The Last Metro

Original title: Le dernier métro

1980
PG
2h 12m

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

16K

YOUR RATING

In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.

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Political Drama Workplace Drama Drama Romance War

In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Germans while doing both of their jobs.In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Germans while doing both of their jobs.In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Germans while doing both of their jobs.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.3/10

16K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 13 wins & 7 nominations total

Trivia
In his Chicago Sun-Times review, Roger Ebert wrote that the character of Daxiat, the collaborationist critic, "is such an evil monster that he must surely be inspired by someone Truffaut knows." Michel Daxiat was the pseudonym of the critic Alain Laubreaux (1899-1968), who wrote for the anti-Semitic journal "Je suis partout." The scene where Bernard gives him a beating is inspired by an incident when Jean Marais punched Laubreaux; after Liberation, Laubreaux shared the fate Daxiat suffers at the film's end.

Goofs
In one scene in the cellar, during a conversation between Marion and Lucas, we can see the sound recordist hiding himself in a corner of the cellar.

Quotes
Marion Steiner: It takes two to love, as it takes two to hate. And I will keep loving you, in spite of yourself. My heart beats faster when I think of you. Nothing else matters.

Connections
Featured in Sneak Previews: Sunday Lovers/Falling In Love Again/My Bloody Valentine/The Last Metro (1981)

Soundtracks
Bei mir Bist du Schön
(Vous êtes plus Belle que le Jour)
Music by Sholom Secunda
Lyrics by Jacob Jacobs
English lyrics by Cahn-Chaplin
French lyrics by Jacques Larue

User reviews62

Review

Featured review

8/10

The best of Truffaut's late films.

Francois Truffaut follows in the tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville by adapting a popular genre as a serious allegory for the darkest period in French history: the Nazi Occupation. Just as Melville used the gangster film to examine notions of legality, legitimacy, authority and criminality in a period when the Resistance were outlaws and the police rounding up Jews for the death camps, so Truffaut takes the beloved putting-on-a-show warhorse, and uses it as a metaphor for the conditions of life in Occupied France: the need to act, adapt and continually discard roles. When Depardieu's character leaves to fight for the Resistance, he puns about exchanging his make-up (maquillage) for the maquis.

What Truffaut is most interested in, as in all his films, is the effect this need for constant dissembling has on individual identity and relationships. This wonderful romantic comedy plays like a mature update of 'Casablanca', richly stylised, bravely open-ended, with Truffaut's moving camera wrenching spirit from the claustrophobic confines.