems to fascinate Melville is their drive, their ambition to succeed, which allows the members to overcome emotional and moral barriers that would have otherwise seemed inflexible. Like Le Samourai and Bob le Flambeur, films that obsess about an unspoken code of honor that unites even the lowliest of theives and murderers, Melville here explores the Code of the Agitator. Anything is allowable so long as it benefits the movement, and the only goal should be the perpetuation of the Resistance regardless of the cost in human lives.
A new restored print of Army of Shadows is playing now in New York and Los Angeles, and maybe even a few other cities as well. Pierre Lhomme and Walter Wottitz's crisp, blue cinematography has been lovingly rendered, giving the film a bright and contemporary feel. As in Le Samourai, the blanched, pastel settings evoke a sense of worn decay. This is a world that might have looked charming when new that has been weathered and allowed to sink into disrepair. These hideouts and ramshackle country headquarters, like their occupants, seem to exist constantly on the brink of total collapse, threatening at any moment to simply give way and fade into the cold forest night.
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