The Army of Crime

We know the fate of the Resistance fighters from the very beginning of the film. On the way to their execution, they pass oblivious French citizens enjoying a sunny day, while a voiceover recites a litany of very foreign names who "died for France". For much of the film, France seems unworthy of the sacrifice. The Germans are there, having photographs taken in front of famous landmarks, playing concerts and kicking a football around in the park but it's the French themselves who betray and hunt down the Resistance. There's a telling, though understated, contrast between French-run Drancy - where anyone who approaches is shot on sight - and the German camp where the German officer greets Melinee with both surprise and courtesy. Of course, these Germans will also shoot the foreign intellectuals held in the camp but there's a different attitude towards them. They are the enemy but they are also soldiers. The real venom is saved for the French police, who are merely collaborators of the worst kind. The dreadful irony at the heart of the film is that this particular group of Resistance fighters are foreign Ccommunists and Jews, who have already fled from persecution (the Turks, the Nazis), and end up tortured and killed by a country they think respresents freedom.
It's a sober, thoughtful film that takes it's time establishing its large cast of characters and the key locations they inhabit, such as the Elek bar or the bustling courtyard where the Raymans live. It has far more in common with Army of Shadows than with Black Book. The assassinations and explosions coexist with planning meetings and domestic scenes, while the French authorities plan their own campaign against the "terrorists" (and just ponder how much that word depends on context) The acts carried out by the group against the Germans contrast with the torture later inflicted on them by the French police, including a particularly nasty sequence showing what happens when a blowtorch is applied to flesh. The Manouchian group are derogatorily labelled "the army of crime" and portrayed as a threat to France itself, yet they are the ones trying to free the country from occupation while the majority acquiese.