Army of Shadows

Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineeer, is arrested for ‘Gaullist thoughts’ and leading a network of resistance fighters. He escaped while being transferred to the Paris Gestapo. Back in Marseille, he looks for the traitor who reported him. But arrests of members of his network followed, and attempts to free them were not all successful.

Adapted by Jean-Pierre Melville from Joseph Kessel’s eponynous novel, Army of Shadows is now seen as Melville’s most personal and cathartic film. Melville’s drew from his own experience of the Resistance, of cities invaded by the ultimate bad guys, the Nazis, and where you never knew who you could trust. From these dark memories, he nevertheless extracts a cold, intense beauty, as even with victims falling one after the other, the flame of the human spirit was kept alive by the heroes in the shadow.

To embody these unforgettable characters, Melville brought together the most prominent actors of French cinema at the time – Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel – for what is without a doubt one of their very finest roles.

This screening is supported by the French Embassy in Ireland and Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Dublino.