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No. 27: Army of Shadows

Wartime’s beastly chaos

by
Liel Leibovitz
December 07, 2011

1969, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville. For petty political reasons, Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece fell out of view soon after its 1969 release. Forty years later, it was rediscovered and given the encomia it so richly deserves. The story of a small band of French Resistance fighters and their exploits, it is also the broader tale of humanity’s descent into wartime’s beastly chaos, where courage and cowardice are hard to tell apart.

Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and a host of its weekly culture podcast Unorthodox and daily Talmud podcast Take One. He is the editor of Zionism: The Tablet Guide.