The Sixteenth Bath Film Festival

The Army In The Shadows (L’Armée Des Ombres)

Perhaps the greatest film portrayal of the French Resistance, by the most underrated of French directors, this chronicles the lives of a group of Resistance fighters, depicting their furtive strategies to outwit not only the occupying Nazis but also - and most dangerously - the traitors in their own camp. Melville makes use of his own experience of fighting for the Resistance, drawing on personal memories of the methods and mind-set of the Underground to capture the spirit of the period. His mastery of suspense is strongly in evidence, as is his preoccupation with questions of honour and courage, trust and betrayal. Watching unglamourised everyday heroics under the Nazi Occupation gives us a profound sense of the courage it took to fight against the Germans and the risks that so many people ran. The cast, headed by Lino Ventura and Simone Signoret, the Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart of their day, is superb. PR/CB

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