The Last Metro

This is a very well made movie. In particular, acting, writing and direction are superb and it just goes to show you that you don't need car chases and explosions to make a good film.

The movie is set in a theater in occupied France. The main concern through most of the movie is that they will come to take the Jewish husband of Catherine Deneuve who is hiding in the basement.

Gerard Depardieu provides excellent support as well and his decision at the end of the movie caught me a little off guard.

So, for those NOT familiar with the work of Truffault, it is an easy to watch starter--easier to take than some of his earlier work for the uninitiated.

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.

The show must go on, even under occupation, to entertain subdued, and sober populations, while all the world's a stage, all around a war is waged, there's a place to find a soupçon of distraction. Behind the scenes, so many subplots are relayed, the lives of people and their characters portrayed, how their worlds are interwoven, with the threads that they've all chosen, of their conduct, how they operate, behave.

It's an extremely engaging story of survival and opportunity that's centred around a theatre in Paris during WWII. Focusing primarily on Marion Steiner, the owner of the establishment who also acts on stage, performed as elegantly as ever by Catherine Deneuve, we observe her interactions with the players and the crew as she conceals her Jewish husband, and notable director, in the bowels of the playhouse bellow. Unlike many films from the time, and on similar subjects, it still holds up to scrutiny today, and it's well worth finding the best seat in your place of residence for a matinee viewing or screening, if the possibility arises.

While it's always lovely to see Catherine Deneuve on the big screen, and always nice to hear the lyrical beauty of French in a film, a lazy Sunday afternoon might not have been the best time to have to focus on subtitles. The movie, though heartfelt and lovingly rendered, slowly meandered and wondered in the typical French way of searching for a higher truth about humanity, all of which made for a more sedate movie-going experience than we had hoped.

In 1942, in a Paris occupied by the Nazis, Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) is a former cinema and presently theater actress, who has also to manage the Montmartre Theater and its company. Her Jewish husband Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), the writer, director and owner of the theater, has officially moved to South America, escaping from the Germans. Indeed he is hidden in the basement of the building. Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu) is a promising actor hired to act with Marion in a new play. The survival of the theater depends on the success of this play. Marion falls in love with Bernard, but hides her feelings due to her respect for her husband. Although having a very simple story, this movie is marvelous. The story is a great homage to theatrics, where not only the persons wants to survive, but also desire to save what they love: the theater. I recalled the movie `Il Viaggio di Capitan Fracassa', where theatrics is also honored. It is a love story in times of war. It is a human story, where citizens are presented trying to have a normal life, even having to share their sovereignty and culture with the invaders. It is not corny in any moment. The direction is from one of my favorites directors, François Truffault, who was born in 1932, therefore, he was a ten years old boy when this story begins. Certainly he has had a great experience of life in an occupied country and how life goes on. The beauty and the performance of Catherine Deneuve are astonishing. Gérard Depardieu is in an excellent shape and has also a wonderful performance. Although having 133 min. running time, the film is not long, since the story hooks the attention of the viewer. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): `O Último Metrô' (`The Last Subway Train')