Some fine moments in Truffaut's late [not Last, see correction below] film

Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro (1980) is far from his best film but it was his last film (he died, too young, in 1984) [Correction, 5/22: it was not his last film, it was his third-from last] and it holds up well over the years and is still worth watching. In brief it’s about a small theater company (the Montmartre) in Paris in the early 1940s under Nazi occupation; the Nazis, using obsequious French so-called journalists and drama critics, have purged all theater companies of  Jewish actors/producers/owners and evaluate each script and performance to exhume Jewish elements and traits, whatever that’s supposed to mean. A horrible and frightful time – and this theater company pulls together to launch its new show, a plaintive melodrama, it seems. The head of the company is played by Catherine Deneuve, beautiful as always; her Jewish husband has supposedly left the country but actually lives in the cellar of the theater, from where he listens to all the rehearsals and provides his notes and comments – a nice conceit, but pretty much impossible. Gerard Depardieux plays the male lead in the show-within-the-show, an ambiguous character at first but who ultimately rises up against the Nazi censorship and leaves the company to serve in the Resistance. The film reminds me of 2 I’ve seen recently. The obvious comparison is w/ Truffaut’s Day for Night; that one gave us an inside look at the process of making a film – this one gives an inside look at producing a play, though it’s in no way as complete and surprising and bold as D4N. The film also calls to mind the screwball comedy To Be or not To Be, about a theater company under the Nazi occupation of Poland – a much more uproarious film and produced during the uncertainty and terror of the war. Last Metro has its heart in the right place, of course, though the Nazis [and collaborators, I should add - 5/22] are a pretty easy target by 1980; this film was not in and of itself about the resistance – it’s nothing compared w/, say, Army of Shadows – but Truffaut does a great job managing a large cast of eccentric characters, and the film has some fine sequences, including a bit of a surprise at the ending (no spoilers here), even though Truffaut had to cheat a little bit to bring the ending to life – we’ll excise that; I was his last film [see correction above], and it was Truffaut.