Films Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Study Guide) - Army of Shadows, Le Samourai, Le Doulos, Bob Le Flambeur, Le Cercle Rouge (Paperback)

This is nonfiction commentary. Chapters: Army of Shadows, le Samourai, le Doulos, Bob le Flambeur, le Cercle Rouge, le Deuxieme Souffle, Leon Morin, Priest, Un Flic, le Silence de La Mer, Two Men in Manhattan, Les Enfants Terribles. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 43. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Army of Shadows (French: ) is a 1969 French film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. It is a film adaptation of Joseph Kessel's 1943 book of the same name, which blends Kessel's own experiences as a member of the French Resistance with fictionalized versions of real Resistance members who fought against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. Army of Shadows follows a small group of Resistance fighters as they move between safe houses, work with the Allied militaries, kill informers, and attempt to evade the capture and execution that they know is their most likely fate. While portraying its characters as heroic, the film presents a bleak, unromantic view of the Resistance. At the time of its initial release in France, Army of Shadows was not well received or widely seen. In the wake of the events of May 1968, French critics denounced the film for its perceived glorification of Charles de Gaulle. At the time American art-film programmers took their cues from Cahiers du cinema, which had attacked the film on this basis, and so it was not released in the United States for almost forty years. In the mid-1990s Cahiers du cinema published a reappraisal of the film (and Melville's work in general), leading to its restoration and re-release in 2006. The film was greeted with critical adulation in the U.S., landing on many critics' year-end top ten lists. October 1942 in Nazi-occupied France. Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a distinguished civil engineer and the head of a Resistance netw...http: //booksllc.net/?id=3723140