Movie · 1980 · Drama, Romance, War · 2h 11m · PG · French
Curator score: 7.1/10 (42.2K ratings)
A story of love and conflict.
Overview
In occupied Paris, an actress wed to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.1/10
IMDb: 7.3/10
Letterboxd: 3.76/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 86%
TMDB: 7.2/10
Director
François Truffaut
Production
Les Films du Carrosse, Sédif Productions, SFP, TF1 Films Production, TF1
Cast
Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Poiret, Andréa Ferréol, Paulette Dubost, Jean-Louis Richard, Maurice Risch, Heinz Bennent, Sabine Haudepin, Christian Baltauss, Pierre Belot, René Dupré, Aude Loring, Alain Tasma, Rose Thiéry, Jacob Weizbluth, Jean-Pierre Klein, Renata Flores, Marcel Berbert, Hénia Suchar
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A thoughtful, elegantly acted wartime backstage drama that blends romance, resistance, and the practical anxieties of keeping a theater alive under occupation. It’s less a thriller than a humane ensemble piece, but the craft, performances, and emotional intelligence make it rewarding.
Best for
fans of French cinema and François Truffaut
viewers who like wartime stories focused on civilians and artists
people drawn to backstage theater dramas
fans of restrained romantic melodrama
viewers who appreciate period detail and strong ensemble acting
Skip if
you want a fast-moving resistance thriller
you prefer overt emotional intensity over quiet, layered drama
you’re not interested in theater-world stories
you want the occupation setting treated with maximum grimness and urgency
Overview
The Last Metro is one of those films that turns survival into a performance, and performance into survival. Truffaut stages occupied Paris as both a political pressure cooker and a working theater, where every cue, lie, and silence has consequences. The result is polished, humane, and often moving, even when it feels deliberately controlled rather than explosive.
Worth noting
Catherine Deneuve gives the film its cool center, while Gérard Depardieu adds warmth and volatility. Their relationship, and the larger triangle around them, gives the film its romantic charge, but the real pleasure is the way Truffaut keeps returning to the daily labor of making art under threat. The backstage details are vivid without becoming quaint.
Bottom line
It may not hit with the urgency some viewers expect from an occupation drama, and Truffaut’s restraint can make the emotions feel carefully contained. But if you respond to films about artists under pressure, moral compromise, and the stubborn persistence of culture, this is a rich and elegant watch.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Romi (3.5★) · 299 likes
they didn't even take the metro
Edgar Cochran ✝️🍋 (4★) · 210 likes
When I see Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) in Inglourious Basterds (2009), I am reminded of Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) in Le Dernier Métro. Both gorgeous French-speaking women, both looking terrific in a red dress, both intrepid femmes facing catastrophes once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, both having a lover, both being owner of a prestigious theater (one for movies, one for plays), they share striking similarities. Shosanna is Tarantino's French prototype of Steiner.
Both movies have moments of tense suspense… more
📀 Cammmalot 📀 (4★) · 176 likes
”How many years does a man have to live?”
The Last Metro feels like three films in one:
1. A film about the struggle of surviving and hiding in occupied France
2. A film about the struggle of keeping a theatre afloat in occupied France
3. A film about the struggle of a love triangle...that could pretty much happen anywhere.
Film one fascinated me with how Lucas Steiner is forced to become the Boo Radley of theatre production and what… more
Lisa Berndle (5★) · 124 likes
I love art.
And by art i mean catherine deneuve.
Mike D'Angelo (3★) · 124 likes
54/100
Curiously staid, given the subject matter. Even knowing in advance how the movie ends (from a previous viewing), I could scarcely detect any sign of repressed passion from Deneuve and/or Depardieu—it feels as if Truffaut belatedly grafted some dramatic elements onto what's primarily meant as a simple, earnest tribute to the theater world in Occupied France. Always watchable, but rarely urgent; consequently, I find that I have almost nothing to say about it. Even the title alludes to something that's ultimately accorded very little weight.
1969 · War, Drama, Thriller · 2h 25m · NR · Curator 9.9/10 (29.5K ratings)
A more austere and severe companion piece about resistance under occupation, ideal if you want the same historical setting with greater tension and moral weight.