Army of Shadows
d. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969
Like the existential fiction of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre—two writers whose metaphysical discomfort hovers over this film—Army of Shadows is as familiar as it is terrifying; it’s less a dull history lesson than an unsettling, present tense account of WWII’s psychological toll. To discover the film for the first time 38 years after it was made is not only a testament to its brilliance, but also to the staggering amount of valuable films made in the late 60s.
