Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27448 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-05-18
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 131 minutes

Amazon.com
François Truffaut again tackles the elusive nature of creativity and the elusive creation in this thoughtful, sumptuous, 1980 film. Nominated for the Best Foreign Language film Oscar, and a winner of various Césars, The Last Metro is a tale of the theater in occupied France during World War II. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) manages the Theatre Montmarte in the stead of her Jewish husband, director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent). He has purportedly fled France but is really hiding out in the basement of the theater. The one hope to save the Montmarte is a new play starring the dashing Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu). The attraction between Marion and Bernard is palpable, and as usual Truffaut creates tension and drama from even the most casual of occurrences. The theme of the director locked away while his lover and his creation are appropriated by others makes for interesting Truffaut study, but first and foremost this is a well-spun romance. --Keith Simanton

Customer Reviews

A film about love...
`Le Dernier Metro' is a gentle and almost placid film, one that sort of floats over the audience with its silky texture. This is both good and bad, for while it manages to absorb us in its emotional manipulation, it fails (at times) to give us any real tension; which is what we'd expect from a film of this nature. Even in the throws of marital aggression we are never really brought into the grit of it all, because everything moves with such smooth calculation. While this form of delivery may not work to establish the intimate tensions it tries to create, it does work with developing the intimate romance that blossoms between two of the films stars, building a soft and near private exchange of pure emotional interaction.

So, in other words; this film works very well as a romance, but struggles a bit as a character study.

`Le Dernier Metro' tells the story of Marion Steiner, a young and beautiful woman who is running her Jewish husbands theater in war-torn Paris. Her husband has reportedly fled France but in actuality he is hiding in the basement of the theater. Marion tries to juggle both the running of the theater, the starring in the plays and the shielding of her husband from the Nazi's. Her husband on the other hand is just trying to remain sane as he tucks himself away, never seeing anyone but his wife; and even that is limited. He tries to work from the basement, listening closely to the rehearsals going on above him and giving his advice for change.

What he never expected though, was that his wife would fall for a co-star.

That co-star is Bernard Granger, a dashing young man working for the resistance. Marion is quietly (where that serene flow really works beautifully) falling for this man; not just his charms and good looks but really for him as a person, his ideals and all he stands for.

There is a magical scene, on the stage, in front of hundreds, where they have a genuine `moment' and it nearly takes your breath away.

The performances within the film are brilliant all the way around. Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu are Oscar worthy here, developing characters we can relate to and sympathize with. Deneuve says so much with just the emotion in her eyes, really portraying every single emotion with such precision and realism. Depardieu has the tough job of being almost instantly engaging without ever jumping out at you, since their attraction to one another is so subtle and calm. He does this brilliantly. Both Heinz Bennent (as Marion's stir-crazy husband) and Jean-Louis Richard (as the critic bent on Steiner's distruction) are fantastic in their supporting roles and really add layers to the films development. It just would have been nice if the direction had changed pace for their encounters, so as to add a little more intensity to their situations.

That said; I am also not a huge fan of the ending (I hate the whole `lets wrap everything up by just telling you what happens next' sort of thing) but it isn't a complete kill-joy.

I definitely would recommend `Le Dernier Metro', especially for the top-notch performances by the entire cast. Deneuve is a knock out, whichever way you look at it. The film is a beautiful love story; tackling a woman's love for her husband, a woman's love for another, a man's love for his wife, but most of all it tackles the passionate love for the theater.

The show must go on!
Despite the restrictions of the occupied French by the [...] boot, a Parisian theatrical company decides to continue.

A bold and striking statement in favor of the creative liberty in those opprobrious years of oppression and censure.

One of the smarter icon movies of this unforgettable director. Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu make each one a superb tour de force performance.

Minor Truffaut, but quite enjoyable
Although Truffaut had another two films in him, in many ways The Last Metro looks as if it was planned as his last movie, even down to filming a deleted scene (included on the European DVDs but not this NTSC version) where a dying director tries to convince Catherine Deneuve's heroine to star in his last film. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean it sums up his life and work so much as it feels as if the somewhat half-hearted screenplay has been rushed into production without being entirely thought through. Not that its bad - indeed parts of it are quite enjoyable - more that it tends to drift by like exactly the kind of `well-made play' that he once attacked, with the romance barely developed and much of the interest coming from characters on the sidelines, such as Jean-Louis Richard's critic, collaborator and anti-Semitic propagandist. At it's best it comes over like a theatrical variation on Day For Night set against the German occupation (indeed, Richard was DFN's co-writer), without ever quite matching that film's emotional rollercoaster ride.