Special Guest: Ginette VincendeauGuest Co-Hosts: Samm Deighan, Andrew Leavold
We conclude Art House August with a look at Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969). Based loosely on Joseph Kessel's memoir about the French Resistance in World War II, the film stars Lino Ventura as Phillipe Gerbier, one of a handful of Resistance fighters we meet as we travel through the underworld, striking out at the German occupiers and those loyal to the Vichy government.
Andrew Leavold and Samm Dieghan join Mike for an insightful conversation while special guest Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, discusses Melville's career at the time and the reaction to the film.
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Music:
Original Soundtrack - Eric Demarsan
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I haven't finished the episode yet, but I was really surprised that not a single person in the conversation knew what "the phony war" was. That context (France only briefly invaded Germany after the invasion of Poland, then moved back behind the Maginot Line and waited) would have been assumed for a French audience at the time.
ReplyDeleteOn Jews who had been in France a long time: the Vichy government actually distinguished them from foreign Jews who fled the Nazis into France. Petain was happy to hand the latter over to the Germans, but shut down the deportation program after asked Eichmann asked for French Jews. The Slate Star Codex review of Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" discusses this.
Awesome! Thanks for the insight!
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