Eric Breitbart
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Call Me Melville
In my opinion cinema isn’t an art form because you can’t reread things, scratch them
out and do them over again in the hope of approaching perfection. What makes a film
different from a painting, a symphony, or a book is the fact that a release print is only a
sketch.
—J. P. Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville made just thirteen feature films in an all-too-short career. Though
he enjoyed both popular and critical success in France, this stubborn, fiercely
independent director was virtually unknown in the United States when he died in 1973.
Le doulos (The Fingerman), Le deuxième souffle (Second Wind), and Le samouraï
(The Samurai), his three “série noire” films from the 1960s, did not fit the then-popular
New Wave cinema mold, and weren’t released in the U.S. until twenty years later, when
Melville’s laconic style and dark, existential worldview found a receptive audience.
Along with Bob le flambeur (Bob the Gambler, 1955), and Le cercle rouge (The Red
Circle, 1970), these films brought him critical acclaim, the admiration of directors such
as John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, and cult status as a master of that rarefied genre,
the French gangster film. Now, with the American theatrical release of L’armée des
ombres (Army of Shadows, 1969) in a beautifully restored print, and the availability of
many of his earlier films on DVD, audiences can appreciate the full range of Melville’s
artistry.
Adapted from Joseph Kessel’s novel of the same name, Army of Shadows recounts
the tragic story of five members of a Resistance network in occupied France. In the
war’s early years, the French underground was a small force—Melville estimated their
number at no more than six hundred—and their activities as depicted in the film consist
primarily of eluding the Gestapo while saving British and Canadian pilots who have
been shot down over France, and building the Resistance network by bringing in
su