Le Dernier Métro [The Last Metro] **** (1980, Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Heinz Bennent, Jean Poiret, Andrea Ferreol, Paulette Dubost, Sabine Haudepin) – Classic Movie Review 3021

Co-writer/director François Truffaut’s endearing1980 film is a fine tribute to the French theatre and the spirit of bravery and resistance. You can smell the greasepaint backstage and feel the mood of the wartime Nazi Occupation of France. And there are notable performances by Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve, who has a rare in-depth role to sink her teeth into as the actress trying to maintain her husband’s theatre in wartime. Heinz Bennent is the other hit turn as the Jew hiding from the Nazis in the vaults.

It is not surprising for Truffaut to ensure good roles for his actresses (also Andrea Ferreol, Paulette Dubost and Sabine Haudepin), but the feeling of sentmental attachment for the theatre from this quintessential man of the cinema is quite unexpected. The director goes for entertainment rather than intellectual or emotional depth and hits the target exactly.

Also in the cast are Jean Poiret, Jean-Louis Richard, Maurice Risch, Marcel Berbert, Richard Bohringer and Jean-Pierre Klein.

It is another well-crafted movie from Truffaut and it is fitting that he has again assembled several of his most trusted long-term collaborators, co-writer Suzanne Schiffman, cinematographer Nestor Almendros and composer Georges Delerue.

Classic Movie Review 3021