The Last Metro (1980)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Last Metro (1980) – F. Truffaut

Truffaut’s last huge hit is a remembrance of Occupied France and the efforts of a theatre company to survive those days.  Catherine Deneuve is the (Gentile) wife of a famed Jewish director (Heinz Bennent) who has gone underground (literally), leaving her to manage the company (and also to star in their productions).  Gerard Depardieu is the leading man hired for the latest show who has ties to the Resistance.  Although some suspense is built because a powerful theatre critic and Nazi collaborator (Jean-Louis Richard) has taken an interest in the company/show and has the power to shut them down (and perhaps also discover Bennent hiding in the cellar), Truffaut seems less interested in using his Hitchcock-derived techniques here.  Instead, this is a character and relationship driven period piece, capturing people in a time and place, the tensions they feel, the compromises they make.  The central relationships are between Deneuve and Bennent (their relationship has changed because now he rather imperiously but also tenderly “controls” her from the cellar yet she must have more independence than she did) and between Deneuve and Depardieu (they experience friction because he doesn’t know her husband is still around – but their sexual tension doesn’t exactly light up the screen here).  Truffaut doesn’t hold back in showing us the awfulness of anti-semitism (and also homophobia), as codified in public policy and national broadcasts.  Very ugly.  But otherwise this is really a backstage drama about theatre people, albeit taking place during the Occupation.  See Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969) for a more typical look at the Resistance (and of course, Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, 2009, is set in this same milieu).