While some films about resistance to Nazism and the Vichy regime valorize and romanticize their heroes, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 feature offers a gritty, sobering picture of those struggles, particularly in depicting the difficult and dangerous decisions made by the groups. Based on a partly autobiographical novel by resistance member Joseph Kessel, the film follows the interwoven stories of several fighters (portrayed by an array of major French film stars, such as Simone Signoret and Lino Ventura) from Marseilles to Paris. Never released theatrically in the U.S., this is the restored version that made its debut in 2006 to near-universal acclaim. 145 min.
Part of the Emory Cinematheque series “Resisting Fascism.” Each film in the series will be introduced by Paul Buchholz, assistant professor of German Studies, with contributions from other faculty in Emory’s Department of German Studies.
