Best French Films Ever.
Top rated French Movies: popular, classic, famous "must watch" Cinema Fançais

30. Le Dernier Métro
The Last Metro

The Last Metro (original French title: Le Dernier Métro) is a 1980 film made by Les Films du Carrosse, written and directed by the French filmmaker François Truffaut, and starring Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu.

In 1981, the film won ten Césars for: best film, best actor (Depardieu), best actress (Deneuve), best cinematography, best director (Truffaut), best editing, best music, best production design, best sound and best writing. It received Best Foreign Film nominations in the Academy Awards[3] and Golden Globes.

This film was one installment—dealing with theatre—of a trilogy on the entertainment world that Truffaut had planned.[5] The installment that dealt with the film world was 1973's La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night)] which had been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Truffaut completed the screenplay for the third installment, L'Agence Magique, which would have dealt with the world of music hall.[5] In the late 1970s he was close to beginning filming, but the failure of his film The Green Room forced him to look to a more commercial project, and he filmed Love on the Run instead.

Set during the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War, it tells the story of Lucas Steiner, a Jewish theatre director and his Gentile wife, Marion Steiner, who struggles to keep him concealed from the Nazis in their theatre cellar while she performs his former job both as an actress and directing the company.

The title The Last Métro (the last subway train) is a referral to the fact that during the occupation it was imperative that Parisians catch the last train (Métro) home. This was to avoid breaking the strict curfew imposed by the Nazis. During the winter months of occupied Paris, there was no way to obtain coal and the only manner in which people could keep warm was attending plays in theatres which ended just before the last train left.

As in Truffaut's earlier film Jules et Jim, there is a love triangle between the three principal characters: Marion Steiner (Deneuve), her husband Lucas (Heinz Bennent) and Bernard Granger (Depardieu), an actor in the theatre's latest production.

Boston Film Critics (USA)
Won: Best Foreign Language Film

César Awards (France)
Won: Best Actor – Leading Role (Gérard Depardieu)
Won: Best Actress – Leading Role (Catherine Deneuve)
Won: Best Cinematography (Néstor Almendros)
Won: Best Director (François Truffaut)
Won: Best Editing (Martine Barraqué)
Won: Best Film
Won: Best Music (Georges Delerue)
Won: Best Production Design (Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko)
Won: Best Sound (Michel Laurent)
Won: Best Writing (Suzanne Schiffman and François Truffaut)

David di Donatello Awards (Italy)
Won: Best Foreign Actress (Catherine Deneuve)