Studiocanal has announced the release of a brand-new 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville’s WW2-set masterpiece, Army of Shadows, which will be available to own on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital from June 3. The release follows the film’s inclusion in this year’s Cannes Classic strand at the Cannes Film Festival.
Though remembered now primarily for his intense, spare 1960s gangster films, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville had a startlingly varied career, encompassing wartime dramas, psychosexual character studies, and a collaboration with Jean Cocteau. Melville famously mainly worked independently, even building his own studio. It was this fierce do-it-yourself attitude and such startling, uncompromising films as Les Enfants Terribles and Bob le Flambeur that appealed to the filmmakers of the French New Wave, who adopted Melville as a godfather of sorts (Godard even famously gave him a cameo in Breathless).
During the New Wave, however, Melville went his own way, making highly idiosyncratic crime films—classically mounted if daringly existential—that were beholden to no trend, including Le Doulos, Le Deuxième Soufflé, and Le Samouraï. Melville died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of fifty-five.
As a participant in the French Resistance, Melville made Army of Shadows his most personal film. Though initially underappreciated in France, it is today widely recognised as his finest. Based on a novel by Joseph Kessel and featuring a stellar cast that includes Lino Ventura (Les Misérables, Lift to The Scaffold), Paul Meurisse (Les Diaboliques, The Eleven O’clock Woman), Jean-Pierre Cassel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Three Musketeers) and Simone Signoret (Room at The Top, Les Diaboliques), Army of Shadows is a real-life story channelled through the minimalism of Melville’s gangster films. The result is an unmissable tale of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
In 1942, French engineer and Resistance cell leader, Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura), is arrested and sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Escaping, we follow Gerbier and his Resistance allies through operations, camaraderie, and espionage, witnessing the constant threat of capture, danger, and the tough decisions required to stay alive.
The new 4K restoration of Army of Shadows includes new extras and is the latest addition to Studiocanal’s ever-expanding Vintage World Cinema Collection.
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