Buy Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection here, one of many top quality France Classics products at DVD Dispatcher. We greatly appreciate your patronage at DVD Dispatcher and look forward to offering you great products and prices in the future.
Current Page: Home : Classic DVD Movies : France Classics : Item 7 of 125
|
|
Features
Actors: Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret, Claude Mann
Directors: Jean-Pierre Melville
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English, French, German
Subtitles: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 2
Studio: Criterion Collection
DVD Release Date: May 15, 2007
Run Time: 145 minutes
Average Customer Review:
  (23 customer reviews)
Reader Reviews
To view a Jean-Pierre Melville film is to step into a universe where real communication between men (and the occasional woman), if it exists at all, has been reduced to a few spare facial expressions. Melville's characters are deeply skeptical of social codes (which simply provide rationalizations/justifications for countless injustices), of human nature (which is mutable and unreliable), and of themselves. And since his characters are deeply skeptical of the things that usually bind people together Melville's social/human outcasts maintain some sense of self only by setting their own course according to a supra-human standard. It is human nature to seek friendship and brotherhood but in the human world no bond is ever sacred and the only inevitable thing about bonds is that they eventually break. Melville's universe is thus a fatalistic universe populated by gamblers, thieves, assassins, and resistance fighters who each recognize that the odds are against them and unbeatable. But Melville's quiet anti-heroes fascinate us because even though they do not believe that anything like victory is ever achievable in human affairs they remain curious about themselves and how they will act in different circumstances and so they persist if only to test themselves and re-affirm (perhaps only to themselves) that they are made of harder stuff than the rest of fickle humanity. There have been relatively few insightful French films about WWII. A few that come to mind are: Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943), Resnais' Night and Fog (1955), and Chabrol's Eye of Vichy (1993). Clouzot's film is especially interesting since it was made during the occupation and when Criterion released Le Corbeau they included a documentary about the French film industry during the war (and many French film makers that went on working during the occupation, Clouzot among them, were stigmatized as collaborators). During WWII Melville was not a film maker, rather he was a member of the resistance. And this credential really singles him out from the crowd especially when one considers Melville's claim that the French resistance numbered only 600. Army of Shadows is a film that makes the French uncomfortable because any film that deals with this period of French history stirs up new accusations about French complicity with the Nazi regime. In 1969 France was experiencing a whole new kind of social upheaval and in that decade that valorized the radical will and politics of film makers like Godard, Melville, and the history that Melville represented, was not particularly welcome. Ironically, Godard's late-60's radical style (what we might call his postmodern experiments in irreverence) has since been absorbed, assimilated, and adopted by the culture that it was originally attempting to overthrow; while Melville's detached realism retains its gritty contestatory spirit. Army of Shadows is a film about WWII but its not only about that. Its also about human beings confronting their own weaknesses and taking a measure of what human life really consists of. Perhaps the most fascinating equation Melville makes in the film is the equation between the philosopher king/artist and the resistance fighter; each fights a losing battle to save/protect humanity from its own self-serving impulses (what the Greeks called the fates). Melville's universe is cold and it offers no consolation save the consolation that one was one of an army of shadows that resisted the fates or fought them off in a few places for a few moments and won some small measure of transient grace from oblivion.
Comment (1) | Permalink |
function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) {
var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId);
if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) {
msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours.";
} else {
showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value);
}
}
(Report this)
|
|
Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection
List Price: $39.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $23.49
Updated on 11-27-2008.
|
dvddispatcher.com offers top quality Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection in association with leading DVD movie retail stores such as Amazon.com. DVD Dispatcher features hot deals on Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection.
![]()
|
|
Increase your websites importance by offering your visitors one-click consumer reviews and purchase reviews for "Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection" and similar Products from DVD Dispatcher. Just copy and paste the code into your page and add on-topic value to your site.
Provide a link to this product on your website:
Your Code will look like this:
Read reviews and get product information on Army of Shadows - Criterion Collection
|
|
|
|
See all 23 customer reviews...