The Last Metro
I think Francois Truffaut is one of my favorite filmmakers. Every time I watch a new (to me) film of his, his warmth and humanity just washes over me. That is not to say that I love all of his films, but the ones I do love, I cherish. His appreciation for art, both in his craft and his stories, is something that will always resonate with me.
In his next-to-last feature, Truffaut creates a film about the Nazi occupation of France during WWII, and specifically, its impact on a theatre in the midst of putting on a production. The theatre is run by Marion Steiner, an actress played by the great Catherine Deneuve, who took over after her husband, Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), has had to leave the country. Lucas was the director, and he is a Jew. The catch is, he hasn’t actually left; he’s hiding out in the cellar, waiting to leave. When the Nazis make his path out even more difficult, he can either try his luck, or stay. Either decision leaves a lot to chance, and whom Marion can trust. Is her new lead she’s playing opposite, Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu), one of those people? Is the director, Jean-Loup Cottins (Jean Poiret), working from Steiner’s vision of the play, one of those people? The tension rachets up throughout the film, especially when it feels as though life might imitate art between the two leads in the play.
“The Last Metro” is a celebration of the artists who struggled to make art during the Nazi occupation, which Truffaut was a young boy for. In particular, it feels like a love-letter to the filmmakers who made “Children of Paradise,” the epic French masterpiece, through clandestine means, during the occupation. Truffaut is very much with the artists in this film, even a Jewish actor whom, at the beginning, Marion must turn away; it would just bring too much attention to the production, and they might run a fowl with the censors who must approve such productions. You never know whom a collaborator could be- maybe an actress who seems to have over extended herself on her way to stardom? Will Granger’s associations outside of the stage cause issues? We do know one person they cannot truth, and that is the local critic, Daxiat (Jean-Louis Richard). Daxiat talk a good game with Marion about her husband and his talents, but when it comes to his eventual review of the work, his true colors come out; he is a collaborator, and his anti-semitism is vile- when he discovers something about Lucas’s disappearance, will he bring others to his cause in exposing everything? The fate of the character hits all the right notes, and the cruelty reveals a lot about how Truffaut felt of such people.
This is a very solid and entertaining piece from Truffaut. He obviously put a lot into this movie, and he gets good work out of every one of his actors. The emotional core of his best work is missing, but as a piece of genre filmmaking, it remains an example of his love of film, of creating art, and how it could express personal feelings.
