-
Saturday, Jun 10, 2017
6 PM (145 mins)
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BAMPFA -
Sunday, Jun 25, 2017
7 PM (145 mins)
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BAMPFA
Army of Shadows
(L’armée des ombres)
featuring
Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Simone Signoret, Jean-Pierre Cassel,
This drama of the French Resistance is Joseph Kessel’s novel translated through director Jean-Pierre Melville’s personal recollections of the period, and of course his extraordinary cinema technique. Lino Ventura stars as a member of a Resistance unit in the early years of World War II, when nobility and recklessness were called for in equal measure. He wears a suit in prison, but sangfroid masks purity of mission: he’ll give you his last cigarette or execute you, depending. In a marvelous cast, Simone Signoret stands out as a master of disguises—bomb maker, whore, old woman, collaborationist nurse, and, fatally, mother. Great escapes, intricate plotting, superb suspense in secret acts of courage: following all of Melville’s great gangster films, all the experiments in form, here is the original underworld. Army of Shadows is the Melville blueprint, revealed post-construction.
FILM DETAILS
Screenwriter
- Jean-Pierre Melville
Based On
the novel by Joseph Kessel
Cinematographer
- Pierre Lhomme
Language
- French
- with English subtitles
Print Info
- Color
- 35mm
- 145 mins
Source
- Rialto Pictures