ATTACK! 13
refuses. Jardie emerges and convinces Le Bison that Mathilde is incapable of sui-
cide; they must kill her. Jardie and his team find Mathilde in Paris and Le Bison
kills her. The film ends with intertitles that confirm the fate of the four main char-
acters. All are either dead via suicide or eliminated by the Nazis.
Reception
At the time of its initial release in France (12 September 1969), Army of Shadows
did fairly well at the box office, but France’s leading (neo- Marxist) film journals,
Positif and Cahiers du cinéma, denounced the film as a reactionary Gaullist nostal-
gia piece, an inaccurate characterization and somewhat beside the point, insofar
as de Gaulle had resigned the presidency of France six months earlier, after a de cade
in office. Army of Shadows did not see theatrical release in the United States until
37 years later. In 1996 Cahiers du cinéma published Le Cinéma selon Melville, a reap-
praisal of Melville’s work by Rui Nogueira that led to a painstaking digital resto-
ration at the Eclair Laboratories in Paris in 2004 by StudioCanal’s Béatrice
Valbin- Constant under the supervision of the film’s original cinematographer,
Pierre Lhomme. Released by Rialto Pictures in 2006, the film won almost univer-
sal critical acclaim in the United States and appeared in many critics’ annual top
10 lists.
Reel History Versus Real History
In Kessel’s novel, much of the action is based on real events, but almost all the
characters in Army of Shadows are composites of real people, which was necessary
camouflage, as the war was still raging when the book was published and identi-
ties had to be protected. A faithful adaptation of the novel, Melville’s film also dis-
guises the real persons involved. For example, Luc Jardie is based on Jean Moulin
(1899–1943), a nationally recognized hero of the Re sis tance who died at the hands
of the Gestapo. Mathilde, Simone Signoret’s character, is a composite of three real-
life Re sis tance members: Lucie Bernard Aubrac (1912–2007), Dominique Persky
Desanti (1920–2011), and Signoret’s makeup artist, Maud Begon. Apart from these
devices, Melville’s film captures the aura of isolation, paranoia, and secrecy that is
pervasive in any clandestine war.
Attack! (1956)
Synopsis
Attack! is an American war drama set in Eu rope during the final months of World
War II. Adapted by James Poe from Norman Brooks’s 1954 play, Fragile Fox, directed
by Robert Aldrich and starring Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, William
Smithers, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel, Buddy Ebsen, and Peter van Eyck, the
film recounts the story of a frontline combat unit led by a cowardly captain (Albert)
who clashes with a tougher subordinate (Palance) over the fate of their rifle com-
pany in a combat situation.