The Last Metro

Plot

Set during the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War, it tells the story of Lucas Steiner, a Jewish theatre director and his Gentile wife, Marion Steiner, who struggles to keep him concealed from the Nazis in their theatre cellar while she performs both his former job as the director and hers as an actress.

The title The Last Metro refers to the fact that during the occupation it was imperative that Parisians catch the last train (Métro) home. This was to avoid breaking the strict curfew imposed by the Nazis. During the winter months of occupied Paris there was no way to obtain coal, and the only manner in which people could keep warm was attending plays in theatres, which ended just before the last train left.

Cast

Production

Truffaut had wanted to create a film set during the French occupation period for a long time, as his uncle and grandfather were both part of the French Resistance, who were once caught while passing messages. This event was eventually recreated in The Last Metro. Truffaut was stimulated by the actor Jean Marais’ autobiography and by other documents of theatre people from during the occupation of which he based the film upon.

This film was one instalment—dealing with theatre—of a trilogy on the entertainment world that Truffaut had planned. The instalment that dealt with the film world was 1973's La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night), which had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Truffaut completed the screenplay for the third instalment, L'Agence Magique, which would have dealt with the world of music hall. In the late 1970s he was close to beginning filming, but the failure of his film The Green Room forced him to look to a more commercial project, and he filmed Love on the Run instead.

Truffaut began casting in September 1979, and he wrote the role of Marion especially with Catherine Deneuve in mind for her energy. Gérard Depardieu initially did not want to be involved in the film, as he did not like Truffaut’s directing style, but he was later convinced.

Most of the filming took place in an abandoned chocolate factory on Rue du Landy in Clichy, which was converted into a studio. During shooting Deneuve suffered an ankle sprain from a fall, resulting in having to shoot over scenes at short notice. Scriptwriter Suzanne Schiffman was also hospitalised with a serious intestinal obstruction. The film shoot lasted fifty-nine days and ended on April 21, 1980.

Themes

A recurring theme in Truffaut’s films has been linking film making and film watching. The Last Metro is self-conscious in this respect. In the opening the film mixes documentary footage with period re-creations alongside shots of contemporary film posters.

Truffaut commented “this film is not concerned merely with anti-semitism but intolerance in general” and a tolerance is shown through the characters of Jean Poiret playing a homosexual director and Andrea Ferreol plays a lesbian designer.

As in Truffaut's earlier film Jules et Jim, there is a love triangle between the three principal characters: Marion Steiner (Deneuve), her husband Lucas (Heinz Bennent) and Bernard Granger (Depardieu), an actor in the theatre's latest production.

Reception

The film recorded admissions in France of 3,384,045.

Awards and nominations