François Truffaut’s Le dernier métro opens promisingly. Accompanying newsreels, Truffaut’s voiceover (which will return later on) provides facts and figures about the German occupation of parts of France. The title is explained. Because of the curfew that the occupiers have imposed, it was important not to miss the day’s last train. The setting here is Montmartre—almost entirely, the Théâtre Montmartre, whose resident Jewish director, Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent, brilliant), has reportedly fled. While his wife, star Marion, now runs the theater, Lucas actually is hiding in the basement. In the film’s one piercing moment, Lucas breaks into dance with the woman he loves in his arms.
Marion eventually falls in love with Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu, spirited), her new leading man (in a play called Disappearance) and, secretly, a member of the Resistance. One feels that this outcome owes something to both the tenuousness of the times and the fluctuating, volatile nature of theater, with its shifting masks and roles.
Truffaut well conveys the oppressive atmosphere of foreign occupation, but in the main his biggest popular success is a prosaic, mediocre film, its reflections on the relationship between life and art banal, its rousing finale a terrible cheat (what we take as real turns out to be part of the play being performed), with a stage window showing actual people moving about in distant windows across the way. How is this any better than The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)?
Truffaut said he wanted to give Catherine Deneuve a “responsible” role. But one has to “use” this glacial model expertly, not rely on her to act, which she can rarely, if ever, do. Truffaut, moreover, undercuts Deneuve’s principal asset, her beauty, by allowing her ridiculous period hairdo.
This lavish film won ten Césars.
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THE LAST METRO (François Truffaut, 1980)
By grunesFrançois Truffaut’s Le dernier métro opens promisingly. Accompanying newsreels, Truffaut’s voiceover (which will return later on) provides facts and figures about the German occupation of parts of France. The title is explained. Because of the curfew that the occupiers have imposed, it was important not to miss the day’s last train. The setting here is Montmartre—almost entirely, the Théâtre Montmartre, whose resident Jewish director, Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent, brilliant), has reportedly fled. While his wife, star Marion, now runs the theater, Lucas actually is hiding in the basement. In the film’s one piercing moment, Lucas breaks into dance with the woman he loves in his arms.
Marion eventually falls in love with Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu, spirited), her new leading man (in a play called Disappearance) and, secretly, a member of the Resistance. One feels that this outcome owes something to both the tenuousness of the times and the fluctuating, volatile nature of theater, with its shifting masks and roles.
Truffaut well conveys the oppressive atmosphere of foreign occupation, but in the main his biggest popular success is a prosaic, mediocre film, its reflections on the relationship between life and art banal, its rousing finale a terrible cheat (what we take as real turns out to be part of the play being performed), with a stage window showing actual people moving about in distant windows across the way. How is this any better than The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)?
Truffaut said he wanted to give Catherine Deneuve a “responsible” role. But one has to “use” this glacial model expertly, not rely on her to act, which she can rarely, if ever, do. Truffaut, moreover, undercuts Deneuve’s principal asset, her beauty, by allowing her ridiculous period hairdo.
This lavish film won ten Césars.
Tags: Truffaut
This entry was posted on July 25, 2008 at 9:03 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.