Cinema
Tinsel town
Peter Ackroyd
The Last Metro ('A', Curzon) As the credits unroll, Edith Piaf is singing one of her vibrant, throaty songs; it makes you feel warm and nostalgic all at once: at least that, I think, is the general idea. Truffaut has always been adept at laying on the charm, even if he does sometimes grab a trowel in order to do so. The Last Metro is set in Paris in 1942: a charmless and frightening period which now, through the magic of the cinema, has taken on the characteristics of some golden age. The film recounts the hazardous career of the 'Theatre Montmartre during the Occupation, in the days when, according to a commentary at the beginning, 'people flocked to the theatre for warmth'. I can't imagine that they would have found much of it here. Not only are the cast rehearsing some dire costume drama imported from Norway, they also spend most of their time trapped in attitudes of hysteria or whimsy. They play to the gallery even when it is empty.
Catherine Deneuve is the actress manager; a terrible composure is stamped upon her features, as though she has just stepped out of a refrigerator where she had been resting between acts. Her leading man, played by Gerard Depardieu, is an impetuous womaniser; he rushes off to join the Resistance towards the end of the film, like a bear suddenly waking from hibernation. M Depardieu has aged somewhat, but one can forgive him anything. And there is the anti-sernitic theatre critic, Daxiat, a heavy-jowelled, red-faced man who makes pretentious speeches about 'the Israelites' (now, I believe, it is fashionable for everyone to do the same) and stands at the back of the theatre like some squat figurine with its cracks plastered over. The three actors are, in their way, remarkable; but one never has any doubt that that is all they are doing acting, as deliberately and as obviously as if a clapper-board could be seen in the right hand corner, or a microphone hovering somewhere above their heads.
For what we have, in this film, is a conventional melodrama which perhaps deliberately or perhaps not bears all the mannerisms of the period in which it is set. As a result, everything becomes slightly artificial as if even the life outside the confines of the Theatre Montmartre were framed by a proscenium arch. Footsteps echo down cobbled alleys, the streets are foreclosed in darkness, characters are seen in a misty light through the windows of the local bar. Sentimentality, however, can become a positive restraint when it obfuscates or misdirects a plot and here there are so many loose ends, and so many scenes where whimsy overtakes reality that it is like watching a fairy story set in a jungle. We wish to believe it possible, but know it is not. It has to be said, of course, that Truffaut is a master of the romantic view. He has a great capacity for filling the screen with stray human figures a young boy tending a row of plants, a German soldier painting a water-colour of the Sacre Coeurwho shine with a bright innocence and humour. But here they seem to be composed of tinsel rather than of truth.
The problem is that Truffaut lends this lightness of touch to whatever he shows. In large part The Last Metro is about antisemitism. The Jewish director of the theatre is hiding in the basement, listening to Nazi propaganda broadcasts on the radio, while above ground a young girl slips precariously through the streets trying to conceal the 'hut' inscribed within a yellow star which, no doubt, will soon seal her fate. The occupation of Paris by Germans, antisemitism, and the deportation of the Jews to extermination camps is not really best approached through whimsy. It is rather like taking a nut to smash a sledge-hammer.
Of course the French cinema is nothing if not transparent; uncluttered by solemnity and unaffected by the glossy heroics of the American film industry, it retains a sharpness of outline and a clarity of tone which can deliver any message, moral or mood like outlines cut in glass. Truffaut seems to have set out quite deliberately to create a universe in a small room, to evoke the ambiguous relationships of Occupation Paris with the help of a few exemplary characters, to introduce into his charmed world of feeling intimations of tragedy, danger and death. But, somehow and quite uncharacteristically, he has got himself into a muddle in the process. Is this a film about the Theatre Montmartre, about antisemitism, or about the French character under duress? And, if about all three, where on earth are the connections between the staging of a Norwegian drama and the poisoned bowl of life outside? The major difficulty in resolving these questions lies with Truffaut's immense theatricality. Even when handling the most distressing or serious subjects, he cannot resist the tug of easy sentiment, the thrill of the sudden confrontation, or the yearnings towards nostalgia and innocence. But when these no doubt important and often engaging qualities are introduced into an ostensibly realistic setting, the reality itself becomes false, over-determined, slightly forced. When you do set a fairy story in a jungle, you must be sure that there are no real serpents who may reduce the effect of the cardboard replicas, no real wounds that show up the manufactured blood of theatrical ones.
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