DVD OF THE WEEK: The Last Metro

Truffaut's romantic anti-war melodrama, a gently personal-political ode to theatre and life under the German occupation of France, is perhaps the most slickly populist work of his career. Luminously bathed in a nostalgic warmth—all rosy reds and smoky chocolates—by cinematographer extraordinaire Nestor Almendros, it's a luxurious production set in despairing times. As WWII rages on in 1942, Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), the Jewish director and owner of the Théâtre Montmarte, hides out in the cellar while his Gentile wife and beloved actress Marion (Catherine Deneuve) juggles rehearsals and administering to their struggling business. A new play is being staged, and former Grand Guigol actor Bernard Granger (Gérard Depardieu) has been cast as the new leading man, an incorrigible horndog who moonlights as a radical for the Resistance.

The stagehand and designers and supporting talents are exactly that—supporting talents—to the film's subdued love triangle between Marion, her brash co-star, and her hermetic hubby who impotently hears all through a floorboard duct. (The photo up top, a pivotal if fleeting moment after a successful opening night, only teases at any sort of release to what is a palpable sexual tension.) It's curious why Truffaut and co-scenarist Suzanne Schiffman restricted their milieu to this theater since Lucas's isolation clearly parallels the repressed, physically divided country (even illustrated in a bifurcated map onscreen), the redundancy ultimately limiting the film's chances to be as emotionally impactful as others set in this time and place. Still, even as I pretentiously proclaim this lesser Truffaut, The Last Metro satisfies as a glossy, tenderly witty entertainment.

What I've most been thinking about since finally catching up with this film is one single character, Daxiat (Jean-Louis Richard). As pictured at right being publicly pushed around by Bernard, the film's most villainous character (beyond, you know, the Nazis) is this anti-Semetic drama critic, who vengefully spews out a damning review of the Montmarte's new production because of his bigoted loathing of Lucas and gay director Jean-Loup Cottins (Jean Poiret). Under German rule, Daxiat's ideology (one of the few explicably defined in the film) is given more power, his words now weightier, which made me wonder if former critic Truffaut was secretly commenting on what he saw as an unwelcome sea change amongst these professionals, or if it simply made sense dramatically to have this character be one more oppressive foil to an artist's livelihood. As Steven Soderbergh commented to me recently, casting my man Glenn Kenny as a hostile critic in The Girlfriend Experience wasn't meant to be interpreted as a veiled annoyance toward reviewers, but who knows? What would Anton Ego think, or Lord Dargis, perhaps?

Posted by ahillis at March 25, 2009 3:57 PM