Synopsis
Betrayed by an informant, Philippe Gerbier finds himself trapped in a torturous Nazi prison camp. Though Gerbier escapes to rejoin the Resistance in occupied Marseilles, France, and exacts his revenge on the informant, he must continue a quiet, seemingly endless battle against the Nazis in an atmosphere of tension, paranoia and distrust.
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Cast
- Lino VenturaPhilippe Gerbier
- Paul MeurisseLuc Jardie
- Jean-Pierre CasselJean-François Jardie
- Simone SignoretMathilde
- Claude MannClaude Ullman / The Mask
- Paul CrauchetFélix Lepercq
- Christian BarbierGuillaume Vermesch / The Buffalo
- Alain DekokLegrain
- Alain LiboltPaul Dounat
- Jean-Marie RobainBaron de La Ferté-Talloires
Recommendations
- 100
Newsweek
Infused with the bleak romanticism of Melville's gangster movies ("Le Samouraï," "Bob le Flambeur"), and deepened by his own experiences in the Resistance, this hard-bitten tribute to freedom fighters makes most current movies look flabby and undisciplined. Don't miss it. - 100
Premiere
Composed of relatively few events and scenes, it's often excruciatingly tense and never less than heartbreakingly human. And as much as I admire "Munich," Shadows leaves Spielberg's film in the dust in the moral-ambiguity department. Never before seen in the States, it's already on my year's ten-best list. (April 2006 Premiere) - 100
The New York Times
This film, which was never released in America and will now be making its way across the country in limited release, has been immaculately restored and features new subtitles. You can get lost in the blackness of its heart and its shadows. You might never come back. - 100
New York Daily News
It's a white-knuckler all the way, with most of that tension coming from the smallest facial expressions exchanged in uneasy silence between compatriots who knew what they were getting into, but were nevertheless unprepared for the moral and emotional fallout of their patriotic actions. - 100
Salon
Not just one of the great films of the '60s but one of the great films, period -- and the chance to discover it at the beginning of the 21st century, in an era when we think we've seen it all, is an unquantifiable privilege. - 100
The New Yorker
For the first, and maybe the only, time this year, you are in the hands of a master. - 100
L.A. Weekly
The result is a brilliant and relentless thriller, painted in Melville's trademark shades of charcoal and midnight blue, marked by daring escapes, unimaginable moments of self-sacrifice and unconscionable acts of betrayal. - 90
Village Voice
It's here that Melville fully achieved his notion of the sublime, applying "Le Samouraï's" "empty" compositions and near theatrical blocking, as well as its methodical suspense, cosmic fatalism, and sense of grim solitude, to a subject far closer to his heart, namely his own World War II experiences.
