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The Last Metro (French,1980)

Updated: Mar 12

The Last Metro, directed by François Truffaut, is set in 1942 when France was under Nazi occupation. The title alludes to the last metro departing out of Paris at 11 PM, which city commuters could not afford to miss because of nighttime curfew.




 

The plot


The plot consists of three strands, each of which plays out in three different physical locations: the theater, the cellar and the city.


The theater


The theater at the center of the plot is the Montmartre, owned by Lucas Steiner (played by Heinz Bennent) and his wife, Marion Steiner (played by Catherine Deneuve). Lucas is a playwright and director, while Marion performs on the Montmartre stage, although she gained her fame from earlier film work. Theaters in Paris are thriving despite the Nazi occupation, as they provide a reliable source of heat amid fuel shortages.


Jews are being persecuted in France. Lucas is Jewish, but Marion is not. In this anti-Semitic environment, the theater offers the lead male role in the Montmartre's upcoming production to Bernard Granger (played by Gérard Depardieu), a gentile. The play, Disappearance, is a Norwegian work that Lucas Steiner has translated into French. This role would be a significant step up for Bernard, as the Montmartre seats twice as many as the Grand Guignol, where he previously performed. However, when Bernard suspects that a fellow actor was rejected solely because of his Jewish ethnicity, he hesitates to accept the role. The theater manager, Jean-Loup Cottins (played by Jean Poiret), reassures him that the Jewish actor was not a contender for the lead role. Ultimately, Bernard proves to be a great fit, and the play becomes a major commercial success, saving the Steiners from financial hardship.


The cellar


While people believe that Lucas has fled to South America to escape imminent Nazi persecution, he is actually hiding in the theater's cellar. Every night after rehearsals, Marion goes down to the cellar, where the couple lead a parallel domestic life. Marion raises money to fund her husband's escape, but the plan is abandoned when the Germans conquer the previously free territories within France. Frustrated that he cannot direct his own play, Lucas devises a ingenious solution: he listens to the rehearsals from the cellar through a heating vent. In this way, he directs the play on background by providing feedback to Marion every night!


Paris


The drama inside the theater unfolds against the backdrop of the much larger drama of the Nazi occupation. When the movie ventures outside the artificial confines of the theater, we are confronted with a grim reality: the streets and restaurants of Paris are filled with German soldiers, bomb shelters are everywhere, and air-raid sirens are commonplace. Paris is also a hotbed of French resistance activity. Unknown to his theater colleagues, Bernard is secretly in contact with members of the French underground. He rigs a bomb inside a record player, which the resistance uses to assassinate a German official.


 

Observations


The occupied people


The characters in the movie represent a range of how the French respond to their German occupiers, broadly falling into four categories. At one extreme are active collaborators, such as the drama critic Daxiat (played by Jean-Louis Richard), who denounces the play Disappearance as too Jewish and delivers anti-Semitic rants on the radio. Further left on the spectrum is the young actress Nadine Marsac (played by Sabine Haudepin, the child actor in Truffaut's Jules et Jim), who is indifferent to the Germans; she has no qualms accepting a ride from a German soldier when running late for rehearsals. The third category, likely representing the majority, includes those who despise the Germans but remain silent in their suffering; an example is the theater's concierge, who washes her son's hair after seeing a German soldier pat his head affectionately. Finally, there are those who bravely engage in active resistance, like Bernard Granger, risking their lives in the process. These four personas apply not just to the Nazi occupied France but in any situation where power is used as a tool of exploitation or oppression.


The villain


Daxiat is the villain of the film, collaborating with the German occupiers to expel all Jews from the French theater. When he learns from the Germans that Lucas Steiner's stolen identity card has been found, he informs Marion that this suggests Lucas is still in France. Unaware of Lucas's hiding place in the cellar, Daxiat tries to deceive Marion by claiming that the Nazis respect artists like Lucas, suggesting she should inform him if her husband tries to contact her. Later, Daxiat attempts to seize control of the Montmartre by conniving with the Germans, arguing that Lucas Steiner's transfer of theater ownership to his non-Jewish wife, Marion, was a sham “Aryanization” because it occurred after the Nazi occupation. We feel a sense of satisfaction at the film's end when Daxiat is forced to flee after France is liberated. He is sentenced to death in absentia and ultimately dies of cancer in the 1960s.


Love and longing in Paris


Nazi occupation or not, love and longing are intrinsic to the human condition. The film begins with Bernard Granger attempting to score a one-night stand with Arlette Guillaume (played by Andréa Ferréol) on the streets of Paris. Later, when Bernard secures the lead role at the Montmartre, he discovers that Arlette is the costume designer. His subsequent pushy attempts to pursue her would seem inappropriate in today's "Me Too" era.


It turns out that Arlette is in a lesbian relationship with Nadine. Arlette's mix of shame and outraged dignity is sensitively portrayed when Marion accidentally walks in on the two women kissing. Marion angrily tells Arlette to keep her love life outside the theater. Arlette feels an extra layer of judgment, possibly believing Marion's reaction would have been more muted had she walked in on a heterosexual couple. Interestingly, we also learn indirectly that Jean-Loup is openly gay; in one scene, Bernard apologizes to Jean-Loup after using a homophobic slur from a script during rehearsals.


Another charming subplot involves the theater's technician, Raymond Boursier (played by Maurice Risch). Raymond lets people believe that Martine (played by Martine Simonet), who peddles coveted items like meat on the black market, is sleeping with him. He is forced to confess the truth when Martine steals from the theater.


The characters not only yearn for love but also for success. Nadine is working tirelessly to succeed in her profession, and we feel empathy for her when she becomes hysterical after being reprimanded for being late. It's unrealistic to expect people to put their personal aspirations on hold until a global crisis, over which they have no control, is resolved.


The Love Triangle


The main romantic entanglement in the story is the love triangle between Lucas, Bernard, and Marion. For much of the film, the attraction between Bernard and Marion is not explicitly clear. Bernard refrains from using his usual pickup line, "I see two women in you," with Marion, while she insists that he avoid touching her during rehearsals, as dictated by the script.


Nevertheless, there are signs of sexual tension between them. Marion watches Bernard wistfully as he flirts with Nadine, and at another point, Bernard acknowledges Marion's beauty to a comrade from the resistance. Bernard also manhandles Daxiat for criticizing Marion's performance in the play, an especially gallant gesture considering Daxiat had lavishly praised Bernard. The ice between Bernard and Marion begins to thaw when Marion is forced to seek Bernard's help in hiding Lucas when the Gestapo searches the cellar. Later, when Bernard informs Marion that he is leaving the theater to join the French resistance, the two have sex.


After the war, Lucas writes a play in which Bernard and Marion play the lead roles. The final scene of this play also serves as the last scene of the film. There are two possible interpretations of how their affair culminates. In the final scene, Bernard's character tells Marion's character that he is no longer in love with her. One interpretation is that this statement reflects Bernard's own feelings, not just those of his character. The attraction between them developed during a tumultuous time when they were working in closed proximity and it's understandable that the intensity of that passion might eventually fade. In an alternative interpretation, Lucas, Bernard and Marion are a throuple! This reading is supported by the way Marion deliberately places herself between Lucas and Bernard when they take their bows before the audience.


Intolerance


When we think of the Holocaust, many of us see it as a crime committed by a select group of Germans within the Nazi party. However, Nazism could not have taken root in a tolerant society. The film's portrayal of deep-rooted anti-Semitism in occupied France is disturbing. Marion notes that French citizens send 1,500 letters of denunciation every day to the German authorities, identifying Jewish people within their social circles. Even newspaper crosswords contain offensive clues describing Jews. In one scene, Bernard declares he will refuse to drop his pants to prove his Aryan identity, yet he is still compelled to sign a declaration attesting to it to comply with the rules. The normalization of hatred in human societies seems, sadly, inevitable. All we can hope for is that it does not lead to violence.


Red


Like one of the movies within the Three Colors trilogy of Krzysztof Kieślowski, the color red is weaved into the film. In addition to the opening and closing credits, which are presented on a red background, the characters almost always wear something red—men in red ties and sweaters, women in red dresses or with bright red lipstick. The theater walls have a reddish hue, and the chairs are upholstered in red. The deliberate use of this color scheme is evident in the smallest details. For example, the script for the play is bound in a red hardcover, and in another scene, Bernard writes what he mistakenly believes to be Arlette's phone number in a red notebook.


 

The Last Metro is a beautifully narrated film that is visually gorgeous and fast-paced. While on the surface it is a period drama, the core theme of the film is intolerance, of which Nazi anti-semitism was just one instance.






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