``Army of Shadows" was made in 1969, between those two cinematic peaks, but it's a different film entirely: a long, realistic, unbearably sad Resistance drama in which the stakes are as high as they are unspoken. If heroes in other Melville movies struggle against fate, they fight a known enemy here. The characters are plainspoken and average-looking, given to the noble gesture because to do otherwise would be to just give in. Their heroism requires acts of savagery, though, and that's the harder fact to confront.
One of the early scenes in ``Army of Shadows" involves the murder of a traitor to the cause -- a young man whose family was in all likelihood threatened by the Nazis -- and as the Resistance cell members circle him in a quiet Marseilles apartment, they realize that none of them has murdered before. It's an awful sequence, and it needs to be, because this is what separates these men from the Germans: For them, killing another person is an unimaginably difficult act.
The leader of the Marseilles group is Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), a middle-age man who was a civil engineer before the Occupation and who looks it. As soon as we meet him, in a German POW camp where the commandant has no idea who he has captured, we see that Gerbier has the practiced eye of his profession, looking everywhere for weaknesses and leverage. Does he knowingly sacrifice another man to the Nazis so he can make his escape? It's unclear even to Gerbier, and, anyway, contingency is everything.
Back on the streets, he reconnects with other members of his organization: Felix (Paul Crauchet), who loathes the bowler hat he wears to blend in with the crowd; sensitive muscleman Le Bison (Christian Barbier); new recruits Jean (Jean-Pierre Cassel) and Le Masque (Claude Mann), the former capable and quiet, the latter enthusiastic and naive.
