Intrigue

An account of underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France.

France, 1942, under German occupation. Philippe Gerbier, a civil engineer, is a French Resistance commandant. Denounced by a French collaborator, he is interned in a concentration camp. He manages to escape, and rejoins his network in Marseille, where he has the traitor executed. This movie reveals rigorously and austerely what life was like in the French Resistance: the solitude and fear of its members; their relationships with one another; the constant threat of arrest by the Gestapo; the Resistance command structure and the way its orders were carried out. Head writer Joseph Kessel and co-writer/director Jean-Pierre Melville were both veterans of the "Shadow Army".—Yepok

In 1942, French engineer and Resistant cell leader Philippe Gerbier is arrested and sent to a concentration camp. He manages to escape, and together with Felix Lepercq and Resistance hit-man Claude "The Mask" Ullmann, they kidnap the traitor that gave him away to the Germans and execute him. Gerbier travels to London to discuss Allied logistical support for the Resistance; meanwhile, Felix is captured by the Germans and tortured. Resistance members Mathilde, Guillaume "Bison" Vermersch, and the Mask try unsuccessfully to rescue him. But Jean François Jardie, brother of Resistance commandant Luc Jardie, sacrifices himself to deliver a cyanide pill to Felix in prison. As the months go by the organization continues its clandestine operations until the day a captured member, tortured by the Germans, becomes a threat to the mission. He will have to be assassinated.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

France, 1942. Philippe Gerbier is the leader of a French Resistance cell. Through his eyes we see the workings of the French Resistance - the day-to-day operations, the intrigue and espionage, the constant threat of being captured by the Germans, the camaraderie, the danger and the tough decisions that need to be taken.—grantss