Was the bowler hat associated with the collabarators or the Nazis?
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jpb316 — 19 years ago(January 11, 2007 12:24 PM)
You're thinking of Gerbier, who didn't wear a bowler.
Early in the film, Felix wants to take his bowler off, but Gerbier tells him that he needs to wear it as long as he's in the Resistance. Later in the film, when Felix is arrested by the Germans, his hat falls off into the alley, and as the Germans drive off with Felix, the camera lingers on his hat lying in the alley.
I've no answer to the original question, so hopefully somebody can fill us in! -
PVarjak — 16 years ago(January 01, 2010 08:04 PM)
There's a scene between these two (with Felix) I think. When he's on the train, he takes off his hat and drops his arm to his side. Then we see that neither hand has a hat (when he meets Jean-Francois in the cafe), implying that he dropped it on the train. Later however, he is wearing another hat that falls off when he's arrested in the alley.
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malsperanza — 19 years ago(January 12, 2007 10:24 AM)
It was a symbol of bourgeois conventionalism. The bowler is a disguise: it makes Felix look like a solid French citizen of the sort who was quite comfortable collaborating with Vichy and the Germans. Felix would probably have preferred to wear the working man's beret.
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Krustallos — 19 years ago(January 15, 2007 05:29 AM)
I think the French police (detectives) wore bowler hats at that time as part of their uniform (see also the Thompson Twins in "Tintin").
Felix was posing as a policeman in that scene. The Vichy police were de facto collaborators with the Germans, Felix didn't like dressing as an agent of the Vichy regime.
I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity. -
postdlf — 18 years ago(June 16, 2007 09:47 PM)
In addition to Felix and his bowler, hats are significant in several other scenes. The scene where Felix encounters Jean-Francois at the bar begins with a shot of just the German officers' caps on racks (I think it was the NY Times critic who likened these to weapons). When Gerbier is leaving his room in London, he makes a point of removing his hat and leaving it on the bed before he goes. The next shot is of the Gestapo officer entering the room where Felix is handcuffed; the officer's right-to-left movement across the room continues Gerbier's from the previous scene, and ends with the officer removing his hat and placing it on his desk.
There might be other instances, but those are the ones that I remember off the top of my head. There might also be something to the beret that Dounat is wearing until he is killed.
What does it all mean? I don't know. The NY Times critic thought this: "It is a world in which a man's hat is an emblem of his professionalism, part of the armor he dons for battle. When a Resistance member walks into a bote in "Army of Shadows," and Melville shows us a row of Nazi caps neatly lined on a shelf, it's as if he were showing us a cache of weapons." -
malsperanza — 16 years ago(November 29, 2009 05:18 PM)
Also, Melville has a thing for hats. In Le Samourai Delon's character is defined by his fedora, which is almost literally his samurai helmet. There's a scene toward the end where Delon puts on his hat and checks in the mirror to be sure the brim is at the right angle before going out to ah, the rest would be a spoiler.