The Last Metro

The Last Metro
Film poster
Directed byFrançois Truffaut
Written byFrançois Truffaut
Suzanne Schiffman
Jean-Claude Grumberg
Produced byFrançois Truffaut
Jean-José Richer
StarringCatherine Deneuve
Gérard Depardieu
Jean Poiret
CinematographyNéstor Almendros
Edited byMartine Barraqué
Music byGeorges Delerue
Production
companies
Les Films du Carrosse
Andrea Films
SEDIF
SFP
TF1 Films Production
Distributed byGaumont
Release date
  • 17 September 1980 (1980-09-17)
Running time
131 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Box office$23.3 million[1][2]
3,393,694 admissions (France)[3]

The Last Metro (French: Le Dernier Métro) is a 1980 period drama film, co-written and directed by François Truffaut, that stars Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu.[4]

Set in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1942, the film follows the fortunes of a small theatre in the Montmartre quarter which keeps up passive resistance by maintaining its cultural integrity, despite censorship, antisemitism and material shortages.[5] The title evokes two salient facts of city life under the Germans: fuel shortages led people to spend their evenings in theatres and other places of entertainment, but the curfew meant they had to catch the last Métro train home.

Upon its release in theatres on 17 September 1980, The Last Metro became one of Truffaut's more commercially successful films. In France it had 3,384,045 admissions and in the United States it grossed $3 million.[1] At the 6th César Awards, The Last Metro received 12 nominations and won 10 of them, including Best Film. The film also received Best Foreign Film nominations at the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes.

  1. ^ a b JP. "Le Dernier métro (1980)- JPBox-Office". Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  2. ^ "The Last Metro (1981) - Box Office Mojo". Retrieved 28 October 2016.
  3. ^ Box Office information for Francois Truffaut films at Box Office Story
  4. ^ Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier (2002). French Cinema: From Its Beginnings to the Present. Continuum. pp. 314–315. ISBN 978-0-8264-1600-1.
  5. ^ Holmes, Diana; Ingram, Robert (1998). François Truffaut. Manchester: Manchester university press. p. 18. ISBN 0-7190-4554-1.