Speaker 1: Oh is, folks, it's showtime.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie. When they
Speaker 2: go out to a theater.
Speaker 1: They want cold sodas, pop popcorn and no monsters in
Speaker 1: the projection booth.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White,
Speaker 2: Jenny once again as MS. Sam Degan.
Speaker 5: Hello.
Speaker 2: Also back in the booth is mister Andrew Leevold.
Speaker 1: I'm really happy to be here, thank you.
Speaker 2: We conclude our house August with a look at Jean
Speaker 2: Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows, ostensibly a about the French
Speaker 2: resistance in World War Two. The film stars Lino Ventura
Speaker 2: as Philippe Xerbier, one of four main resistance fighters we
Speaker 2: meet as we travel through the underworld, striking out at
Speaker 2: the German occupiers and those loyal to the Vshi government.
Speaker 2: We will be spoiling the film and World War Two
Speaker 2: as we go along. So if you don't want anything ruined,
Speaker 2: and if you don't like it when Nazis are called
Speaker 2: bad people, then this podcast isn't for you. This may
Speaker 2: be one of those though, where it's better to hear
Speaker 2: the podcast before actually watching the film. It might help. So, Sam,
Speaker 2: when was the first time you saw Army of Shadows?
Speaker 2: And what did you think?
Speaker 5: I want to say this was the film that really
Speaker 5: got me into Melville, So probably fifteen twenty years ago
Speaker 5: at this point, and I mean, I just instantly fell
Speaker 5: in love with it. It was so much darker than
Speaker 5: I think I was expecting, or than I think I
Speaker 5: was used to because a lot of World War Two
Speaker 5: films do kind of feel like propaganda, and there's some
Speaker 5: of that going on here, which I'm sure we'll talk about,
Speaker 5: but it's just so grim.
Speaker 2: Andrew, how about yourself?
Speaker 1: Pretty much the same as Sam, I think fifteen or
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, during the early phase of the Melville obsession.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what order I saw the three films,
Speaker 1: you know, like Army of Shadows and the two Elaine
Speaker 1: Delan films on either side. But for me, the film
Speaker 1: definitely solidified the fact that I was a now a
Speaker 1: committed Melville file and there was certainly no going back.
Speaker 1: There was certainly no resistance from my part.
Speaker 2: This was a new one for me. Of all the
Speaker 2: Melvilles that I've seen, I have not seen Army of Shadows,
Speaker 2: so I don't know what it was. I've watched it
Speaker 2: a few times now, but the very first time I
Speaker 2: watched it, I just said, I don't think I'm going
Speaker 2: to understand too much of this film. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to let it wash over me and then I'll think
Speaker 2: about it later, maybe about it, and then I'll come
Speaker 2: back to it. But I'm just going to enjoy this
Speaker 2: experience of being in this world. I mean enjoy quote
Speaker 2: unquote because it's so dire and it's that world, I mean,
Speaker 2: the physical world of it. I think we said this
Speaker 2: before we even started recording, just that muted tone that
Speaker 2: he's going for. I mean we saw that a little
Speaker 2: bit in the circle rouge and then we're for sure
Speaker 2: going to see that in Unfleek, and it's just, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the look of this movie is just so gorgeous.
Speaker 5: Between like how beautiful it looks and how beautiful the
Speaker 5: performances are, I feel like there is kind of this
Speaker 5: dissonance where you enjoy it and like you said, you
Speaker 5: kind of let the world of the film wash over you.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, it's it's such an unpleasant
Speaker 5: experience because it just like every scene is grim.
Speaker 1: The silence is in the film, you know, there's so
Speaker 1: much more deafening than dialogue and so much more oppressive
Speaker 1: than words that you do get the most uncomfortable breaks
Speaker 1: in dialogue where you know something terrible is bound to
Speaker 1: happen and your your mind is just kind of like
Speaker 1: filling in the blanks, and then what happens is just
Speaker 1: so much more grim. So that's fun.
Speaker 2: This whole movie seems to rely on that as far
Speaker 2: as the we're going to show you some things, we're
Speaker 2: not going to show you other things. There are so
Speaker 2: many times where, like even one of the major sequences
Speaker 2: of the film is when they're trying to break somebody
Speaker 2: out of a hospital or get somebody out of a
Speaker 2: hospital and they are all in German uniforms, and at
Speaker 2: one point, this guy I think the Bison comes in
Speaker 2: where the buffalo depends on which subtitles you read. He
Speaker 2: comes in and Simon Signori is there and as Matilda,
Speaker 2: and she's like, where'd you get the uniforms? Say that's better.
Speaker 2: I don't tell you, okay, I mean that whole how
Speaker 2: did you get the uniforms? Could have been an adventure
Speaker 2: unto itself, or there's one character where you see him
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, yeah, I think I'd be interested in
Speaker 2: this whole resistance thing, and then two scenes later it's oh,
Speaker 2: this guy's been on tons of missions. He's good to go,
Speaker 2: and we don't see any of those missions in between.
Speaker 1: And also Stani, I think it's one of those rare
Speaker 1: films that if you played it backwards it would still
Speaker 1: have an unhappy ending.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the ending would be Germans marching out
Speaker 2: of Paris because of that amazing opening shot of the
Speaker 2: Germans marching into Oh my gosh, right by the Umpty
Speaker 2: ly say the Arcta trionf having that in the background,
Speaker 2: and then to have that in the background to your
Speaker 2: point of the very final shot the Arcta trielphis in there.
Speaker 1: I know it's a beautiful book ending of the film,
Speaker 1: but you can see it through the windshields of their citrone,
Speaker 1: we assume, and it's sort of like framed within this
Speaker 1: almost like this kind of oh, what are the vehicles
Speaker 1: that you use in funerals?
Speaker 5: A hearse?
Speaker 1: Hearse? That car is almost like a hearse because you've
Speaker 1: just found out that all four people in that car
Speaker 1: are more or less being driven to their deaths.
Speaker 5: It's one of those films that would maybe be a
Speaker 5: good introduction to the actual historical events, like if you're
Speaker 5: watching it as a younger person and maybe you don't
Speaker 5: know as much about the French occupation, because I think
Speaker 5: he is able to use his genius as a director
Speaker 5: who constructs really intricate, well made thrillers into this world
Speaker 5: that feels so personal and that it's like, it's fun
Speaker 5: to think about something like this World War two resistance
Speaker 5: kind of historical film being so deeply personal for a director,
Speaker 5: but like it clearly is so personal, and both from
Speaker 5: the adaptation of the book to just the different scenes,
Speaker 5: it's like you get the sense that he lived it
Speaker 5: in a way that I think the majority of World
Speaker 5: War Two films or war films period don't have this
Speaker 5: kind of quality to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's also reconstructed his memories of World War Two,
Speaker 1: and he's put them through a kind of film nerds siev,
Speaker 1: you know, so that it's all become kind of mashed
Speaker 1: up into a big pink paste, and then he's rearranged
Speaker 1: it according to pulp fiction or genre cinema principles and
Speaker 1: quite clearly cinematic ideas that would have been prevalent in
Speaker 1: the thirty and forties when he was a young man
Speaker 1: that he is now kind of reconstructing as a as
Speaker 1: an elder of French cinema.
Speaker 5: Which is crazy to think that when this came out
Speaker 5: in France, now we think about it as such a classic,
Speaker 5: but when it came out people hated it, partly because
Speaker 5: the younger generation, who would all become part of the
Speaker 5: French New Wave, really pointed out that this was like
Speaker 5: an older model of filmmaking and therefore not in vogue
Speaker 5: and not worthy of attention. And that combined with the
Speaker 5: fact that he it's such a strange film because it's
Speaker 5: like he paints the resistance fighters individually as fundamentally heroic,
Speaker 5: and so the issue of releasing a film in the
Speaker 5: late sixties that glorified the resistance and made it seem
Speaker 5: like the majority of French citizens supported the resistance, which
Speaker 5: was not at all true. It's like a film that
Speaker 5: came at the wrong time and didn't get appreciated basically
Speaker 5: for decades. But it's even with those elements. I don't
Speaker 5: get how any of those kyaucinema writers could have watched
Speaker 5: this and thought it was a bad film, like just
Speaker 5: an insane tea.
Speaker 1: I suspect that they didn't even bother to watch it.
Speaker 1: I think they just saw the subject matter French resistance
Speaker 1: during World War Two and wrote it off after May
Speaker 1: sixty eight as old fashioned, as reactionary. And so he
Speaker 1: became redundant almost as a filmmaker overnight because his concern
Speaker 1: was with you the nineteen forties, and therefore it just
Speaker 1: wasn't cool anymore.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but it makes you want to like bend them
Speaker 5: over your knee and give them, give them a spanking.
Speaker 1: They didn't see the film because the film is anything
Speaker 1: but reactionary.
Speaker 2: They just wanted to tear down the old you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And then with like you said with May sixty eight
Speaker 2: and then the glorification of Degaull and this, you know,
Speaker 2: the big moment where Degaul gives one of the characters
Speaker 2: a ribbon. All right, this is great, but by that point, yeah,
Speaker 2: completely out of fashion, Like, don't glorify to Gaul at
Speaker 2: that point that had.
Speaker 5: Been going on for a while. But if you actually
Speaker 5: watched this in the late sixties, which you know, I
Speaker 5: was not alive for that. But I feel like you
Speaker 5: can also, even though this was not intentional on Melville's part,
Speaker 5: I think you can still draw parallels between this film
Speaker 5: and something like the Algerian War and this sense of
Speaker 5: needing to resist despite the inevitability of things like torture
Speaker 5: and death and possible defeed, and this idea of there
Speaker 5: being this overwhelming enemy that you don't necessarily know that
Speaker 5: you can overcome, but you're fighting anyway. So I yeah,
Speaker 5: I don't know. I think Andrew must be right. And
Speaker 5: they probably didn't see it or went into it determined
Speaker 5: to hate it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and tear him down. I believe. The other criticism
Speaker 1: leveled at the film at the time was that he
Speaker 1: was trying to make resistance fighters seem like gangsters, and
Speaker 1: they were like the characters that would appear in some
Speaker 1: of his earlier policia films. And I mean that's a
Speaker 1: really facile kind of argument as well, because these stories
Speaker 1: exist outside of their generic structures. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: here resistance fighters that are kind of like gangster figures
Speaker 1: in other Melville films. You've got the Gestapo who may
Speaker 1: as well be the cops or lef Flick, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And really, those those genres are just
Speaker 1: vehicles for Melville to tell his stories, to tell the
Speaker 1: those elements of tales that he himself fetishizes, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, stories of loyalty, deceit, betrayal and other big
Speaker 1: picture terms like that. And you can only really get
Speaker 1: that level of intensity within a genre such as, you know,
Speaker 1: a film about the French resistance or about the criminal underworld.
Speaker 1: So really it was just it was convenient that he
Speaker 1: was able to draw on his own past, his own
Speaker 1: sets of personal fetishes, to be able to tell a
Speaker 1: story of the resistance using these kind of underworld figures.
Speaker 5: But I do think it's appropriate because one of the
Speaker 5: criticisms at the time, and I think even into the
Speaker 5: seventies was the way that this as I think, I said,
Speaker 5: the way that this makes it seem like most French
Speaker 5: citizens were sympathetic to the resistance and participated in it,
Speaker 5: even in some kind of soft way, which as we know,
Speaker 5: is absolutely not true. But I don't know. I just
Speaker 5: I think this idea that painting resistance fighters as criminals
Speaker 5: and as gangsters, I think it's true to life, because
Speaker 5: occupations forced people into criminal activity. Like once you have
Speaker 5: something like a military occupying force, a colonial occupying force
Speaker 5: that creates a whole set of laws about what citizens
Speaker 5: can and cannot do, you drive people to crime and violence.
Speaker 5: And with the case of the French resistance, I think
Speaker 5: the people who actually got involved, I mean, as the
Speaker 5: film point out, you have once you sign up for
Speaker 5: something like that, I think they had a six month
Speaker 5: life expectancy, so you're basically signing yourself up for a
Speaker 5: death sentence, and that takes a particular type of person.
Speaker 5: And it's also, as the film I think really points out,
Speaker 5: the people who excel the most in the resistance and
Speaker 5: were able to do the most effective work were people
Speaker 5: who didn't have qualms about violence, who were able to
Speaker 5: murder people, or maybe they had military experience from the
Speaker 5: First World War that gave them that particular skill set.
Speaker 5: But you also have people who were actually engaged in
Speaker 5: criminal activity signing up. So it's like that kind of
Speaker 5: criticism that you know, he's taking these sort of revered
Speaker 5: figures of the war and turning them into gangsters. It's
Speaker 5: like they were gangsters. They're blowing up cars and trains
Speaker 5: and doing whatever they had to do.
Speaker 2: They described the Felix as a terrorist when they tried
Speaker 2: to pick him up from the hospital, and all right, yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess that would be how they'd be painted as
Speaker 2: not resistance fighters but terrorists by the system.
Speaker 5: But also I think it's important to point out not
Speaker 5: just by the Nazi occupying force, but also by a
Speaker 5: lot of the French population who were comfortable. It's like,
Speaker 5: as long as you weren't Jewish or Communist or overtly outspoken,
Speaker 5: the Nazis treated the French very differently from any other
Speaker 5: country they occupied, and I think that kind of explains
Speaker 5: why so many average French citizens were quick to turn
Speaker 5: a blind eye, because for the most part they were comfortable,
Speaker 5: which I think he does sort of get at a
Speaker 5: little bit with the film.
Speaker 1: Oh, I would also explain why Marine Lepine had such
Speaker 1: a massive swing towards her basically National Front party in
Speaker 1: the recent French elections, because once you go outside of
Speaker 1: the cities in France and you go into rural France,
Speaker 1: they're deeply conservative, deeply racist, deeply fearful of communism and
Speaker 1: other races. And so I think that decent percentage of
Speaker 1: the population would have seen the Nazis as a kind
Speaker 1: of cleansing agent of all of these decadent and disreputable
Speaker 1: influences on France back in the thirties and forties.
Speaker 5: Well, and also a cleansing influence that would remove quote
Speaker 5: unquote foreigners from the country. And yeah, it's I think
Speaker 5: there are definitely some parallels to Marine La penn But
Speaker 5: it's also kind of heartbreaking when you think about someone
Speaker 5: like Melville, who would have been seen as an outsider
Speaker 5: because he was Jewish, and the fact that so many
Speaker 5: French Jews whose families had lived there for centuries, like
Speaker 5: they were French people, they weren't outsiders. But that conservative contingent,
Speaker 5: I think is just determined to have that kind of
Speaker 5: make France great great again mentality.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because you're talking about the how people
Speaker 2: are playing along with these guys. And really, when I
Speaker 2: think about it, there's two regular citizens that they bump
Speaker 2: into that to your point, they help out. I mean,
Speaker 2: Serge Reggiani shows up. I mean that whole scene at
Speaker 2: the barber shop I think is fantastic, the whole is
Speaker 2: he going to turn me in? Is he not going to?
Speaker 2: He's got that kind of vchy poster on the wall,
Speaker 2: and you know, but then he ends up giving him
Speaker 2: the coat. And then that woman at the train station
Speaker 2: when she's going along with a Gen Francois, and then
Speaker 2: the cops. The cops at the train station, I think
Speaker 2: they're looking for stuff they can steal out of these
Speaker 2: suitcases more than anything, and what the radios just don't
Speaker 2: really interest them. And then there's the cops that are
Speaker 2: in the van with JBA at the beginning and what
Speaker 2: they were talking about how great that prison camp is
Speaker 2: because they built it for the Germans or no that, yeah,
Speaker 2: they built it for the Germans, so it's going to
Speaker 2: be really comfy and everything. And he says something about
Speaker 2: like we built it during the Phony War. Is that
Speaker 2: a World War One reference?
Speaker 5: I think it's a reference to the years before world
Speaker 5: War Two actually kicked.
Speaker 1: Off before the Vishi government took over and said, you know, welcome.
Speaker 5: There's this period in the very beginning of World War
Speaker 5: Two where the Nazis invade Austria and then they invade
Speaker 5: Czechoslovakia and that I think that's the period where World
Speaker 5: War Two had actually begun but it didn't impact France
Speaker 5: at all yet, but they set everything up assuming that
Speaker 5: battle would break out. And because like for anyone who
Speaker 5: doesn't know this history, I think it's confusing because it's
Speaker 5: easy to assume that everyone was immediately against Hitler, which is,
Speaker 5: you know, not true. Unfortunately, like you said, we will
Speaker 5: be spoiling World War Two in this episode. But the
Speaker 5: fact that the French government kind of went back and
Speaker 5: forth like yes, we have to defend our borders, but
Speaker 5: also they're not really going to attack us. How bad
Speaker 5: can it be? And so I think that period in
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty nine is the is what's referred to as
Speaker 5: the phony War. Do you think that you need an
Speaker 5: understanding of World War Two in France to really get
Speaker 5: this film, because I don't entirely. I think the way
Speaker 5: that he structures it, like Andrew has been pointing out
Speaker 5: like it's a gangster movie. It's like he does so
Speaker 5: much work building this world that I think you can
Speaker 5: go into the film knowing French people versus Nazis and
Speaker 5: you don't need to know too many other details.
Speaker 1: Well, it was for a French audience in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: you know, and most of the people who would have
Speaker 1: been watching the film would have lived through it, so
Speaker 1: they don't need context. I mean, you know, Usp Sucker
Speaker 1: is now more than fifty years after the release of
Speaker 1: the film, and I mean this film came out before
Speaker 1: even I was born. I'm feeling pretty damn old right now.
Speaker 1: The fact that there was a collaborative government, you know,
Speaker 1: the Vichy puppet government in France at the time. If
Speaker 1: you don't know that that was going on, this film
Speaker 1: might be a little confusing. It's like, who are the
Speaker 1: bad guys here? You know, I thought the French were
Speaker 1: with us man, but no. It's the great stain on
Speaker 1: the French soul that a great percentage and probably more,
Speaker 1: as Melville would have pointed out, more people siding with
Speaker 1: the Germans than with the resistance. You know, that's the great,
Speaker 1: the great shame of the country that so many of
Speaker 1: the population went, you know, who cares about the Jews.
Speaker 5: In the three decades following World War Two, no one
Speaker 5: talked about that. There's this immediate glorification of the resistance
Speaker 5: that happens basically in nineteen forty five on where there
Speaker 5: is this kind of myth that the government and French
Speaker 5: culture and French citizens build around this idea that everyone
Speaker 5: participated in the resistance. You know, the whole country was
Speaker 5: against the Nazis the whole time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you were in the Viishi government, you
Speaker 1: had a gun pointed directly at your forehead, was the idea?
Speaker 2: Oh yes, So much so that the stuff has become
Speaker 2: tropes for movies. I mean, as they're introducing La Masque
Speaker 2: and Le Bisson, I'm thinking of you know, let chocolate
Speaker 2: Moose from Top Secret, you know, just like resistance films
Speaker 2: became a subgenre of movie.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a real lost opportunity here. I
Speaker 1: reckon Phelipe Jerbier, he should have had a cool nickname
Speaker 1: like Legerbille. That would have been really boss.
Speaker 5: That would have been much more like heist movie appropriate.
Speaker 5: But this comes at an interesting time because, as I
Speaker 5: said earlier, it like French resistance movies became, like you said,
Speaker 5: such a mainstream, popular subgenre, but they feel like these
Speaker 5: really kind of stripped down adventure films that are propaganda
Speaker 5: for how great French people are. So it's like, you
Speaker 5: have this movie come out in the late sixties that
Speaker 5: it doesn't say anything bad about the resistance fighters other
Speaker 5: than the moral lengths they're willing to go to. But
Speaker 5: then right after this you have The Sorrow and the
Speaker 5: Pity come out, the great Off Fuels film, and The
Speaker 5: Sorrow and the Pity is basically like fuck everyone France
Speaker 5: did not did not support the resistance, and it's just
Speaker 5: like interesting to see them come back to back and
Speaker 5: the scandals that they both caused in very different ways.
Speaker 5: But people don't like being reminded that their shills for Nazis.
Speaker 1: I can't understand why.
Speaker 5: Well, maybe don't side with them in the first place.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe I mean the whole idea of this being
Speaker 2: a gangster film, Ian I consider, yes, this does feel
Speaker 2: like a gangster film. I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: rail against that, like no, no, no, it's not a
Speaker 2: gangster film, but yeah, it totally feels like it. And
Speaker 2: there are so many moments where it's a heist. But
Speaker 2: Melville handles heists and gangster films like no one else.
Speaker 2: So the idea of building tension. There's the whole thing
Speaker 2: of you know, helping Serbia escape, you know, that's an
Speaker 2: amazing scene, and it's basically a heist. Or trying to
Speaker 2: get Felix out of the hospital. That's basically a heist
Speaker 2: when you think about it. Even going back to the
Speaker 2: scene in the I guess the Nazis took over these
Speaker 2: grand hotels, right, and so the scene in the hotel
Speaker 2: with the two men with Serbia and the other guy
Speaker 2: that he gets sat down next to, the tension in
Speaker 2: that scene before they escape is just incredible. The editing
Speaker 2: is great, just looking at these guys faces and just
Speaker 2: wondering when is this going to happen, and then when
Speaker 2: it does, it just is crazy. And then I also,
Speaker 2: speaking of things that are left off screen, you don't
Speaker 2: know what happens to the other guy. You hear the
Speaker 2: the machine guns. I'm thinking things aren't good for him,
Speaker 2: But I love that you don't know what happens to him.
Speaker 2: He doesn't come back later in the film. You don't
Speaker 2: get these traditional moments of you know, oh, what happened
Speaker 2: to this person or this thing happened off screen? I
Speaker 2: need to see it. No, just leave it up to
Speaker 2: Melville to show the important parts.
Speaker 1: And talk about it. Reaction shots as well, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: you have your two execution scenes in the film, and
Speaker 1: they more or less bookend the action as well. And
Speaker 1: that initial scene where the collaborator is taken to a
Speaker 1: room and they're trying to shoot. They're trying to shoot
Speaker 1: the guy, but then they realize that the walls are
Speaker 1: paper thin and they might wake up the children next door.
Speaker 1: So they're arguing, you know, how are they going to
Speaker 1: kill him quietly? And they end up using a towel.
Speaker 1: But that whole execution scene is done almost entirely from
Speaker 1: reaction shots, and you could tell they're not having a
Speaker 1: good time. Oh man, Like every one of those close
Speaker 1: ups of those reaction shots are post gods of pain
Speaker 1: and regret and revulsion and moral turpitude.
Speaker 5: It's I think one of the most affecting death scenes
Speaker 5: in any film, and it's brutal to watch. Like, no
Speaker 5: matter how many times I've seen this, that scene is
Speaker 5: just brutal to watch. And I have to wonder if
Speaker 5: that was influenced by Fritzlan's Hangman Also Die, which has
Speaker 5: kind of a similar scene in it where for anyone
Speaker 5: who doesn't know that film because it is a more
Speaker 5: obscure long movie, it's another resistance film. Check Resistance. And
Speaker 5: there's similarly a scene where a resistance fighter and a
Speaker 5: Nazi get into a fight and they're trying to keep
Speaker 5: it quiet so as not to draw the attention of
Speaker 5: other police or Nazis. And it's a similar moment where
Speaker 5: there's this just like harrowing long shot where the way
Speaker 5: that the resistance fighter has to kill the Nazis by
Speaker 5: strangling them to death, and it's like long. Lets you
Speaker 5: know that like strangling someone is not quick, It takes
Speaker 5: a while, much like they do in an Army of Shadows.
Speaker 5: But the comparison always made me wonder if maybe that's
Speaker 5: what Melville was referencing a little bit, though I'm sure
Speaker 5: he also probably either lived through something like this or
Speaker 5: heard stories about it.
Speaker 1: It's all about the details as well. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can see, you can taste the fear on the guy
Speaker 1: who is blindfolded and then strapped into a chair and
Speaker 1: is waiting to die, and I mean all those people
Speaker 1: in the film. I mean, no one gets out alive.
Speaker 1: Everyone is essentially facing their own death, which is what
Speaker 1: Lindsay Anderson when talking about this film described as the
Speaker 1: essence of tragedy. You know that this is all about
Speaker 1: people facing their imminent death. And I think that the
Speaker 1: details of that scene leading up to that character's death
Speaker 1: are absolutely, like you said before, Sam, absolutely harrowing. Just
Speaker 1: those little the whimpers, you know, the cries of you know,
Speaker 1: the how of someone who knows that they're about to die.
Speaker 1: That stuff's chilling. Melville is able to put that into
Speaker 1: a movie because he knows that sound.
Speaker 2: And how smart does it to have that take place
Speaker 2: in the chair, which then you get that chair repeating.
Speaker 2: You know, that's one of the most famous images from
Speaker 2: the movie, is this back of the chair with a
Speaker 2: victim in there. And you get that scene framing, you know,
Speaker 2: twice with those guys, and then you have this chair here.
Speaker 2: Are they any better than what the Nazis are doing?
Speaker 1: They're taking turns to be the tormentor and the tormented.
Speaker 5: That's part of what makes it feel so tragic. It's
Speaker 5: not just that they're facing their deaths. It's that I
Speaker 5: Thinkville makes it much less black and white than previous
Speaker 5: French made resistance films, which really kind of polarize things.
Speaker 5: So on one hand, you have these super heroic resistance
Speaker 5: fighters and the only people that they're really ever seen
Speaker 5: to be killing are actual Nazis, Whereas in this film
Speaker 5: he gives you the sense basically from early on that
Speaker 5: the world is full of gray area, and in order
Speaker 5: to be an effective resistance fighter, you're not just killing Nazis,
Speaker 5: but you also have to be willing to kill French
Speaker 5: people who are collaborating, even if they're collaborating under duress.
Speaker 5: It's just I keep saying this, but it's brutal the
Speaker 5: way that the moral choices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also one of those moral choices is to
Speaker 1: choose to kill one of you're in a circle, and
Speaker 1: that comes at the end of the film with the
Speaker 1: execution Matild.
Speaker 5: That is one of the ultimate tragic scenes again in cinema,
Speaker 5: because she's been such a powerhouse throughout the film and
Speaker 5: Simone Signori, you know, one of the greatest actors of
Speaker 5: all time, got to be said, is so incredible in
Speaker 5: the role. But the way that it sets up, it's
Speaker 5: almost when she gives them when she's imprisoned, and she
Speaker 5: has to give them names in order to protect her
Speaker 5: teenage daughter. It's like she knows that's a death sentence,
Speaker 5: but she would rather be killed by other resistance fighters
Speaker 5: who will at least be merciful, rather than being tortured
Speaker 5: to death by the Gestapo who will then also kill
Speaker 5: her teenage daughter. It's just it's we're so removed from
Speaker 5: having to make choices like that, although watching this film now,
Speaker 5: with everything going on in Palestine, it's just like the
Speaker 5: cycle never ends. Not not to make this a more
Speaker 5: depressing conversation.
Speaker 2: Two of the people that we see murdered are the
Speaker 2: initial guy, the young guy at that house, and then
Speaker 2: Simon Signur at the end. And for me, one of
Speaker 2: the biggest tragedies is that they think that Jean Francois
Speaker 2: did something bad, rather than knowing that he turned himself
Speaker 2: in in order to try to comfort Felix and then
Speaker 2: eventually give felixes. As far as I understand the scene,
Speaker 2: give Felix his cyanide pill so that Felix can be
Speaker 2: put out of his misery. Jean Francois just is taking
Speaker 2: this major bullet for his friend, his comrade, and I
Speaker 2: just I think that's that's wonderful. And the other tragedy, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the rest.
Speaker 1: Of the comrades will never know that he died in
Speaker 1: an anonymous death at the hands of the.
Speaker 2: Guestar par No, they won't. They'll curse his name, and
Speaker 2: his brother won't know this whole thing, that his brother
Speaker 2: is basically one of the leaders of these cells send Luke.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And that wonderful scene of them eating together, the two
Speaker 2: brothers together in that little tiny it's like a house
Speaker 2: within a house.
Speaker 1: It's like your little figaboos.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that this is how they
Speaker 2: maintain their heat because they don't have any coal to burn.
Speaker 2: I thought. I love that. I love that whole idea
Speaker 2: of them being so close together in that little tiny room,
Speaker 2: but not knowing that either one is working for the
Speaker 2: resistance now and they'll never know that.
Speaker 5: That's another element that really emphasizes the tragedy in this.
Speaker 5: Like so often in classical tragedy things, something that moves
Speaker 5: the plot forward is this failure to communicate basic things
Speaker 5: that would resolve everything. And it's not necessarily here that
Speaker 5: it would resolve everything, but the secrecy required and the
Speaker 5: fact that people can't have really any kind of emotional
Speaker 5: intimacy at all without putting someone directly at risk of
Speaker 5: death or torture or imprisonment. It's like, how do you
Speaker 5: continues society in this type of situation where everything is
Speaker 5: compromised and everything is kind of put on pause. The
Speaker 5: way that people know how to relate to each other.
Speaker 5: It's he's really great. I think it depicting that kind
Speaker 5: of tragedy of communication and tragedy of just like human drama.
Speaker 5: It's not just that you have to make these moral
Speaker 5: choices to commit violence or not, but also that you
Speaker 5: have to kind of be in this little bubble that
Speaker 5: no one else can touch. It's such a lonely film
Speaker 5: and no.
Speaker 1: Room for sentiment or love of any kind. You know,
Speaker 1: when Matil brings out the photograph of her daughter, you
Speaker 1: know that that's going to be her weak spot. Jerbier
Speaker 1: knows that it will probably bring her down. He says,
Speaker 1: get rid of the photo now, probably knowing that she
Speaker 1: won't out of sentiments, you know, out of love and loyalty,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being the thing that sends it
Speaker 1: to her execution.
Speaker 2: After they rescue Gerbier, and there's that little moment in
Speaker 2: the back of the car where she grabs his hand. Oh,
Speaker 2: so wonderful, just that little bit of human contact. Just
Speaker 2: it's so great. His whole thing too, where he's angry
Speaker 2: that he's been rescued. He did not want to run
Speaker 2: from the Nazis, you know, being held in that prison,
Speaker 2: and that he's so angry, I think at himself, angry
Speaker 2: at them for rescuing him. He's just had it at
Speaker 2: that point. And I don't think that has to do
Speaker 2: with him not getting a cigarette. That whole sequence is
Speaker 2: fucking amazing, where we've got Yourbia with this pack of cigarettes,
Speaker 2: and rather than take one himself, he passes it to
Speaker 2: the next prisoner. And I just love that editing pattern
Speaker 2: of just moving from one person to the next, and
Speaker 2: then you go back when they get the lighter. And
Speaker 2: then after they come all the way around to your
Speaker 2: BA again where he doesn't have his cigarettes. The guy
Speaker 2: previous to him had the last one, and then you
Speaker 2: do those little push ins on all of those guys
Speaker 2: as they're lighting their cigarettes, and you just know these
Speaker 2: all these guys are doomed.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, That's where Melville is best able to convey love
Speaker 5: and affection is in these silent gestures of sacrifice and loyalty,
Speaker 5: whether it's you know, Jean Francois really taking a bullet
Speaker 5: to give him that cyanide capsule, or these little moments
Speaker 5: with the cigarettes. It's it just I think he's unable
Speaker 5: to convey regular sentiment in any of his movies in
Speaker 5: a way that feels like warm and fuzzy and sort
Speaker 5: of typical mainstream cinema, but he so often does it,
Speaker 5: especially showing these sort of bonds of loyalty between men
Speaker 5: through moments of sacrifice, which I think is especially why
Speaker 5: it's unusual in his films have a character like Matilda
Speaker 5: at all. I mean, one of the biggest criticisms lobbed
Speaker 5: against him as a director is that he can't do
Speaker 5: women characters. He so infrequently has them in major roles
Speaker 5: in his crime films, But here, I think she's such
Speaker 5: an important balance to everything that's going on that, like,
Speaker 5: I can't imagine the film without her character and the
Speaker 5: way that she represents that kind of inability to stop
Speaker 5: being human. It's like she loves her daughter.
Speaker 1: I think you could argue that she is the soul
Speaker 1: of the movie. Certainly, the moral backbone of the film
Speaker 1: and that every everyone else kind of is able to
Speaker 1: weave a sort of sinewy dance around a moral compass,
Speaker 1: but she is the moral compass.
Speaker 2: I didn't look at the time code when this happens,
Speaker 2: but it takes a long time for her to come
Speaker 2: into the story, like we are introduced to so many
Speaker 2: things before we're introduced to her. And I just really
Speaker 2: appreciate what Melville was doing when it came to the
Speaker 2: structure of this, because we should probably say that the
Speaker 2: Cassell book also author of Belle deo Joure, another film
Speaker 2: that we've talked about on here. I mean, it's similar
Speaker 2: in that there's a lot of vignettes and just kind
Speaker 2: of fragments of stories and little bits and pieces of things,
Speaker 2: because that's really what Melville was doing with this. I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a lot of vignettes, but each one feels
Speaker 2: like it leads to the next one. It doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like it's just random scene. It's like, oh, here's a
Speaker 2: day in life of a resistance fighter. It feels like
Speaker 2: everything adds to the next thing, and that he's able
Speaker 2: to inform it to your point from earlier, He's able
Speaker 2: to inform it with his own life that when he's
Speaker 2: reading this Cassell book, he's basically, oh, yeah, I knew
Speaker 2: that guy. Oh I've had a beer with that, you know,
Speaker 2: just was able to put his own life into this.
Speaker 2: Like you said, this is definitely, I think one of
Speaker 2: his most personal films, and this is the one where
Speaker 2: you get the closest to kind of cracking that nut
Speaker 2: of that. Even though there have been now I think
Speaker 2: at least read documentaries about Melville, he still seems so
Speaker 2: inscrutable so often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this film is certainly not bogged down by
Speaker 1: facts of any kind.
Speaker 2: No, no, don't let those get in the way.
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate fictional docudrama, really, if you break break
Speaker 1: it down that way.
Speaker 5: It's also such an interesting companion piece. So this comes
Speaker 5: pretty late in his career. It's his I think he
Speaker 5: only made two films after this, and it very much
Speaker 5: feels like the work of a mature director, Like I
Speaker 5: can't imagine someone young making this film, like either the
Speaker 5: content or the formula of it based, but he didn't
Speaker 5: make like I think it would be easy to see
Speaker 5: him as someone who was so invested in the war
Speaker 5: and that time in his life that maybe he would
Speaker 5: just make a bunch of World War two films, but
Speaker 5: the fact that they really only bookend his career with
Speaker 5: the exception of Leon Moran, which is sort of in
Speaker 5: the middle. This is the total opposite film of Las
Speaker 5: Sillons de la Maire, which was his first film and
Speaker 5: is also a World War two drama about this father
Speaker 5: and daughter whose house in the French countryside is requisitioned
Speaker 5: and this young Nazi officer comes to live with them
Speaker 5: and they don't fucking talk to him for the entire movie.
Speaker 5: But it's it's almost like this quiet, tragic chamber drama
Speaker 5: that's played out in these monologues where he talks to
Speaker 5: the family every night, even though they don't want to
Speaker 5: talk to him, And this is the total opposite film
Speaker 5: of that, But they both ill personal in such different
Speaker 5: ways that it's like, I don't know, it makes me
Speaker 5: wish that he could have made twice as many films
Speaker 5: because he's just such a genius.
Speaker 1: Well, there's what around twenty years between those two films
Speaker 1: between In Silence of the c.
Speaker 5: And exactly twenty years. One is nineteen forty nine, one
Speaker 5: is nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he's had twenty years to brood about things
Speaker 1: and to become increasingly jaded and cynical and world we
Speaker 1: weary and basically a cranky old Frenchman who's you know,
Speaker 1: railing against not just a classical cinema but also these
Speaker 1: you know, new wave upstarts. A guy who is independent
Speaker 1: of everyone, you know, an independent filmmaker who just wants
Speaker 1: to be left alone to make the films he wants
Speaker 1: to make, which is why I love Melville. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's basically me.
Speaker 5: I mean, his his ethos very punk in a lot
Speaker 5: of ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so completely idiosyncratic in the way that he
Speaker 1: pieces together these films from fragments of memories of his
Speaker 1: own life but also of the movies that he was
Speaker 1: watching when he was a young man. And that relationship
Speaker 1: to cinema is so beautifully encapsulated in that moment where
Speaker 1: he's in London and he sees the billboard for Gone
Speaker 1: with the Wind behind him on the Marquee on a
Speaker 1: theater in London, and he says, when we see this
Speaker 1: in Paris, we know that we'll be free, or something
Speaker 1: like that, And so he is still able to relate
Speaker 1: a moment like that back to cinema, which I think
Speaker 1: is emblematic of his relationship with his chosen art form,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 5: Think it also is what makes someone like you know,
Speaker 5: all three of us probably feel a very special connection
Speaker 5: to him, because he's not just a director making movies.
Speaker 5: He's someone whose entire life and many life experiences are
Speaker 5: framed in relation to things he watched and movies that
Speaker 5: gave him a particular feeling. Like I think a lot
Speaker 5: of his love of cinema helped him process things like
Speaker 5: war trauma, which is why he's so drawn to these
Speaker 5: more violent subgenres. And to have a director like that
Speaker 5: who's so outside of the system, and I think if
Speaker 5: you're not as familiar with his work, it might not
Speaker 5: immediately be obvious that he pretty much told mainstream French
Speaker 5: cinema to fuck off by going outside of it entirely
Speaker 5: starting his own studio, Like who does that in the
Speaker 5: immediate years after the war ended in the rubble of Paris, Yes,
Speaker 5: in the rubble of Paris and combining elements from American
Speaker 5: films in a way that nobody else in France was
Speaker 5: doing at the time, which is why I think it's
Speaker 5: especially rude to have all these young upstarts treat him
Speaker 5: like he's one of those cinema of quality directors, like
Speaker 5: none of them would have had careers without him.
Speaker 1: But also remember where he was seeing all of these
Speaker 1: formative film experiences, and that was when he was in
Speaker 1: London during World War Two. He wouldn't have had access
Speaker 1: to all of those hard boiled American film noirs or
Speaker 1: pre pre noirs of the nineteen thirties if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the fact that he was stationed in London during
Speaker 1: World War Two on behalf of the Resistance. So that
Speaker 1: period of forty two to forty four is basically shaping
Speaker 1: his movie taste. In that very same period that he's
Speaker 1: depicting an army of shadows with that billboard on the
Speaker 1: theater behind him in London, So I thought that was
Speaker 1: kind of neat too, and it's almost like a nod
Speaker 1: to his exponential growth is a cinophile thanks.
Speaker 5: To the war, which is a wild thing to fold
Speaker 5: into a movie like this, or even to just have
Speaker 5: subtle references to it, because I think it does remind
Speaker 5: you that even though the war was going on and
Speaker 5: it went on for over six years, for a lot
Speaker 5: of people, especially in Central Europe, it went on even
Speaker 5: longer than that, but it kind of gives you the
Speaker 5: idea that life continues on even if you're fighting with
Speaker 5: the Free French Army, or even if you're in the
Speaker 5: resistance and finding those moments to connect with something beautiful
Speaker 5: like cinema. It's what keeps a lot of people going
Speaker 5: or dance.
Speaker 2: That whole scene with the Benny Goodman song, I mean
Speaker 2: he goes in and gets see the people kissing and dancing,
Speaker 2: and then the way that the camera shakes, and then
Speaker 2: you know the dust coming down from the ceiling, and.
Speaker 1: They keep on dancing. They keep on dancing, and you
Speaker 1: know that they ain't going to be dancing for too
Speaker 1: much longer. You know the lights are going to go
Speaker 1: out and they're going to be making little war babies.
Speaker 5: I mean, France has survived somehow, right.
Speaker 1: France.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead and take a break and
Speaker 2: play an interview with Jeanette Vincendu, author of Jean Pierre
Speaker 2: Melville and American in Paris. Right after these brief messages.
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Speaker 2: Next Time, I wanted to compliment you on your audio
Speaker 2: commentary for Army of Shadows. I thought it was fantastic
Speaker 2: and just so packed with information and so well timed
Speaker 2: with the action of the actual movie itself. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for doing that well.
Speaker 7: Thank you, And in fact, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 7: I haven't listened to it again, so I hope I'm
Speaker 7: not going to contradict myself. But when I did the
Speaker 7: a number of those Melville commentaries, it's such an enormous
Speaker 7: amount of work that now when people ask me, I'm
Speaker 7: very tempted to say no, because precisely because I always
Speaker 7: do it in such a way that it's timed exactly,
Speaker 7: you know, so that I've seen so many commentaries where
Speaker 7: just people just say, oh, you know, he's now he's
Speaker 7: entering the room, and you think, yes, okay, I can
Speaker 7: see that. So I was trying to and it's very
Speaker 7: interesting exercise because in some cases you have a lot
Speaker 7: of things happening, you know, in a few seconds, and
Speaker 7: it's very hard to cover everything. And in other times,
Speaker 7: obviously you have you know, long moments, so then you know,
Speaker 7: I use those for giving historical background for example, or
Speaker 7: details about the reception of the film or something too.
Speaker 7: So that is not just simply duplicating what people can see,
Speaker 7: you know, unless you're actually saying something about, you know,
Speaker 7: the way they come into the room or something. So
Speaker 7: but thank you very much, And as I say, I
Speaker 7: hope I'm not going to contradict myself. Although of course,
Speaker 7: seeing it again quite a few years after I worked
Speaker 7: on this book, it's now I was quite shocked to
Speaker 7: seece twenty years more than that year since I wrote
Speaker 7: this book. So it's obviously I've seen the film in
Speaker 7: the meantime, but it's you know, not to work on.
Speaker 7: So it's kind of seeing it again, you know, you
Speaker 7: you know, you move on, and obviously I think a
Speaker 7: lot of the things I you know, I reread my
Speaker 7: chapter in the book and you know, agreed with myself
Speaker 7: more or less, but I yeah, it's you know, something
Speaker 7: suddenly you perceive, you know, slightly differently.
Speaker 2: You've done so much research, or you probably had to
Speaker 2: do so much research just on the French resistance movement,
Speaker 2: because obviously we're too young to have lived through all
Speaker 2: of these things. How much is that taught when it
Speaker 2: comes to being in school even or is it just
Speaker 2: kind of glossed over?
Speaker 7: Well, it really depends on your age, and and yes,
Speaker 7: that's right. I was born after the war, and throughout
Speaker 7: my childhood and at school it wasn't talked about very much.
Speaker 7: And I also noticed that when I was young, people
Speaker 7: around me never talked about it. And as you know,
Speaker 7: there was a kind of explosion after May sixty eight,
Speaker 7: roughly just after the moment when La Medison was made,
Speaker 7: people started talking much more about what had happened in
Speaker 7: the war, and especially the less glawous aspects. Because straight
Speaker 7: after the war there's a moment when, of course there's
Speaker 7: a lot of writing and a few films about the
Speaker 7: glories of the resistance, and then it's sort of it
Speaker 7: doesn't disappear that, you know, a number of films are
Speaker 7: made that refer to it, but it's quite muted. And
Speaker 7: I think that corresponds to the fact that in society
Speaker 7: in general. People just didn't want to know. And when
Speaker 7: in the I was very struck in the early seventies,
Speaker 7: for example, and you know, I was a student and
Speaker 7: I was no longer at school, and all these great
Speaker 7: works like Robert Paxton's book in particular about VC France
Speaker 7: came out and people started talking about the occupation. And
Speaker 7: my parents, for example, who they lived in farms in
Speaker 7: the west of France when they were young, and suddenly
Speaker 7: there was talking about or you know, this farmer, everybody
Speaker 7: knew that he gave food to the Germans. He's sold
Speaker 7: on the black market. This one everybody knew. They were resistors.
Speaker 7: And I said, well, you never talked about that before,
Speaker 7: and they said no, you know, just nobody was interested.
Speaker 7: They didn't want to They wanted to forget. I think
Speaker 7: there's also this kind of oblivion. Often his criticize people saying, well,
Speaker 7: you know, French people did want to come to terms
Speaker 7: with it, and there is some truth in that. I
Speaker 7: also think that there's a kind of natural phenomenon of
Speaker 7: wanting to move on and forget those ghastly four years
Speaker 7: of the German occupation for French people, and people in
Speaker 7: my family were like very typical that they were in
Speaker 7: occupied region and yes, they said, you know, there were
Speaker 7: everybody was divided. So nah, I think it's very different.
Speaker 7: And for example, my father when he passed away recently,
Speaker 7: but when he was in his seventies, he would go
Speaker 7: around schools and talk to children, I mean with other
Speaker 7: former people, and I mean he was very young during
Speaker 7: the war. He was I think, you know it just
Speaker 7: joined at the end of the war and he was
Speaker 7: in the Air Force, but he would go round to
Speaker 7: talk to school children in the nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties
Speaker 7: and so on, and you know, so that's that's the
Speaker 7: kind of what's happened at a larger scale in the country.
Speaker 7: So as a child, no, it wasn't taught. Now it's
Speaker 7: very different and there's much more awareness of it.
Speaker 2: It feels to me as an outsider that perceptions of
Speaker 2: that whole period change over the years. Things like Sarah
Speaker 2: and the Pity really kind of recast everything, and just
Speaker 2: the pendulum swings back and forth when it comes to
Speaker 2: impressions of that era.
Speaker 7: You're right, And of course you mentioned The Store and
Speaker 7: the Pity, which is clearly a film which talks about
Speaker 7: how the majority of people were not in the resistance,
Speaker 7: nor were they out and out collaborators, but they were
Speaker 7: what was called atonics. They were just living and waiting
Speaker 7: for things to come to an end and just living
Speaker 7: every day life. And of course in countries that were
Speaker 7: not occupied, for example in the UK, there's often a
Speaker 7: very critical attitude towards that. But I think on a
Speaker 7: day to day basis, it's very difficult to decide what
Speaker 7: is resistance, what these collaborations in some cases. I think
Speaker 7: another aspect that has changed enormously is the perception of
Speaker 7: the Holocaust, because when you see the Soul in the Pity,
Speaker 7: they're talking about the German occupation of France. But still
Speaker 7: the question of anti Semitism, the Vichy government attitude towards
Speaker 7: the Jews and its collusion with the Germans in sending
Speaker 7: people to the count all that is still very much
Speaker 7: kept on the cover, and you have to wait until
Speaker 7: you get to films like Showa you know later where
Speaker 7: sort of as it were, the last taboo becomes much
Speaker 7: more talked about. So it's a very long process and
Speaker 7: it's taken decades, but it is very striking in France
Speaker 7: is that wherever you look, there's always that sense of division,
Speaker 7: that some people were denouncing the Jews to the police,
Speaker 7: others were saving them. Some people resisted and some people didn't.
Speaker 7: There's you know, it's very easy to judge from outside.
Speaker 7: I think one thing, but of course I would have
Speaker 7: been on this side of that side. I think experience
Speaker 7: shows that it's always much more muddled and complicated. But
Speaker 7: of course this is not what you see in a
Speaker 7: film like Army in Shadows, which takes a very definitive
Speaker 7: view of the period and view that I think it's
Speaker 7: very interesting and very historically located as well.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: It must have been a lot for you to look
Speaker 2: at Cassell's book and see how it was changed by Melville,
Speaker 2: and then compare that even to kind of the historical record,
Speaker 2: to weide your way through all of these different impressions
Speaker 2: of the actual time period.
Speaker 7: Yes, I mean sure, the F. K. Cell's book is
Speaker 7: very interesting because it's more it really is a collection
Speaker 7: of anecdotes that are very loosely put together, and Melville
Speaker 7: turned it into a tighter narrative with the hero RBA
Speaker 7: sort of running through all the anecdotes. And that being said,
Speaker 7: I was very interested watching the film again last week
Speaker 7: that I suddenly was more aware of this kind of
Speaker 7: episodic nature. There's a kind of epic quality to the
Speaker 7: film and the sense of heroism and the sense of purpose.
Speaker 7: At the same time, it's all very fragmented and quite ambivalent,
Speaker 7: and I think that comes partly from the Caselle book.
Speaker 7: But at the same time, what Kesel and Melville shared
Speaker 7: was of course kind of reverence for the Resistance, and
Speaker 7: of course Ksell's book was written much earlier, and I
Speaker 7: think was part of this kind of the idea, sort
Speaker 7: of very much based on the personal experience for people
Speaker 7: telling their story. And Melville, when he made the film,
Speaker 7: was very keen on authenticity. Decided that, you know, we
Speaker 7: must tell it how it was. And according to Melville
Speaker 7: in interviews, every anecdote in the film, every episode, sometimes
Speaker 7: quite difficult to believe that such a thing actually took place,
Speaker 7: and yet he says everything was absolutely genuine. It happened
Speaker 7: to one person. Of course, it didn't happen to the
Speaker 7: same person as you see in the film, but nevertheless,
Speaker 7: it's it's very much part I think of that search
Speaker 7: for authenticity, for recreating the experience of the resistance and
Speaker 7: the German occupation, Army in the Shadow was Melvie's third
Speaker 7: film about the war, because he made Lucie lance de
Speaker 7: la Maire soon after the war, which is based also
Speaker 7: on the book by a great figure of the resistance, Verco,
Speaker 7: and then in the sixty early sixties he made Leon
Speaker 7: moreen Prette, which is based on a book by Betris Beck,
Speaker 7: which is also an autobiographical story. So it's interesting that
Speaker 7: all three films that Melville made about the resistance, which
Speaker 7: he himself had been part of, were based on other
Speaker 7: people's views, but people who belong to the resistance and
Speaker 7: whose heroism and whose personal views cannot be doubted. So
Speaker 7: I think that's the first thing that's important, is this
Speaker 7: sense of genuine ness of authenticity, that which was very
Speaker 7: important to Melville at the time when he made the
Speaker 7: film sixty nine.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, though, that you do point out that all
Speaker 2: of the protagonists are all older people rather than possibly
Speaker 2: what they would have been in that time period. It's
Speaker 2: almost like taking a look at it from nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: nine perspective.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, when one looks at the earlier films about the
Speaker 7: Resistance that were made in the immediate period, there's often
Speaker 7: the figure of the resistance is a very young man
Speaker 7: in a leather jacket performing kind of great feat of action.
Speaker 7: And by the time of La Medism of Army Shadows
Speaker 7: in nineteen sixty nine, yes, these are older men. Certainly
Speaker 7: the hero Gerbier, who is played by Leno Ventures. One
Speaker 7: guess the sense that these are the heroes of the
Speaker 7: Resistants who lived when they were young and twenty five
Speaker 7: years later are still there to kind of testify for it.
Speaker 7: And the same thing with Lukexardi, the character played by
Speaker 7: Paul Maurice, who is the head of the whole network
Speaker 7: that we see, and in fact we also see in
Speaker 7: the film a character called Colonel Passi, which was his
Speaker 7: resistance name, who plays himself, who had been in London
Speaker 7: with genealder Gold during the war. And one sees the
Speaker 7: film nineteen sixty nine and we see this man, we
Speaker 7: realize he would have been a very young man in
Speaker 7: twenty five years earlier, because he doesn't look that old.
Speaker 7: So that's why it's the sense of these people reflecting
Speaker 7: like Melville himself. And when the film came out in
Speaker 7: nineteen sixty nine was just after Geneval de Gold had
Speaker 7: left power. He'd been pushed at by a referendum after
Speaker 7: ME sixty eight event, And of course the goal is
Speaker 7: the great hero of the resistance, and the great hero
Speaker 7: has portrayed also in the film. And when the film
Speaker 7: came out, a lot of people criticized Melville for having
Speaker 7: made a goalist film, And to me, that is a misreading.
Speaker 7: And I think it's easy, of course for us to
Speaker 7: see that now, because it is a film to the
Speaker 7: glory of the resistance and the glory of Genehalde Gold.
Speaker 7: It's also extremely ambivalent. It's an extremely dark film. It's
Speaker 7: very pessimistic. Everybody dies at the end that it's almost
Speaker 7: like all this heroic action was for nothing. So it's
Speaker 7: and that, of course what makes the film so rich
Speaker 7: and interesting. But I think it probably I wouldn't blame
Speaker 7: too much people at the time for not perceiving it,
Speaker 7: because at the moment when de gaul had gone, France
Speaker 7: had been through the Mesic th eighty event, everything was
Speaker 7: about youth and change, and suddenly there was this monument
Speaker 7: to the great glory of the of the resistance. But
Speaker 7: when one looks closely at the film, one sees that
Speaker 7: it's a very dark film. It's almost morbid it's it's
Speaker 7: extremely dark, and of course it's not unlike other films
Speaker 7: by Melville, including his gangster films. But so one has
Speaker 7: to temper the view that this is a film to
Speaker 7: the glory of the Resistance. It's to its glory, but
Speaker 7: also there is a sadness about it. It's a tribute
Speaker 7: and yet also a lament for it.
Speaker 2: I think it's not a sexy film. It's not splashes
Speaker 2: of color. I mean, it's so cold. I love how
Speaker 2: Melville was making those black and white films and color
Speaker 2: and just gives you that He keeps you at arm's
Speaker 2: length with so much of it.
Speaker 7: Yes, it's a film where it's almost like permanent winter.
Speaker 7: We begin the film with our two beginnings. The first
Speaker 7: one is German soldiers marching down the chans Lys with
Speaker 7: in the background very early in the morning when it
Speaker 7: was shot, so the light is quite a sort of
Speaker 7: blue gray. And then we move on to an even
Speaker 7: darker scene with somebody lenovent rade hero being taken away
Speaker 7: to camp and the policeman gendarme driving the vans stop
Speaker 7: at the farm and they step in the mud. The
Speaker 7: first thing, the driver comes out of the van and
Speaker 7: steps in the mud, it's raining, it's dark, and this
Speaker 7: is almost the way that we're going to have all
Speaker 7: the way through the film. So it's like, yes, it's
Speaker 7: it's dark in winter, it's often at night or as well,
Speaker 7: and it seems to rain and be cold all the time.
Speaker 7: I think when you say it's not a sexy film,
Speaker 7: I don't know if you had that in mind as well,
Speaker 7: that of course it's a very masculine film, and and
Speaker 7: there's ontainly one female or one woman Mattile played by
Speaker 7: Simon Signor, And it's a film which sort of bizarre
Speaker 7: everything seemed to be sucked away from the film. Absolutely,
Speaker 7: so I think, yes, I would in a way, I
Speaker 7: would agree with you.
Speaker 2: I know you talked about this on the commentary as
Speaker 2: well as your book. But what was the relationship like
Speaker 2: between Melville and Tenture at this time?
Speaker 7: They had not got along and it's well this started
Speaker 7: in an earlier film that Melville made with which is Lusiamsuf,
Speaker 7: in which their relationship deteriorated because Melville was somebody's very
Speaker 7: demanding with his actors. Whatever feeling was between the two men,
Speaker 7: and Val is absolutely magnificent on screen, and he's somebody
Speaker 7: who you know, in a way stepped in the shoes
Speaker 7: of Jean Gabbard in you know, in previous roles. And
Speaker 7: and his performance style is really what Melville is after,
Speaker 7: because it's a very minimalist, very sober performance, very interiorized.
Speaker 7: He almost leaves lets nothing out. And this kind of cold,
Speaker 7: apparently emotionless performance is of course what he's after. So
Speaker 7: I think that in that respect, the Louvre's performance in
Speaker 7: Lamidis own it's on the par with Alan Delan in
Speaker 7: the Samurai with de Lanort again, or Ive Montan for example,
Speaker 7: in the Circle, the Red Circle, all this kind of
Speaker 7: very interiorized, internalized masculine performances where masculinity is defined not
Speaker 7: by spectacular action, but but this kind of the solidity
Speaker 7: of the presence. And and and I think Vaturra is
Speaker 7: absolutely brilliant at the center of the film. So yes,
Speaker 7: he and the director didn't get on all that well,
Speaker 7: but for our benefit it doesn't matter, because on screen
Speaker 7: he gives kind of perfect performance.
Speaker 2: All the performances are just so solid. But Signor, I
Speaker 2: really like her, and I believe that you said something
Speaker 2: that she's not on screen very much, but her presence
Speaker 2: just goes throughout so much of the film.
Speaker 7: Yes, so Simon Signor is a wonderful choice for Matthilde
Speaker 7: as the only female presence. This is Simon Signore already
Speaker 7: aging as an aging woman and for most of the film,
Speaker 7: except there's a moment when she dresses up as a prostitute,
Speaker 7: she's trying various disguises for a particular action. She's an
Speaker 7: actress who was very, very beautiful in her youth, and
Speaker 7: suddenly it quite quickly loves that beauty, and unlike most actresses,
Speaker 7: especially at the time, who would then disappear from the screen,
Speaker 7: Signor managed a really wonderful second career playing those figures.
Speaker 7: As she does play mattive with a huge presence, and
Speaker 7: in a way I would say she echoes Lenoventire's performance
Speaker 7: because she is also an actress who is not particularly
Speaker 7: demonstrative with her gestures or facial expressions, but the strength
Speaker 7: of her face and her eyes is such that she
Speaker 7: imposes her personality the minute we see her on screen.
Speaker 7: She is also when my favorite scene in the film,
Speaker 7: which is a very spectacular one, is the one where
Speaker 7: she and two of the men in the in her
Speaker 7: network try to retrieve Felix and not who's been arrested
Speaker 7: at the gest from the Gestapo compound where he's healthy
Speaker 7: after having been tortured, and the entire scene is played
Speaker 7: in silence, there's no dialogue. She's as a nurse, she's
Speaker 7: being driven by her friend who are two of her
Speaker 7: the members of the network who are disguised as German soldiers,
Speaker 7: and she's disguised as a nurse. But the tension is
Speaker 7: of course extreme in that scene because of course with
Speaker 7: fear for them for to be discovered as French in
Speaker 7: German disguised. But also her presence I think is very
Speaker 7: central too, is central to the to the scene. I
Speaker 7: think she also brings signor she was too young during
Speaker 7: the war and was not particularly involved in the resistance herself. However,
Speaker 7: after the war with ve Montane, she as a couple
Speaker 7: that were very much involved in politics, in left wing politics.
Speaker 7: So in a sense, although she doesn't bring her own
Speaker 7: experience in the resistance, she does bring a kind of
Speaker 7: moral conscience which is very powerful I think through that
Speaker 7: very minimalist performance.
Speaker 2: He talked about how the film wasn't well perceived in
Speaker 2: France when it came out, but I'm curious how it
Speaker 2: was received in other countries, if you're aware of that.
Speaker 7: Mervin in general is a filmmaker who was very, very
Speaker 7: popular in France in the sixties, and some of these
Speaker 7: films were exported, but critically speaking, his reputation suffered towards
Speaker 7: the second half of the sixties and later, as he
Speaker 7: was perceived as a commercial director and also a conservative director.
Speaker 7: And this film when it came out, was considered by
Speaker 7: most reviewers, certainly in France, as a goalies film, as
Speaker 7: a right wing film, as a film which was out
Speaker 7: of step with the time. And I think that's the
Speaker 7: reputation in the film had, And it took several decades
Speaker 7: for Melvy's reputation to be reclaimed and for the brilliance
Speaker 7: of the films of the film, all his films to
Speaker 7: be recognized more widely. And then of course he became
Speaker 7: a figure of admiration by directors like Quentin Tarantino, John
Speaker 7: Wayne Hong Kong and had a much bigger international reach
Speaker 7: than he did at the time. So I think it's
Speaker 7: the change in the reception of this film is more
Speaker 7: generally the change in Melvy's own reception from great success
Speaker 7: in the early part of the sixties, then the kind
Speaker 7: of waning and a lot of criticism for his politics
Speaker 7: which were perceived as conservative and gaullist at the time
Speaker 7: when this was no longer the majority of view, and
Speaker 7: then a sort of oblivion for a couple of decades
Speaker 7: until being reclaimed later on in the nineteen nineties and
Speaker 7: then the twenty first century. So yes, And at the
Speaker 7: same time, I think it's because since the film was made,
Speaker 7: a lot has been written about films and the German occupation,
Speaker 7: and there's much more awareness of how it fits within
Speaker 7: this particular topic, which is one which at the time
Speaker 7: the film was made was not particularly discussed, but since
Speaker 7: then again has become a topic in it's own right.
Speaker 7: So it's both it fits within the Melville story and
Speaker 7: it also fits within the story of the perception of
Speaker 7: the Second World War and the German occupation of France.
Speaker 2: What's your opinion about the way that Cayu de Cinema
Speaker 2: and a reversed course and what was in ninety six
Speaker 2: when they re evaluated in Melville? Why was that?
Speaker 7: To understand that is in a ways is to do
Speaker 7: with the history of Kyu Di Cinema and the way
Speaker 7: the journal has been through you know, ups and down
Speaker 7: and a variety of views. So as you know, I'm
Speaker 7: sure that when the journal was created in nineteen fifties,
Speaker 7: for a while it was very much the center of
Speaker 7: the what was called the politic desoteur, the claiming of
Speaker 7: the director as the author of the film above all else,
Speaker 7: and and something which was then put in practice with
Speaker 7: the New way filmmakers, So the critics like Franco Trifo,
Speaker 7: Shure we got out becoming filmmakers, and Eric Romer and
Speaker 7: so on. Then around sixty seven sixty eight, the Journal
Speaker 7: went through a kind of incredibly intent politicization and where
Speaker 7: films were only analyzed in relation to ideology. And this
Speaker 7: was the phase when they even had no illustrations because
Speaker 7: that was frivolous and anything to do with entertainment was
Speaker 7: of no interest. And then gradually esthetics came back as
Speaker 7: a consideration of what films were about. And I think
Speaker 7: so you had to go through all these different phases
Speaker 7: for Melville to be reconsidered, because in the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 7: for a while Melville was considered sort of part of
Speaker 7: the New Wave with Bubbla Flamburg and also then two
Speaker 7: men in Manhattan, and from the early sixties onwards, from
Speaker 7: Leon Moore and pret his second film about the war,
Speaker 7: he decided to make more mainstream films with stars, and
Speaker 7: he said he was fed up with making marginal films.
Speaker 7: And then from that point on his film were very
Speaker 7: successful with the audience, and they employed stars like Jean
Speaker 7: Paul ben Mondeaux and Leno Venture, et cetera. And so
Speaker 7: at that point, the moment when Melville was particularly popular
Speaker 7: and making films with big stars like Alan Delan was
Speaker 7: the moment when Causima was very politicized. And so it's
Speaker 7: quite shocking when you look at the reviews of Melville
Speaker 7: films in the late sixties. So even the review of
Speaker 7: Le Saint Murais, for example, which you know, too many
Speaker 7: people is his masterpiece, you know, together with m in
Speaker 7: the Shadows. Maybe. Then the review of the Samurai says, oh, well,
Speaker 7: you know, it's it's yet another thriller and there's a
Speaker 7: good scene in the metro and that's like three lines, okay.
Speaker 7: So and then a film like Lami Deison was criticized
Speaker 7: for being too much in thrall to the Gold's ideology,
Speaker 7: when at that point the journal was absolutely completely, you know,
Speaker 7: in the extreme left. So you know, it's where when
Speaker 7: the team of people in charge changed gradually, and when
Speaker 7: you reach the nineteen eighties and you see the cinema
Speaker 7: itself in France changes, There's a return to the studio
Speaker 7: and to big productions, and within cinefi journals there is
Speaker 7: a return to an attention to style, to miss ancene,
Speaker 7: and attention to the figure of the director and the
Speaker 7: themes that are repeated exactly as they did in early
Speaker 7: in the nineteen fifties. So in fact then one could
Speaker 7: see why and then they looked different. People in Ki
Speaker 7: Cinema looked at Melvis film then said well, this is brilliant,
Speaker 7: you know, the which of course they are, so I
Speaker 7: think they're different people. They basically it's the same journal
Speaker 7: with the same name, but it's a totally different team.
Speaker 7: You know, when when you look in the fifties, in
Speaker 7: the sixties and then later you know there's complete change
Speaker 7: of writers and a complete change of ideology. So there's
Speaker 7: that sense that because it's cage you see them out,
Speaker 7: it must be the same, but actually it's not.
Speaker 2: Kind Of along those lines, we talk about how perceptions
Speaker 2: of films change over the years, and I'm curious if
Speaker 2: there are any Melville films that you have thought differently
Speaker 2: about as the years have gone on.
Speaker 7: I haven't changed my mind massively about them, but looking
Speaker 7: for example, looking at Army in the Shadow more recently,
Speaker 7: when I was looking at Army in the Shadow, I
Speaker 7: was more aware of the episodic nature. Also when recently,
Speaker 7: a few years ago, I did some work on the
Speaker 7: Red Circle and the issue of masculinity, and it's something
Speaker 7: which I've continued to work and also working on the
Speaker 7: stars in the films. Currently, I'm writing a book about
Speaker 7: a filmmaker called Claude Tola, who also was very mainstream
Speaker 7: and very controversial figure as a French cinema and in
Speaker 7: nineteen fifty three he made a film called Le bon
Speaker 7: Dieu San confession there isn't really an English title, which
Speaker 7: is partly about the German occupation of France, and there's
Speaker 7: a character in it which seems is actually in disguise
Speaker 7: where it is clearly a Jewish character, except it isn't said.
Speaker 7: And when I was researching this film in the archives,
Speaker 7: I found a telegram that Jean Pierre Medril had written
Speaker 7: to the filmmaker Claude Talaha to criticize him violently for
Speaker 7: the representation of the Jewish character, and he says, this
Speaker 7: is nineteen fifty three, and mend says, how could you
Speaker 7: make such a film when six million people, six million
Speaker 7: Jewish people died in the Holocaust, And I'm really shocked.
Speaker 7: I like your work normally, but I'm very shocked by this.
Speaker 7: And this was interesting moment for me because although Jean
Speaker 7: Pierre Melville was Jewish and his real name was Grumbach,
Speaker 7: but he took the name Melville or his admiration for
Speaker 7: the American writer, and in his work and also in
Speaker 7: the interviews that I've read about him, there's never really
Speaker 7: he doesn't seem to be interested in the issue. He
Speaker 7: never talks about it. There's not a lot in leon
Speaker 7: More and pred There's a little bit of discussion, very
Speaker 7: very muted, And so it was fascinating to see that
Speaker 7: in private he was very much concerned with it. But
Speaker 7: he managed to make his films in such a way
Speaker 7: that this would not this would remain implicit rather than explicit.
Speaker 7: So watching his films now, I'm quite interested when they
Speaker 7: are mentioned of Jewishness, and this is something that I
Speaker 7: might not have been looking for before. It's very muted,
Speaker 7: is very discreete in Army in the Shadow at the
Speaker 7: beginning when the hero is in the camp and he's
Speaker 7: describing the the internment camp and he's saying, oh, there's
Speaker 7: absolutely everybody is represented here, you know, Gypsies, communists, resisters
Speaker 7: and so on, and he does, and there are Jewish
Speaker 7: people from every country. So it's a tiny mention. And
Speaker 7: now when one sees the film, one might say, well,
Speaker 7: you know, he should have said more about it. Of course,
Speaker 7: it's easy to judge, you know, with hindsight. But I
Speaker 7: thought it was very to me, very interesting to have seen.
Speaker 7: And in fact, he sent that telegraph he sent to
Speaker 7: Claudo Talaha. He even says he wrote it at one
Speaker 7: in the morning, just after seeing the film. He was
Speaker 7: so enraged by this representation of the Jewish character in
Speaker 7: the film that he had to write it so I
Speaker 7: could measure the strength of his feeling there, because I
Speaker 7: didn't know that. Unfortunately, when I wrote my book on
Speaker 7: Medal is something I discovered very recently.
Speaker 2: I have to plead ignorance when it comes to the
Speaker 2: director who you're writing about. Now, are there any films
Speaker 2: of his you can recommend so I can become more
Speaker 2: familiar the best films.
Speaker 7: His best films I think were made I started during
Speaker 7: the war, although he started in the twenties, but it's
Speaker 7: a very complicated story. You could start with Devil in
Speaker 7: the Flesh and the Diablocare with Gioffe Philippe and Mission Preel,
Speaker 7: which is really wonderful film. And then to stay within
Speaker 7: the theme of the German occupation, one of the very
Speaker 7: best is film called La Traversee de Paris in English,
Speaker 7: I think it was called A Pig Across Paris, which
Speaker 7: is a sort of very dark comedy about the German
Speaker 7: occupation where you have Jean Gabin and Boville cross Paris
Speaker 7: at night with some meat in suitcases. So it's a
Speaker 7: kind of very sardonic view of the period. So I think, yeah,
Speaker 7: I think if you start with those two, I mean
Speaker 7: I can send you an email with you know, Marcus filmography.
Speaker 7: He made a lot of films. I think these to me,
Speaker 7: these are probably the two best. I would start with
Speaker 7: those two and there they are both really good, and
Speaker 7: he made lots of others, But start with Diablo, the
Speaker 7: Devil in the Flesh and which has been remade since
Speaker 7: and it was based on the book and and La Tari.
Speaker 7: I think it's a masterpiece and Diablo as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic. I look forward to watching those and eventually
Speaker 2: reading your book. Do you have a deadline that you're
Speaker 2: working towards.
Speaker 7: Yes, after deadline, which is unfortunately always being pushed back
Speaker 7: with them, I really won't finish this summer. But the
Speaker 7: problem was that he left enormous archives in Lausanne in Switzerland,
Speaker 7: and which I consulted, and that's where I felt. I
Speaker 7: found the the Melville Telegram, and you know, there's so
Speaker 7: much material and my book is a you know, one book,
Speaker 7: and he made a lot of films.
Speaker 2: This was fantastic. I always appreciate talking with you. This
Speaker 2: was so great for you to take the time out.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much and have a good day.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back and we were talking about Army
Speaker 2: of Shadows. And one thing I forgot to say earlier
Speaker 2: is just the way that Melville plays with form. And
Speaker 2: I love that he has multiple voiceovers in this one.
Speaker 2: And I was trying to figure out who all for
Speaker 2: sure Gerbier and Jean Francois, but are there others that
Speaker 2: have vio in this It was feeling almost a little
Speaker 2: casino to me.
Speaker 1: Bo oh sorry vi o oh oh, I didn't come
Speaker 1: my copy didn't And with smell a vision.
Speaker 5: I yeah, my assumption is everyone in the Resistance smelled
Speaker 5: bad at some point.
Speaker 2: Definitely, you don't want to trade jackets with this guy.
Speaker 2: It probably stinks pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here will swap coats. Oh no, it's okay, you
Speaker 1: keep the coat. I'd rather take my chairs with the Germans.
Speaker 5: I actually don't know who else has voiceovers. It's done
Speaker 5: in kind of a confusing way. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of it also is that they all have those like
Speaker 5: gruff gangster voices. I love the voiceovers because it does
Speaker 5: give it this sense that you are watching a story unfold,
Speaker 5: like he's he's reminding you of the narrative structure and
Speaker 5: some of the cinema conventions he's using. But it also
Speaker 5: gives it, i think, an even more kind of defeatist tone,
Speaker 5: where it's like these people are reflecting on their own
Speaker 5: impending deaths.
Speaker 2: No, that's a really good point, because yeah, he does
Speaker 2: start this with a title card and then end it
Speaker 2: with those title cards, probably the most depressing title cards ever.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that killed in Vietnam was
Speaker 2: bad or killed in Vietnam by his own troops was bad.
Speaker 2: These holy shit. And then that that last one for
Speaker 2: as your Bia would say, was not to run.
Speaker 5: He decided not to run, Yeah, because I.
Speaker 1: Mean the book was published in forty three, so you
Speaker 1: didn't know what happened to the characters, and so he's
Speaker 1: imposed this incredibly bleak kind of coda to the film,
Speaker 1: just so there's absolutely no doubt whatsoever everybody dies.
Speaker 5: People also forget that even into forty three, it still
Speaker 5: felt like the Nazis were going to win the war,
Speaker 5: and so when you see stories either fictional or nonfiction,
Speaker 5: set in that period and early nineteen forty four, it's
Speaker 5: like there's this real sense that, like, we can't win this,
Speaker 5: and I think that's reflected in this film so brutally,
Speaker 5: like we're just gonna keep resisting even though we're all
Speaker 5: definitely going to die.
Speaker 1: Who The overwhelming sensation, you know, that you get from
Speaker 1: this is fatalism. You know, It's beyond cynicism. It's it's
Speaker 1: a feeling that you know, this guy is about to
Speaker 1: fall at any moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not one of them gets to live to see
Speaker 2: the end of the war. You know, in the way
Speaker 2: that they do the close up of you know that
Speaker 2: Bison his title card, and then La Masque and his
Speaker 2: title card. I'm like, oh, man, just each one gets
Speaker 2: worse and worse.
Speaker 5: Do you have to wonder why he chose to make
Speaker 5: this film in nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine and
Speaker 5: have it be so defeatist, Like it would be so
Speaker 5: easy to throw in something at the end that felt
Speaker 5: more hopeful or optimistic, because like, everyone knows that how
Speaker 5: the war ends. But I think the most to me,
Speaker 5: the most interesting stories about World War two are stories
Speaker 5: that suggest that the war was not this black and
Speaker 5: white affair where the good guys are defeating the bad guys,
Speaker 5: but that even if on paper the war has ended,
Speaker 5: like did it really ever end? And you kind of
Speaker 5: get that sense from this film, or like even if
Speaker 5: the war ended, the world's not necessarily a better place
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, the struggle continues. You know, the same
Speaker 1: war that those the criminal underworld we're playing with the
Speaker 1: police is mirrored in the story of the resistance versus
Speaker 1: the Nazis, and that story continues. You know that the
Speaker 1: fact that we're talking about World War two is kind
Speaker 1: of arbitrary. Really, we could be talking about gangs, as
Speaker 1: we could be talking about fourteenth century Spain. We could,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's a much bigger picture
Speaker 1: story about loyalty, betrayal, and I'm sure there's a couple
Speaker 1: of other great words that I wrote down let me see, yeah,
Speaker 1: and a shifting moral compass that people are able to
Speaker 1: utilize whenever they need to. Really, so, you know, it
Speaker 1: just happens to be a resistant story that Melville feels
Speaker 1: affinity towards because of his own past. But it is
Speaker 1: a very masculine story. It's a hard boiled story which
Speaker 1: he gravitates to, you know, quite naturally, as he would
Speaker 1: towards any hard boiled Hollywood film of the thirties and forties.
Speaker 1: It just happens to be a vehicle for that kind
Speaker 1: of story that he wants to tell about people in
Speaker 1: exceptional circumstances being forced to make terrible choices.
Speaker 5: I wonder how often this is read as a Cold
Speaker 5: War film, because I do think people were still being
Speaker 5: forced to make those kinds of terrible choices, often under
Speaker 5: total secrecy, no one ever finding out what they did.
Speaker 5: And the fact that it comes out in the late sixties,
Speaker 5: the Algerian War would have been on everyone's mind in France.
Speaker 5: But also just the way the Cold War is playing out,
Speaker 5: with this idea that regular citizens in a number of
Speaker 5: countries are getting swept up into what is basically espionage,
Speaker 5: and there is a lot of that happening in Army
Speaker 5: of Shadows. It's just not in the service of a
Speaker 5: particular government other than the Free French Forces, I guess.
Speaker 5: But now that I think about it, it does kind
Speaker 5: of remind me of some Cold War movies.
Speaker 1: When I was touring pub the movie around Europe a
Speaker 1: couple months ago, I happened to be in the acet
Speaker 1: pot of early in and so of course I had
Speaker 1: to go to the Stasi Museum, you know, which is
Speaker 1: the old secret police headquarters now trapped in aspect. You know,
Speaker 1: they've kind of left it as it was when the
Speaker 1: Stasis were marched out of the front door in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, and it's now a museum to the surveillance
Speaker 1: techniques and the torture instruments that the East Germans were
Speaker 1: using against their own people. And when you actually see
Speaker 1: the suspected death toll, it's way more than ten thousand
Speaker 1: of East Berlin's own citizenry disappeared during that time of
Speaker 1: the East German Republic. So nineteen sixty nine East Berlin
Speaker 1: could have very easily have been transposed to nineteen forty
Speaker 1: two Paris under the German occupation.
Speaker 5: It's horrific to think that, especially in this kind of
Speaker 5: global mythology we have about World War two, this idea
Speaker 5: that you know, once the Nazis finally surrender and once
Speaker 5: the Japanese surrender, like everyone's free now. But really, when
Speaker 5: the war ended, you have thousands of people being killed
Speaker 5: or imprisoned for pretty much arbitrary reasons. Like anyone who
Speaker 5: was or not anyone, but I would say probably sixty
Speaker 5: to seventy percent of people who were prisoners of war
Speaker 5: who went back to Russia were killed because they allowed
Speaker 5: themselves to be held in a prisoner of war camp.
Speaker 5: Was the logic. It's just wild. So I do think
Speaker 5: you could definitely set this later and have it feel
Speaker 5: similarly defeated or defeatist.
Speaker 1: Well, there's always going to be a system. There's always
Speaker 1: going to be individuals outside that system who are being
Speaker 1: tortured and killed by you know, and under those circumstances,
Speaker 1: you know, it then comes down to your character as
Speaker 1: to or your desperate need for survival as to how
Speaker 1: you would act under those circumstances. So that's what I
Speaker 1: think Melville is really interested in, because he was able
Speaker 1: to see that firsthand, you know, first of all as
Speaker 1: a member of the French army and then as a
Speaker 1: member of the resistance. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And it's funny how his jewishness plays so little into
Speaker 5: his films in any obvious ways. He seems to think
Speaker 5: of himself as a resistance fighter first, at least in
Speaker 5: terms of his own self mythologizing.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, but it definitely I think contributes to his
Speaker 1: feeling of being an outsider. Yeah, so you know that
Speaker 1: then feeds into his own self mythology, you know, of
Speaker 1: being that I kind of classed.
Speaker 5: Ultimate outsider, which you can see in all of his movies.
Speaker 5: There's always some usually multiple very lonely characters on the
Speaker 5: fringes of something, and certainly there's this whole movie.
Speaker 2: Is that? Oh absolutely yourbia with his books about engineering,
Speaker 2: as he's in that Last hide Out, What.
Speaker 1: A fucking nut.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing that gives him pleasure.
Speaker 1: Fellow nerds, I'm sure we all gravitate towards Melville for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons, you know, not just the bleeding obvious.
Speaker 5: No, I love him so much.
Speaker 1: That's why I was so excited about doing this. That's
Speaker 1: when we get to talk about Hobbius God, one.
Speaker 5: Of the greatest films of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely in my top three. Melville. I coun't
Speaker 1: decide which one is my favorite, because that would be
Speaker 1: like putting a gun to my fart and being us
Speaker 1: to make Andrew's choice.
Speaker 5: I'm right there with you. I mean, even under Gestapo
Speaker 5: torture dress, I probably couldn't pick one.
Speaker 1: No, I tell you what, I would refuse to run.
Speaker 2: All right, guys, let's go ahead and take another break
Speaker 2: and play a preview for next week's show right after
Speaker 2: these brief messages. That's right, We'll be back next week
Speaker 2: with another World War two film, the kickoff check Timber
Speaker 2: with Diamonds of the Night. Until then, I want to
Speaker 2: thank my co host Andrew and Sam. So, Sam, what
Speaker 2: is the latest with you?
Speaker 5: The latest with me is I recently started a new
Speaker 5: podcast called Erros plus Massacre that is focused on kind
Speaker 5: of more outsider cinema. There's some art house stuff in there.
Speaker 5: Some genre movies and I'm just having a great time
Speaker 5: with it, also doing a lot on my Patreon, so
Speaker 5: follow me over there.
Speaker 2: I believe that you have a couple commentary tracks about
Speaker 2: Melville films coming out.
Speaker 5: I do well, not coming out. I did them years ago,
Speaker 5: but be because Quino Larber have done these four KUHD
Speaker 5: re releases of some of his films, my commentaries for
Speaker 5: things like Lu Dulos, which is another one of his
Speaker 5: great great films, are being poureded over. I think the
Speaker 5: same thing's happening to Unflick. But yeah, I still can't
Speaker 5: believe I've gotten to do Melville commentaries like please write
Speaker 5: that on my tombstone?
Speaker 2: And Andrew, what's going out with you?
Speaker 1: Sir? Well, Like I said before, I just got back
Speaker 1: from Europe where I was touring around my latest punk
Speaker 1: rock documentary called pub the movie with the subject of
Speaker 1: the film, and then I put him on a plane
Speaker 1: back to Melbourne and I jumped on a plane to
Speaker 1: West Africa, and while I was there for a week,
Speaker 1: I ended up doing kind of like the start of
Speaker 1: a multi layered project. First up, I was prepping for
Speaker 1: a feature film that I'm going to do over there,
Speaker 1: with one of their most out there directors, Ninja. If
Speaker 1: you've ever i've seen any Ghanian movie trailers on YouTube,
Speaker 1: that was probably the guy who made them absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1: I'm doing a feature film with him in January called
Speaker 1: The Taller They Come. It's a mockumentary about an Australian
Speaker 1: would be Tarantino who blags his way onto a Ghanian
Speaker 1: film set and tries to do a Kung Fu remake
Speaker 1: of The Harder They Come. So while I was there,
Speaker 1: I was filming a documentary on my camera and that's
Speaker 1: coming out in October film Safari Ghana, and that will
Speaker 1: end up being toured around UK and US for a
Speaker 1: Kickstarter campaign which will hopefully go and fund The Taller
Speaker 1: They Come in January. But then while I was there,
Speaker 1: Ninja got me to star in a movie that he
Speaker 1: directed called White Devil Freedom Is Coming. You can actually
Speaker 1: type that into YouTube and have it come up for free.
Speaker 1: Two days on a film set, and it turned out
Speaker 1: I was the title character, a modern day white slaver
Speaker 1: running my own plantation in Kumasi in Ghana. So it's wild.
Speaker 1: I got to kickstart my career as a lead actor
Speaker 1: in African kung fu movies.
Speaker 5: That's incredible, like the.
Speaker 1: Wildest seven days of my life. And you know, I
Speaker 1: had breakfast with Amlde Marcos, so that's really saying something,
Speaker 1: you know. So I'm kind of like, I'll be touring
Speaker 1: this around the US in late October early November. So
Speaker 1: that's when I'll be knocking on your door, Sam.
Speaker 5: Two couches you can sleep on.
Speaker 1: Wicked, I'll be counting on it actually, But yeah, touring
Speaker 1: around screening that and probably a tenth anniversary screening of
Speaker 1: the Search for Wang Wing as well, since it has
Speaker 1: been a decade since that movie came out. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: has it really only shit?
Speaker 5: I know, I'm really afraid.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 2: of the other shows that I work on. They are
Speaker 2: all available at Weirdinglymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our
Speaker 2: Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit
Speaker 2: patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get
Speaker 2: helps the Projection Booth take over the world.