Film Forum

France, 1966
Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville
With Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse
In French with English subtitles
Approx. 144 min. 35mm courtesy Institut Français.

En route to the border after a successful prison break, Lino Ventura (ARMY OF SHADOWS) takes time for an electrifying highway robbery, but then finds, after ruthless cop Paul Meurisse has turned him into an unwitting informer, that reputation is worth more than life.

Reviews

“The height of [Melville’s] personal expression. From the abstract virtuosity of the opening jailbreak to the silent salute of the final heartbreak, Melville distills emotions to rarefied minimalist gestures and offers a stringent morality of self-discipline, both his heroes’ and his own."
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Takes the noir to the heights of a monumental apogee of the genre where words can only belittle the grandiosity of it all.”
– Mubi

 “Melville’s most elaborate and intricately plotted film noir, a labyrinthine exploration of loyalties and betrayals in the French underworld.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out

“Melville specialized in severely stylized versions of American gangster films, bringing out their unspoken existentialism through a camera style that sometimes evokes the minimalist purity of Bresson, sometimes the seamless studio realism of William Wyler.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader