You are simply missing the point and being ridiculous...
> For one thing, I cannot STAND IT when movies are called "thrillers",
Well, this certainly is not a "thriller" in the pop-corn entertainment way you think. Indeed, it is not even advertised as a thriller, so your mistake.
> For me this was more "a year in the life"
IT IS. It is based on Joseph Kessel's accounts on his own life as a resistance member, and adapted and filmed by Melville who also was a resistance member. Naturally it would never be an entertaining "thriller" that you would expect, but an honest account on how these people regarded their own lives.
> I had to fight off sleep it was so slow moving. S
Simply proves that you were blind--there's A LOT of things going on, morally, philosophically and intellectually.
> What prison commandant gets a sadistic whim of how he's gonna execute everyone...
Errr.... You saw that it was a "sadistic whim"? You are so blind.... In the film it was very clearly depicted that it was a regular routine process for the Gestapo officers, even executed with precisions in time.
You obviously have been watching too many commercial junks like Schindler's List which so simply demonize German officers during WW II. The reality was never that simple. The reality for the German officers was that they were just doing the job they were ordered to do. These cruel executions were in no way "sadistic whims," but meticulously planed out with precisions, based on psychological studies about how to impose fear and how to manipulate people with fear.
So Mathilde just got some leaking information about how executions were done in that prison, and the exact time when the execution of that group including Gerbier would take place. Similar real-life account appears in Kessel's book.
Naturally, The Army of Shadows is so obviously too intelligent for your taste, I am afraid...
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UCHoodman
15 years ago
I wouldn't say that it's too intelligent, not at all, it's just not what most expect when they watch this. Heck they don't expect resistance, I guess they just expect something more, I liked it a lot, O it's not going into my top films of all time, but it's still a very good film
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karelia34
15 years ago
For what it's worth, I think there was a strong implication that it was the German officer himself who had given Mathilde the information. When in the car Gerbier says he was wondering what would have happened if he hadn't run ... and Mathilde puts her hand on his and looks at him meaningfully ... and the officer previously had been very precise about timing, and about getting Gerbier to run ... just a hunch, though.
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Gus-69
15 years ago
What a belly laugh... In order to diss a poster with nehative opinion and praise this (great, yes) film, one has to call a universally acclaimed masterpiece like SCHINDLER'S LIST a "commercial junk". Strong argument indeed.
SCHINDLER'S LIST is anything but commercial - a three-hour, black-and-white, highly depressing and gritty historical war drama. Don't trash it because it deservedly summed up a good amount in box-office recepits.
____________________________
Cinephile Empire: http://imperiocinefilo2.blogspot.com/
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max von meyerling
15 years ago
I repeat, for those too lazy to simply Google or Wiki for the information, the Commandant was not a member of the Red Orchestra and did not allow resistants to escape and he did torture for pleasure. This is a real person, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, the man whom the US brought to South America to teach various dictators how to torture. He spent his life torturing and became the leading expert on torture. He was a war criminal. This is no exaggeration. BTW almost all the violence is seen off screen. This a war of shadows and we see the shadows, not the spot lighted actions.
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