Our heroes are Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a dour engineer, who calls the shots unless The Boss is around. He is Luc Jardie (Paul Meurisse), who appears to be a complacent middle-aged intellectual but is actually the brains of the Resistance movement. Gerbier's confederates are Mathilde (Simone Signoret), a matron with nerves of steel; Bison (Christian Barbier), a courageous but unimaginative deputy; Mask (Claude Mann), a less interesting deputy; Jean François (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a risk-taker who comes closest to the James Bond stereotype; and the hapless Lepercq (Paul Crauchet), whose early capture by the Nazis causes much angst within the close-knit Resistance.
How others will see it. This French-language film died a quick death upon its initial release in 1969. One reason for this was Free French general Charles De Gaulle makes a brief heroic appearance in the film, then controversial since he was the elected leader of France.
By 2006, De Gaulle was long dead, and Army of Shadows could finally be evaluated for what it was, a gripping wartime spy story; and not for what it wasn't, a contemporary political football. The film was painstakingly restored, and finally distributed in the United States, where it was greeted by film critics as if it were a new release. It made numerous annual "top ten" lists, and won Best Foreign Film from the New York Film Critics Circle.
At imdb.com, the user ratings are very high, especially among young adults, who give the film 8.5/10. The ratings drop with advancing age, and women over 45, a demographic that cares little about what others think of a given movie, believe the film merits only 3.3/10. Presumably they find it grim and disagreeable. It's like "Hamlet." Everyone dies.
How I felt about it. Unquestionably, Army of Shadows is a mesmerizing movie. But I have to ask, what does the Resistance actually accomplish? They rescue their confederates from prison, catch flights to and from England, kill young dufus traitor Alain Libolt, get powerful allies like blueblood Jean-Marie Robain killed, and get killed themselves, one by one. If only they had known that the Yanks would invade on D-Day the very next year, and accomplish in a couple of months what the Resistance could only dream of.
We also must accept a couple of remarkable coincidences. Jean François' wine-sipping older brother is the head of the Resistance movement? Gerbier is caught up in a Food Coupon raid as soon as Mathilde exits stage left? Top Resistance agents are risked to free Lepercq and Gerbeir? Shouldn't they be blowing up bridges and railways instead?
So what if Mathilde carries a photo of her daughter? How many teenage girls are in France? The photo presumably doesn't have the child's name on it, and either Mathilde's identity papers are false, which means the child can't be identified, or they have her actual name, in which case the Nazis would learn about the daughter anyway.
While the Resistance appears to be ineffectual, we at least admire their courage, and their unwillingness to implicate others, even under torture. But then, it is easy for them to act this way, since they are idealized fictional characters. They are how the French would have wanted the Resistance leaders to have been. My guess is that the actual leaders got much more accomplished, without the drama of cyanide pills and prison break-outs.