This. So much this. It's because you have idiots that are upvoting Inception and such.

imdb.com/board/10064040/ratings
The ratings by women over 45 are phony. This seems to be a problem on a wide variety of non-U.S. classics. See a discussion about it on the Contributor board:
imdb.com/board/bd0000042/nest/164364008
.
Justin

She's not a villain but she was certainly stupid to carry around that picture of her daughter.

Is Mathilde really the villain of the piece? I don't see the film as having any clearcut good or bad guys among the Resistance members - all are fighting for a just cause but all end up being compromised in some way. I see Mathilde more as a tragic figure faced with an impossible decision.

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How can someone get this far into an arcane discussion of a film and be surprised that a lot of the inner workings of the film have been revealed. I would think to participate, or even just observe, in such a discussion that one might first see the film.

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I did wonder why she couldn't get hold of a razor blade or some way to commit suicide - but they said more than once that she couldn't, for some reasons I didn't understand fully.
By no means do I have any certain knowledge regarding the "right" answer, but the way I understood her situation is that a suicide would've likely been interpreted by the Germans simply as an attempt to escape, and hence the consequences would've been just as awful to her daughter. Whereas being assassinated by someone else, even willingly (to escape the moral dead end of having to sacrifice either the daughter or the resistance), would possibly be a whole another matter.
At the time of writing this, the rating by Females Aged 45+ has gone even lower, from 4.3 (according to the first post) to 2.9 (with 275 votes). I, too, found the slow pacing a bit demanding at times, even though someone like Tarkovsky is one of my absolute favourite directors, and certainly the film doesn't have many qualities that are conventionally thought to connect with women (romance, children, more personal or family relations, even the more abstract ethical and existential questions, and so on), but still that seems awfully low. Perhaps the tomentingly ambiguous, "back against the wall" sort of ethical and existential questions regarding warfare are just too foreign to them to raise much personal interest, beyond the black-and-white "home front sentiments" like "Say no to war" or "Just wipe out those filthy Whatnots and bring our boys back home" (neither of which are really viable options here)? Or maybe the whole film is just too bleak and fleshless? Whatever the reason(s), I, too, admit to being intrigued.

I have to agree with mrtanner. The whole point of this movie is to call into question the nature of good and evil, hero and villain. It's beauty is that it defies such simplistic analysis. As Melville was a former member of Cashiers du cinema and therefore a believer in the auteur theory of directing, it's not such a big leap to postulate that everything therein, including the film's muted blue and gray hue, is supposed to suggest that we're dealing with moral ambiguity. Hence why, despite their firm belief in the righteousness of their objective, there was still debate about Mathilde's execution. It's all very existentialist in it's moral relativism, which is why it's timeless; it goes directly to the core of post-modern angst.

Just wanted to add my voice to the mix and say that I am a woman of 40 who thought this film was incredible.
I also don't think Mathilde was necessarily painted as a "villain". Even her comrades praised her bravery and dedication and seemed to understand why she did what she did. But by the same token, they had to do what they had to do. An awful situation all around.

1. She was the villain because she talked. The fact that she did it to save her daughter and died for it shows the harsh judgement of the underground and contrast this with the man who sacrificed himself just to get in and put another resistant out of his misery. It's an unbelievably high, maybe impossibly high standard but one which she didn't live up too.
2. There is the suggestion that the woman is a Catholic and therefore suicide would be out of the question.
3. She sacrifices her life for her daughter and not for the resistance. She was expected to sacrifice her life AND that of her daughter for the resistance.
   I would imagine that women could never identify with maintaining that standard in that situation and they project they would have done the same thing if it were them and therefore her fate is very objectionable.

This is really strange - the low score given by women age 45+. I am 60. I missed the 1st half hour tonight, on Sundance channel, but I'm going to vote 10 on what I saw. I hope I can see the whole thing soon. I know my best friend my age will like it, and probably my mother age 87 would like it.
this segment of movie-goers might very well have been forced by war-buff husbands to see a film they didn't have to much interest in
Oh please. Can't see this happening - NO apparent war enthusiasts I've come across working in a VA hospital many years with many WWII vets (maybe I didn't know because they were sick), nor my father, WWII, and none among dating/marrying Vietnam vets people who've been in war don't see it as a likeable thing . And, can't envision being forced, or forcing someone, to see a movie (we see most of them on TV/DVD these days, and we can't force anyone to watch a movie when they can walk into another room).
most women over 45 who see a film like Army of Shadows would not register their opinion on a site like imdb
I wish more would - its like people don't realize we even watch movies. (my mom won't get a computer)
45+-year-old women who do record their opinions on imdb would be those moved to do so for some reason
True for me: I only record 9's and 10's, plus a few rotten ones.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=3502124
Hmmmmmm.that closely matches my rating of most of the women over 45 that I have met.
I wonder how I'd rate
you
.
All I'm going to say is that women at extreme ends of the age of spectrum really young or really old don't seem to get a lot of films, that IMO aren't even that guy oriented.
really young, perhaps, but older people invented movies in the first place, and the movies aren't becoming so sophisticated that adults can't understand them, and children can. I think most of us 'old ones'
love
movies like L'arme des ombres.
.
Simone S. was not a villian! She was a heroine. She let the resistance men kill her because although she would have sacrificed her own life at any time, she couldn't make an active choice to have her daughter raped all day every day by filthy strangers, (worse than death). She had to do it the passive way - makes perfect sense, and makes her more sympathetic. I did wonder why she couldn't get hold of a razor blade or some way to commit suicide - but they said more than once that she couldn't, for some reasons I didn't understand fully. Maybe if they shot her, she'd feel her sin giving up the 2 names would be better expiated, and would show the Germans they were as tough and disciplined as the enemy.
Never be afraid to laugh at yourself - you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

This is the point where logic does not enter. This is where polling begins. Stats don't represent any single person's response but the mass response. The demographics man. Sentiment spread over a large number of people. People react to films emotionally not rationally. That's what they're for. Silent films- image and music, were pure emotion. So this is the way a certain percentage of women of a certain age group react emotionally to this picture. It sort of defines itself.

You could be right, max, but I would hope that any person who would actually watch this film in the first place wouldn't be that stupid. I mean, I sympathised with Signoret's character, but the woman had to know that what she did was going to mean her life. She knew how others had been dealt with, and had to expect the same. Further, she had only herself to blame, given the situation.
Either way, anyone even remotely familiar with either the work of Jean-Pierre Melville or any of the other French Nouvelle Vague directors had to know this film wasn't going to end well. I don't know. Perhaps a good deal of the F45+ voting block was lying on their personal details. On the other hand, perhaps most of them have hipster kids who happen to be into art films and simply didn't realize what they were getting into.

Simone Signoret is a woman over the age of 45 and she is cast as the villain of the piece because she rats out the entire operation to save her daughter. Remember even the head of the local resistance doesn't know that it's his brother whose the head of the whole thing. Signoret refuses to make the sacrifice and is excoriated for it and women over 45, especially those with children, don't care about the military discipline stuff, they just know about a mother's love etc. So they hated the picture.

"Hmmmmmm.that closely matches my rating of most of the women over 45 that I have met."
That somehow made me laugh stupidly much. Thank you!

During the war there was little gasoline available to French civilians so they devised cars that ran on wood burning steam engines, chicken manure, methane from beep etc. Each car has some devise cobbled on to make it run.

Hmmmmmm.that closely matches my rating of most of the women over 45 that I have met.
Although the old men sometimes rate great movies very lowly also. Watching movies is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (or women).
Ok, now blast away. I can feel the flames already.
Just for the Wellesianism of the movie you have to give it a lot of credit. The sets are just incredible. What was on top of that car? The only surviving print was totally PINK? I don't understand how even dumb people could allow great movies to melt away in someone's stupid storage room. Not really very smart. If it was that bad, someone performed a miracle restoring this excellent period piece.
"It was the COTTON BOWL, sister woman."

I agree that discussions about the Top 250 and the IMDB rating system are boring, but I hardly think we need to assail people discussing it or label these discussions a "tiresome waste of energy". I mean, if we're all really honest, we'd have to admit that pretty much all discussion in the IMDB forums are a "tiresome waste of energy". We're not curing cancer here, and no great breakthroughs in human thought are occurring. I say let the people who want to mull over these stats have their fun and avoid ridiculing their choice.
Now, the threads in each film labeled "This is the worst movie ever!" are another story.
"nothing is left of me, each time I see her" - Catullus

I'm not only female and over 45 - hell, I'm over 50.
And this film is a flat out masterpiece.
And let me tell you something young scrub - I DO "get it". About most films, guy oriented or not. Come back and let's talk when you can discuss the films of Stan Brakhage and Tarkovsky, Bunuel and Jarmusch, or you've seen 80% of the Top 100 Films listed on Sight & Sound. THEN we'll have a discussion.
The vast majority of Americans, much less any specific demographic, have never even seen this fine film. It simply hasn't been available to see - thank goodness for the rerelease. I hadn't seen it since film class.
The truth is, the segment that most honors this movie is knowledgable film fans and people who care about artincluding scholars and writers, many of whom are female, and many of whom are of a certain age. Frankly, most older women I know who are into films would never dream of voting at IMDB, never mind POSTING here.
There a millions of males, young and old, who don't get "film" either.

All I'm going to say is that women at extreme ends of the age of spectrum really young or really old don't seem to get a lot of films, that IMO aren't even that guy oriented.

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Cat Sailor27 has described this situation perfectly.

Some conjecture here, but I'd warrant that the biggest factor is that most women over 45 who see a film like
Army of Shadows
would not register their opinion on a site like imdb. Younger generations are being trained to become graphomaniacs, recording every opinion and prosaic activity for some unknown posterity, but most women over 45 would have no such urge on average.
Instead, those 45+-year-old women who
do
record their opinions on imdb would be those
moved
to do so for some reason. I imagine that a fair segment of the population moved enough to want to record their opinions would be women who hated this film. Teetering close to stereotype here, I'd say that this segment of movie-goers might very well have been forced by war-buff husbands to see a film they didn't have to much interest in, and at any rate the film could be described in essentialist terms as a hyper-masculine, relentlessly tense exploration of austere war-time existentialism not what many 45+-year-old women would find interesting.