089 - Army of Shadows, 1969, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

089 - Army of Shadows, 1969, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.

In Cameron Crowe's 2001 remake of Alejandro Amenabar's 1997 science fiction thriller Open Your Eyes, renamed as Vanilla Sky (and starring Penelope Cruz in both films), Tom Cruise runs through an empty Times Square.

An empty Times Square.

Someone running through it.

That image alone is worth seeing.

Cameron Crowe successfully got the City of New York to shut down Times Square on an early Sunday morning for a few hours in order to get this shot.

A filmmaker clearly has pull when he can pull off a feat like that.

In 1969 Jean-Pierre Melville pulled off the equivalent feat in France.

He shut down the Champs-Élysées and had actors dressed as German soldiers march past the Arc de Triomphe.

Not only was it an equivalent challenge financially and logistically--in a city about as large and equally world renown--but also politically and emotionally.

This was not a science fiction fantasy, as Vanilla Sky.  It was a historical reality, and millions of people had died in the Holocaust.  Furthermore, Germany had invaded Paris not only in World War II, but also in World War 1, and this sort of thing had not been allowed in decades.  It was too close to home.

But Melville was at the top of his game.

And while working alone, independently of the large studios, he was still widely popular and financially bankable.  He had just made his masterpiece crime drama.  He had support.  He had money.  Now it was time to make his masterpiece Resistance film.

Philippe Gerbier is placed in the back of an enclosed truck.  It has bars in it.  A moving jail.

He sits quietly, humbly.  He listens to the small talk of his guard.

They stop.  They are at a farmhouse.  A man gets out and goes in.  Gerbier's guard explains that they are picking up some produce.  Provisions.

He is acknowledging a Black Market operation.  They are getting things off the record, under the table, below the radar.  He smiles nervously as he tells Gerbier.  Gerbier smiles in return.

The truck arrives at the internment camp.  Gerbier is taken into his barracks.  A room of Frenchmen.  In France.  Arrested under German occupation.  For being members of the French Resistance.  For saying, This is my country.

One of the prisoners has assumed command of the room.  He introduces himself to Gerbier.  Gerbier responds politely.  They are playing dominoes.  Each introduces himself.  Except for two lying on mats in the corner.  Withering.  The leader assigns Gerbier a mat in the opposite corner.  Gerbier thinks to himself, He is not stupid.  He has cornered him.  Contained him.

Gerbier befriends a young Communist.  The boy asks if he is a Communist.  No.  But he has comrades.  They hatch a plan for escape.  But before they can execute it, Gerbier is taken away.  Taken to Paris.  To the Gestapo.

In the Gestapo, he and another man are sitting on a bench.  A guard is in the room watching them.  The leader is in the other room on the telephone.  Distracted.  Gerbier tells his fellow prisoner that this is their only opportunity for escape.  Gerbier will distract the guard while the other man runs.

They sit for a long time.

Watching the guard.

The guard watches them.

They wait.  The timing must be perfect.

Gerbier has seen a knife in the guard's boot.  When he makes his move, he seizes the knife and lunges for the guard's throat.  His motion is clean and true.  He has the guard on the floor within seconds.  The boy is running.

Gerbier runs.  He exits the building.  He hears the shots of the machine guns outside the courtyard straight ahead.

He does not go straight ahead.  He turns right.  He runs.  We follow him.

Melville sits on this scene for awhile.  And it works.

Remember the opening shot of Le Doulos (1963) (086, March 27)?

The camera moves steadily on a dolly track for more than two football fields, in measured pace, moving along as Maurice Faugel walks steadily along the walkway in the underworld.

Here we move steadily alongside Gerbier's running, in hurried pace, moving as Gerbier runs determinedly down the Paris streets.  An older man.  Overweight.  Not in the best shape.  Though he was exercising yesterday morning at the internment camp.  Running for his life.

He ducks inside a barbershop.

And Faugel himself, or shall we say the actor who played Faugel, Serge Reggiani, now known simply as The Hairdresser, appears and stares at him.

What a moment.

On the filmmaking side you have two of Melville's leading men, each the star of his own gangster picture, each having carried a film on his shoulders to wide success, each having played ruthless rulers of the underworld, now together in one scene playing very different roles under very different circumstances.

The bad-boy Faugel from Le Doulos stares down the bad-boy Gu from Le Deuxieme Souffle.  A star in a supporting role.  A role without a name.  Working as a character actor.  Lending truth to a scene.

On the story side you have Gerbier in quite a predicament.  He is in his own country, in his own city, functioning as a fugitive, looking at a fellow Frenchman, wholly unsure of where his sympathies lie, completely unguarded, wholly vulnerable.  Gebier may have just ducked into a trap.  A sitting duck.

The men stand still.  Silent.  Gerbier is breathing heavily.  His whole body heaves.  He cannot hide it.  He does his best to stay calm.

The Hairdresser stares at him.  Sizes him up.  It is obvious he knows.  Something, anyway.

What do you want?

Silence.  Then--

A shave.

The Hairdresser takes him.

Seats him.

Covers him.

Lathers him.

And Gerbier the fugitive, an escaped prisoner of war in an occupied territory, can do nothing but lean back and allow an unknown man to hold a sharpened blade to his neck.

The blade glimmers in the light.

The razor strokes across his face.

An air of heaviness fills the room.

As these two great stars stand and sit respectively, and except for the motions of the shaving, they are mostly still.  And completely silent.

An amazing scene.

The Hairdresser finishes.  Gerbier pays him.  The Hairdresser goes to get his change.  Gerbier insists he keep it and tries to flee the store almost as quickly as he came.

But The Hairdresser returns with his change and with a change for him.  A khaki trenchcoat.  To replace the black one he is wearing.

Take this.

It is not much, but maybe it will help.

Whew.

The Hairdresser understands.  Sympathizes.  Helps.

Gerbier puts on the khaki coat.

Merci.

He returns into the night.

Now that Gerbier is free, he sets up shop in Marseilles.  In a talent agency.  At a dance studio.

He runs a network with three assistants--Felix, Guillaume, the Bison, and Claude, the Masque.

One of their members has betrayed them, committed treason, and they must kill him.  They are not killers.  They have never killed.  They are citizens trying to fight a war.  But they have a duty to do.  They had rented a house with an empty house beside it, so that no one would hear the gunshots.  But since then someone has moved into the adjoining house, and they cannot risk the neighbors hearing.  They must devise a way to do it quietly.  They figure it out.  It is not pretty.  They do not like it.  It is sobering.

Felix runs into a friend, Jean-Francois, in a bar.  Jean-Francois will join them.  He will take a radio through customs, ingeniously getting through, and deliver it to Mathilde, played by the great Simone Signoret.  And we will begin to see the operation come into view.

Jean-Francois will go and meet his brother Luc, a mathematician, a scholar, a man who lives a private life in a his book-lined library in his Paris mansion, a man who knows nothing about weapons, a man who has published five great volumes of mathematics, logic, and philosophy, a man who keeps himself separated from the war.

A man whom we will learn is the head of the entire Resistance.  The Chief.

And his brother himself does not know it.

And never will.

Luc must do everything covertly.

He is, after all, just a peaceful scholar.

They are so organized that they bring a submarine to the shoreline.  And Gerbier and Luc and a group of others escape France for England.

And while in London Luc will invite Gerbier to an important evening event.  Where Gerbier will need a new suit.  Tailored.  Where he will witness Luc's receiving of an award from Charles de Gaulle himself.

And in a moment that should not be overlooked, they go to the cinema.

They are at this moment free men.  In a free country.

And in the grand picture palace they see the grandest picture ever made.  The Great One.

Gone with the Wind (1939).

And as we see the light flickering on their faces, we hear the familiar chords of the epic Max Steiner score.

And we think of another occupation.  During another war.  Another army invading another land.   Living in their homes.  Burning their homes.  Killing their men.  Raping their women.  And the determination those citizens had to Resist.

They exit the theater.  And make an off-hand comment.

Maybe one day France will be free again.  And can show this movie.

Felix will be arrested.

And tortured.

Gerbier will hear about it.

And return.

The only way to return is to jump from a plane.  He has never parachuted before.  He rides in the plane.  The soldier helps him.  Another stunning scene.

Gerbier lives on an estate for awhile.  With a Baron.  And the Baron's land functions as a landing site for Resistance planes.

Mathilde now runs things.  She is practical and intelligent.  She is good and true.

They will help Felix escape.  They will go into the bowels of the prison and help him themselves.

What courage.  What commitment.

How will she do it?  Will they pull it off?

Things do not always work out for our heroes.

They are private citizens with limited resources trying to fight a war.

They approach their duties with courage.  They know that any moment they can be caught.  Any moment they can be arrested.  Any moment they can die.

And they will.

And they do.

This is an epic film.  Running 2 hours and 25 minutes, it covers a lot of ground in the lives of these people.  It is beautifully shot, in deep color, in muted tones, with sweeping cinematography, with moments of great action alternating with moments of quiet, sober-minded drama.

It is a serious film.  A beautiful film.  A journey worth taking.

It is the kind of film that exemplifies what film can do, what film is for.

It achieves what Aristotle wrote of the theatre, the ministrations of catharsis.

Melville lived it.  And in his opening statement he says that these are unhappy memories, bad memories.

"Yet I welcome you.  You are my long-lost youth."


*                              *                              *                              *                              *


With this film Melville brings back several of his stars.

Lino Ventura, who played tough guy Gu in yesterday's film Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966), returns as our protagonist Philippe Gerbier.  He really is a wonderful actor.  We will get to see him again in Louis Malle's 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows and in Claude Sautet's 1960 crime drama Class Tous Risques.  He would go on to play Jean Valjean in a 1980 version of Les Miserables.  Wouldn't you love to see that!

Paul Meurisse, whom we met originally on Diabolique (1955) and who played Gu's nemesis, Commissioner Blot in yesterday's film Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966), returns as the secret head of the resistance Luc Jardie.

Serge Reggiani, who we saw as the tough guy protagonist Maurice Faugel in Le Doulos (1963), returns as the barber, or The Hairdresser, who gives Gerbier a shave after he escapes the gestapo, and then gives him a khaki jacket to help him go out into the streets under cover.  He too played in a version of Les Miserables, in 1958, with our favored star Jean Gabin playing Jean Valjean.  We will see him again, along with yesterday's Alain Delon, in Luchino Visconti's masterpiece The Leopard (1963).

Paul Crauchet, who plays Felix, will appear in the next Melville film, tomorrow's The Red Circle (Le Cercle Rouge) (1970) and in Melville's last film Le Flic (1972), which is not available on Criterion.

Jean-Marie Robain, who played the Uncle in The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer) (1949), the headmaster in Les Enfants Terribles (1950), a poker player in Bob le Flambeur (1956), returns here as the Baron.  We will later see him in Jacques Rivette's mystery Paris Belongs to Us (1961).

Denis Sadier, who appeared in The Silence of the Sea (Le Silence de la Mer) (1949), returns twenty years later here as the Gestapo doctor.

There are others who return in smaller roles.

Jean-Pierre Cassel is new to Melville.  He plays Jean Francois Jardie, Luc Jardie's brother.  He will go on to star in Luis Bunuel's class The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and on both French and American films throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.  You may know him from Julian Schnabel's 2007 biographical drama The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

The film is anchored by France's great star Simone Signoret.  We were introduced to her in Henri-Georges Clouzot's thriller Diabolique (1955), where she played Paul Meurisse's mistress.  They reteam here as fellow members of the Resistance.  She worked for forty years in both France and America, and in 1959 she won the Oscar for her role in the British film Room at the Top.  She would be nominated again for her role in Sidney Lumet's film Ship of Fools (1965).

Here Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani are fighting the Resistance together, intimately bonded by their love of country and freedom.  Seventeen years before this film, they were dancing together in Jacques Becker's film Casque d'Or (1952), in un coup de foudre--an idiomatic expression signifying love at first sight, but literally meaning a shot of lightning.  And one could see then in Signoret's character, Marie the Casque d'Or (the golden helmet, the woman with the beautiful golden hair), and in Reggiani's character, Georges Manda, the coup de foudre at work.  As their outward expressions and physical postures remain formal to the requirements of the dance.  And their eyes, the windows to their souls, reveal the lightning that has just struck them, their lives now forever linked, their destinies intertwined, on a path on which fate will take them, and which they cannot change.  And here they are in this film, together again, seventeen years later, two great colleagues, speaking from their hearts, living in their characters, the lives of unknown French heroes, taking their courage with them silently to the grave so that others might be free.