L'armée des ombres / The Army of Shadows

A masterpiece lost to shifting political winds, The Army of Shadows offers a bleak interpretation of the French Resistance during World War II. A group of men and women work in secret and constantly move to take down collaborators and the Gestapo, narrowly but not always escaping death and persecution. French audiences rejected the film in 1968 as pro-de Gaulle, but its re-release nearly 40 years later received near universal acclaim. Together with Le Silence de la Mer (1949) and Léon Morin, prêtre (1961), this film is one of several made by Melville on the French Resistance.