Sightlines · reception
How Army of Shadows was received
1969 · Jean-Pierre Melville · Army of Shadows on Sightlines
The arc
Trashed by Cahiers du critics on release in 1969 — post-May '68 France read it as Gaullist propaganda — it went unreleased in the US for 37 years, then Rialto's 2006 restoration landed it on top-ten lists and several critics named it the best film of 2006.
What’s debated
The perennial cinephile fight: is this — not Le Samouraï — actually Melville's masterpiece, or is its glacial pace and unrelenting bleakness a barrier only the devoted push through?
Its footprint
The opening image of German soldiers parading past the Arc de Triomphe down the Champs-Élysées is one of cinema's great chilling openings, and its trench-coats-and-fedoras vision of the Resistance defined how the underground looks on screen.
Where it stands
A canon climber turned cornerstone — a Criterion-era rediscovery now routinely ranked among the greatest French films and a 'you must see this' for anyone working through Melville.
Did you know? Melville was himself a member of the French Resistance (his surname was a nom de guerre borrowed from the Moby-Dick author he kept for life), which is why the film's depiction of clandestine work feels so procedurally exact — yet the film wasn't distributed in the US until 2006.