Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

grantss Interesting, thought-provoking story of civilian life in wartime.Paris, 1942. With the Germans in control and her Jewish theatre producer-director husband on the run from them, an actress, Marion Steiner (played by Catherine Deneuve) is left with the task of running his theatre. She starts rehearsals for a new play, written by her husband, and hires a new director and a leading man, Bernard Granger (Gerard Depardieu). It's make or break, as a flop will see the theatre go bankrupt. This, with the Germans clamping down on everything and the city's biggest drama critic an anti-semite and Nazi pawn, means it's going to be tough. Meanwhile, (known to her) her husband is hiding in the cellar, and he can't help but offer suggestions on the finer details of the play...On the face of it, this sounds like the makings of a decent comedy, a farce parodying Nazism and the theatre. While it has its comical moments, The Last Metro is most definitely a drama, and a good one. Quite claustrophobic in the way the French people are forced to live their lives, but that would be accurate for a civilian population in wartime, especially in an occupied country.Has some interesting themes too, not least being the inanity of bigotry. There is a strong sense of perseverance, survival and "the show must go on". Catherine Deneuve sparkles in the lead role. Good work too from Gerard Depardieu as Bernard Granger. Solid supporting cast.On the negative side, is quite slow moving at times and there are some detours which didn't add anything to the plot. The conclusion feels quite rushed and there isn't a great profundity about it - it's more a wrap-up than anything else. The movie is more about the journey than the destination.

antcol8 The "what's happening on stage is mirrored by what is happening in real life" trope is beloved by most of the great filmmakers. The screen inside of the screen; the frame framing; a window that looks out - or in. But honestly, not many of them have made their best films when they focus on become Cinematic Pirandellos. "The text is a tissue of quotations" said my boy Roland Barthes and, without trying to insist that viewers drink the Structuralist or Semiotician Kool - Aid, it would be great if people would stop focusing so much on the stories of these films and spend some more time thinking about how they engage with Films, Film, the nature of seeing, the nature of the porous, ambiguous relationship between "illusion" and "reality". I could see the great Student of Cinema in every frame - many films were evoked, but somehow I kept coming back to the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (Hitchcock) and The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir). But Truffaut's exhaustion is what resonates the most; everything feels trotted out, like a revival of situations and themes that were once vital and alive, and now have become habits and tics. Luckily for François, he met Fanny Ardant right around this time and was rejuvenated into making that really misunderstood and underrated Masterpiece, The Woman Next Door. All of the techniques of Classical American Cinema (Hitchcock, of course, but not only him) are used in that film with a freshness and a sense of rediscovery that is totally lacking here. When that scene featuring a wounded Depardieu comes in at the end, you can see the fact that it's - wait for it - actually a play! - coming a mile away; not that this in itself is bad, but even this use of the "Brechtian" awareness-of-the-"madeness"-of-the thing riff which was a major feature of the audacious early Nouvelle Vague has become a lightly amusing - not even, really! - riff that Truffaut must trot out in order to maintain some Middle Aged semblance of New Wave cred. "Maturity" is a double - edged sword. Renoir, considered in the 30's as the most "natural" of filmmakers, embraces "theatricality" more and more in his later works, and while this works brilliantly in The Golden Coach, many of his later films feel stiff and lifeless to me. I remember feeling like Picnic on the Grass was the geriatric version of Day In The Country. Mais on doit revenir a nos moutons...I'm not going to be as harsh as Godard, who, because of these later films referred to his former comrade as a "fake" and a "liar". First of all, there was life in the old dog yet (If Godard didn't like The Woman Next Door, he was a hypocrite; it's a good as the films of Sirk or Ophuls that he praised when he was a critic, and for the same reasons), and second, this film has its little pleasures, although there are still so many things I could tear apart about it. I just have to mention that scene of the first night of "Disappearance", the main play-within-a-play of this movie. At the curtain call, the camera searches around the theater, and gives a real WPA - style "look, people from all walks of life are transformed by The Theater" kind of shot. Rich! Poor! Gay! Straight! Nazis! Jews!...Something's wrong with that picture...no Cartier - Bresson, this wasn't the appropriate moment for a "Family of Man" shot, I don't think! The form of the shot and what it says clash in a jarring way. Maybe Truffaut was too exhausted to hate Nazis...Maybe he should have pulled out Sirk's A Time to Love and A Time to Die to get a little more nuance into the thing. I mean, I know he's a "humanist" and everything, but...Yummy acting. Yummy actors. Yummy set design. Yummy cinematography. So what. The Occupation and The Resistance feel like a fancy dress - up party. No tension, no energy, no drive, no feeling of necessity. Cinéma de Qualité, in your face, yo!

Neil Doyle Although this precedes the Quentin Tarantino film by several decades, you have to wonder whether screenwriter Tarantino drew some inspiration for his storyline from THE LAST METRO. Its central female character is a woman who owns a theater and holds a dangerous secret--her Jewish husband is a hideout in the cellar and she is surrounded everywhere by the threat of Nazis during WWII in France.CATHERINE DENOUEVE and GERARD DEPARDIEUX play the actress and actor who have leading romantic roles in her husband's play--but their attraction to each other is not revealed until late in the film. She treats him with disdain and makes it clear that during rehearsals it is not necessary for him to touch her face or body in any way.They are an interesting pair, to put it mildly, much more than one-dimensional characters in a film full of theatrical flavor amid all the theater rehearsals for her husband's production of a Norwegian romantic drama. The acting is impeccable, although the play itself seems to be a poor imitation of life full of cliché-ridden dialog about a man and woman in an uneasy love relationship.Unlike the Tarantino film, there are no wild shootouts or raging infernos inside the theater. The drama is subdued all the way with just the right amount of tension to keep a viewer interested in the outcome. The satisfactory ending does not disappoint.Directed in leisurely style by Francois Truffaut, it is a showcase for Catherine Deneuve who walks off with most of the acting honors in a riveting, self-assured performance as a beautiful woman loved by the two most important men in her life.It's the kind of film Warner Bros. would have filmed in the '40s, with Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott and Paul Henried in the leading roles.

lastliberal François Truffaut's homage to the theater was an Oscar and Golden Globe nominee and won a basketful of César Awards. It takes place in Nazi occupied Paris in 1942 and shows how the French coped with that tragedy. The anti-Jewish propaganda is continual throughout.Catherine Deneuve is magnificent as the wife of a theater owner (Heinz Bennent), who now runs it while keeping her Jewish husband hidden in the basement.Gérard Depardieu is her new leading man. He is stunningly suave and comedic as a womanizer, who also happens to be part of the Resistance. His repartee with Arnette (Andréa Ferréol) is hilarious.Bennent was excellent as the husband and director in the basement. Seeing him just before the play opened was just as I imagine it is for all directors.The music and cinematography were excellent also, and Truffaut's direction was flawless.A superb ending!