Original subtitles

Sunday, February 23, 1969, at 8:00 a.m.

The Place Charles de Gaulle has been cleared for a strange parade.

Army of Shadows

is the title of Jean-Pierre Melville's 12th film,

which brings back some unhappy memories.

Courteline said,

“Unhappy memories! Yet I welcome you. You are my long-lost youth.”

I no longer have “unhappy memories,” especially of that time.

Jean-Pierre Melville cherishes paradox as well as free thinking.

The fact I'm an Alsatian Jew doesn't mean

I should see what I did during the war as exceptional.

Many of us had a little something more to defend.

I'd already fought in the war,

and I'd gotten a taste for action.

One becomes a fighter, a Warrior, very quickly.

It takes much longer to stop being one.

If I was drawn to certain books like Les enfants terribles

or Léon Morin, prétre, for example,

after making I e silence de la mer,

it was because something happens within these characters that makes them evolve.

Two years after Le samourai,

Jean-Pierre Melville began shooting Army of Shadows.

One film every two years is all a director should take on.

More than that is madness.

Melville is the most elusive of French directors.

I'm a chameleon.

When I work with actors who like to have fun,

to joke and laugh on the set,

since I'm a chameleon,

I can play along and even surpass them.

But when I work with actors who aren't that way,

then I act naturally, I remain myself,

and I'm not the kind who's always smiling.

A great director of actors, he made the following rules:

A character must be created.

You must never play yourself,

wear a fake nose, nor show yourself bare.

There's no difference between being behind the camera or in front of it.

I firmly believe that if people are used to being in the spotlight -

and directors are in the spotlight -

they feel completely at home behind a camera or in front of it.

It makes no difference.

It's easier being in front of the camera than behind it.

That much I believe.

With Lino Ventura,

Paul Meurisse and Jean-Pierre Cassel,

Simone Signorel stars in Army of Shadows.

But in this case, isn't the director the real star?

Yet this director, who belongs to no school, no movement,

and yet has made some of the best films of his generation,

has a rather cynical opinion of his an'.

I think art only exists if the artist is alone,

if the creator is completely cut off from the world.

That's why cinema isn't an art.

Art is when you're alone in your room at 3:00 a.m.,

writing a scene.

Yes, that might be called art.

Yes... “artist. ”

No other word fits when speaking of Melville.