'Army of Shadows' throws light on Vichy
An eerie foreshadowing of Steven Spielberg's ''Munich," Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 French resistance thriller ''Army of Shadows" (''L'Armee des ombres") arrives on these shores for the first time, and it's easy to see why it has been neglected.
 
It is altogether too forthright about widespread French collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation and the Nazi-puppet, Marshal Petain-headed Vichy government.
 
Directed by noir master Melville (''Le Samourai") and based on a novel by Joseph Kessel, the film begins in the dark year of 1942 (Petain's name and visage are everywhere) and tells the story of resistance leader Philippe Gerbier (wrestler-turned-leading man Lino Ventura). Sporting such colorful noms de guerre as Le Masque (Claude Mann) and Le Bison (Christian Barbier), Gerbier's fellow fighters join him in dangerous assignments.
 
Among them are smuggling downed RAF pilots out of the country and identifying and executing traitors. In one sequence, Gerbier and his team bring a condemned man to a safe house only to learn the adjoining residence has been rented to a large family. Unable to shoot their terrified young captive, they resort to horribly garroting him. Also among Gerbier's most trusted comrades is mistress of disguise Madame Mathilde (French screen iconSimone Signoret), a fearlessfemale warrior.
 
Combining his own experiences in the resistance with Kessel's story, co-screenwriter Melville, France's gangster-movie auteur, fashioned a dark wartime epic for these war-torn times. His fatalistic observations are universal and banal: War breeds heroism in some, evil in others and brings out the extraordinary in ordinary people. Gerbier's favorite piece of advice to recruits and veterans alike: Keep the cyanide tablets handy.
 
A scene in which a captured Gerbier distracts a frightened, young guard, stabs him in the throat with his own bayonet and escapes looks simple, if you have nerves of steel.
 
Italy-born Ventura's great virtue as an actor is his physical and emotional credibility. Built like a fireplug with a ruggedly handsome peasant's face, he was a character sprung from the naturalistic pages of Emile Zola, a salt of the earth.
 
The film's restoration, overseen by cinematographer Pierre Lhomme (''Camille Claudel," ''Le Divorce"), and its first-time release in the United States are a cause for celebration among movie lovers in general and World-War-II-movie lovers in particular. Once seen, these ''Shadows" of war will haunt you for a long time.
 
(''Army of Shadows" contains violence.)