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ARMY OF SHADOWS
French director Jean-Pierre Melville made this story of the French Resistance in 1970, but it was only released in the U.S. this year. It's well worth the inexplicable wait—a somber and steely portrait of men and women risking their lives to make relatively small-scale gestures of defiance against France's German occupiers during World War II. The action is suspenseful, but they don't accomplish a lot beyond asserting their unimpeachable morality. Lino Ventura, one of the greatest minimalist actors, is superbly tough and taciturn in the leading role. Simone Signoret is riveting as a heroic woman forced, finally, into betraying her cause. Almost everyone in this brave little band comes to a bloody end and you're tempted to think of the movie as absurdist—except when you recall the grandeur of the behavior it recounts.
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