1980 Week: The Last Metro

          Polished and sophisticated but also a bit on the trifling side, the World War II drama The Last Metro was the final major international success for François Truffaut, a titan of the French New Wave and one of the most gifted storytellers ever to work in cinema. Telling the story of theater people who defy the Nazis in occupied Paris, The Last Metro is among Truffaut’s most visually beautiful films, thanks to luminous photography by the great Néstor Almendros, and it pairs French-cinema grande dame Catherine Deneuve with Gérard Depardieu, then a rising star of Gallic films. All participants operate at the height of their powers, creating a movie that’s humane, intelligent, romantic, and suspenseful. The Last Metro is bloated at 131 minutes, and the ending is so tidy that it makes much of what came before seem inconsequential. Yet The Last Metro is unusual among movies about occupied France inasmuch as the material is not inherently depressing or tragic. The Last Metro is an inspirational story about survivors who refuse to compromise their principles, thereby getting the last laugh on their jack-booted oppressors. It’s not quite a feel-good WWII movie, but it’s certainly not a feel-bad WWII movie.

          When the picture opens, actor Bernard Granger (Depardieu) arrives for an audition at a theater operated by the beautiful actress Marion Steiner (Deneuve), who manages the acting troupe and the building because her husband, acclaimed director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent), is Jew who fled Paris to escape the Nazis. Or so it seems. Turns out Lucas is living in seclusion, using the theater’s basement as a hideout. Once Marion begins rehearsals for a new play in which she costars with Bernard, Lucas listens to their acting through pipes carrying sound from the stage to the basement. At night, once everyone else has left the building, Marion joins Lucas to get notes on the day’s work. Lots of things conspire to disrupt this delicate situation. French citizens collaborating with the Nazis discover clues suggesting that Lucas never left the country. Lucas gets stir-crazy in the basement, threatening to risk capture by leaving his hideout. And Bernard becomes romantically attracted to Marion, creating a complex triangle while the actors play lovers onstage.

          Despite being written, directed, and acted with the utmost care and refinement, The Last Metro has the feel of a soap opera, with characters pursuing crisscrossing agendas while guarding dangerous secrets. And while the pulpy nature of the material probably contributed to the film’s popularity, demanding viewers can’t help but expect more given the level of talent involved and the sprawling length of the movie. Taken for what it is, however, The Last Metro goes down smoothly. Deneuve is so exquisite to behold that she commands the screen even when she’s doing nothing, Depardieu hits the right note of brash arrogance, and Bennent is believable as a high-minded artiste. As always, Truffaut conjures an immersive sense of time and place.

The Last Metro: GROOVY

Tristana (1970)

          An offbeat character study with elements of radical politics and romantic tragedy, the Spanish film Tristana was adapted from a novel by Bentio Péres Galdós’ novel by the acclaimed avant-garde director Luis Buñuel. French actress Catherine Deneuve, whose dialogue was dubbed into Spanish, stars as Tristana, a beautiful young woman with limited life experience who finds herself thrust into a new world after becoming an orphan. Taken in as a ward by much-older aristocrat Don Lope Garrido—who rebels against society by refusing to work, instead living off old money and the sale of heirlooms—Tristana is confused when Don Lope begins expressing romantic interest, but she accepts his advances out of a sense of obligation.
           Don Lope (played by Fernando Rey) does not insist on marriage because of his nonconformist ways, so when Tristana meets handsome artist Horacio (Franco Nero), a bizarre triangle emerges. Despite all his bold talk about personal freedom, Don Lope tries to enforce his economic, psychological, and sociopolitical claims on Tristana, which has the effect of pushing her further away. Then fate intervenes in cruel ways, creating unexpected complications that take the story from the pedestrian realm of domestic melodrama into the rarified terrain of literary irony.

          While Tristana forefronts issues of class, idealism, and political theory just as strongly as Buñuel’s other films, the movie can be consumed either as a sharp parable or as a simple human narrative. For example, Don Lope’s myriad proclamations about the role of the individual in society (e.g., “We’re happy because neither you nor I have lost our sense of freedom”) speak to Buñuel’s pet theme of preserving identity amid totalitarianism. Yet the proclamations also illustrate the self-serving worldview of a cad who wishes to justify his lascivious behavior. As a case in point, consider Don Lope’s perspective on work: “Down with work that you have to do to survive! That work isn’t honorable. All it does is fatten the exploiting swine. However, what you do for pleasure ennobles man. If only we could all work like that.”

          The catch, of course, is that Don Lope embraces his anarchistic principles when they help coax beautiful young Tristana into bed, and then sings a different tune when she meets an age-appropriate suitor. The X factor in the storyline is Tristana herself, whom Buñuel depicts as an innocent turned cynical and opportunistic by extended exposure to the avarice of man. (One can’t blame her for changing after hearing Don Lope spend years saying things like, “I’m your father and your husband—one or the other, as it suits me.”)

          Although Deneuve captivates with her magnetic screen presence and overwhelming beauty, it’s actually frequent Buñuel collaborator Rey who carries Tristana. He portrays Don Lope as a pathetic failure who hides behind a meticulous appearance and thunderous oratory. Once age and loneliness remove Don Lope’s armor, Rey shows the character’s sad vulnerability without mitigating Don Lope’s insidious qualities. (Costar Franco, an Italian whose dialogue was dubbed into Spanish, mostly gets lost in the shuffle.) Tristana moves along briskly and features several compellingly strange motifs, so while it lacks the edgy wit of, say, Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), it’s very much of a piece with the director’s myriad condemnations of the ruling class. Plus, on some levels, the movie is a good old-fashioned yarn about a woman trying to seize limited opportunities during an oppressive time—while appropriate for the feminism era, it’s also the type of story in which someone like Joan Fontaine might have appeared during the ’40s heyday of Hollywood “women’s films.”

Tristana: GROOVY

Un Flic (1972)

          The final film of French director Jean-Pierre Melville, a specialist in postmodern hard-boiled cinema, Un Flic has enough style for a dozen movies, even though the plot leaves something to be desired. Starring suave Alain Delon as a Parisian police superintendent, the picture is a methodical, sleek examination of the title character’s investigation of an armed robbery that turns out to have larger implications. The picture soars when presenting a twilight world filled with amoral people and wicked schemes; Melville treats actors and objects as colors in his deliberately minimal palette. Yet the picture falls short in characterization, since Melville is obviously more interested in mood than in psychology. Still, with Paris as the primary backdrop and the beautiful faces of Delon and leading lady Catherine Denueve at his disposal, it’s hard to blame the director for getting preoccupied with surfaces.

          The movie begins with a brief introduction to Edouard (Delon), an unflappable detective who spends his evening prowling the Parisian underworld to resolve cases that flummox other policemen. Then the movie shifts to a bank robbery overseen by Simon (Richard Crenna). The robbery ends with one bystander murdered and one accomplice wounded. While the injured crook is hospitalized, Edouard cleverly connects the man to the crime; then the policeman works informants and discovers that the robbery was merely the prelude to an elaborate train heist. Concurrently, Edouard spends time with his glamorous mistress, Cathy (Deneuve), who is also Simon’s lover—although Edouard initially has no idea that Simon is involved with criminal enterprises.

          While the procedural aspects of the story come together well, culminating in an deliciously ambiguous finale, the romantic-triangle thread fizzles after too many excessively cryptic scenes. Plus, the nature of the principal Gallic performances creates an inherent storytelling obstacle—Delon and Deneuve transfix with their looks, but neither actor communicates much emotional heat. Meanwhile, the valiant Crenna’s work is hampered by dubbed dialogue, for although the Hollywood star spoke his French lines on set, a performer with better diction was hired to loop the role during post-production.

          These shortcomings aside, Un Flic has an utterly unique look that communicates Melville’s themes beautifully. In addition to employing such playfully artificial tools as miniatures for train scenes and process shots for driving scenes, Melville presents the whole film in a cool shade of blue—it seems likely he shot daylight film without adjusting for artificial light, and vice versa, so even the whites in Melville’s images (with a few exceptions) feel slightly azure. This offbeat visual device makes Un Flic seem as if it exists within a universe all its own. Better still, the most effective sequences do more than merely cast a spell with visuals. The centerpiece of the picture, for instance, is a real-time staging of the audacious train heist, an impressive 20-minute sequence almost entirely bereft of dialogue. Similarly, the opening robbery sequence and Edouard’s final scramble to capture fleeing criminals are studies in economy.

Un Flic: GROOVY

Le Sauvage (1975)

          The sleeky entertaining French farce Le Sauvage is like a Gallic spin on a Blake Edwards movie. Fast, funny, sexy, surprising, and touching, the picture matches two iconic stars—breathtaking Catherine Deneuve and suave Yves Montand—with masterful storytelling by director/co-writer Jean-Paul Rappeneau. Le Sauvage is frothy entertainment at its best, exactly because it’s not frothy in every scene; Rappeneau realizes that audiences need moments of sanity in order to care about characters when things get crazy.
          Here’s the short version of the plot. Frenchwoman Nelly (Deneuve) is in Venezuela to marry her hotheaded Italian fiancé, Vittori (Luigi Vannucchi). Just before the wedding, she changes her mind, so she runs away and seeks shelter in a hotel, where an altruistic stranger, Martin (Montand), intervenes when Vittori breaks into Nelly’s hotel room and tries to drag her home. Escaping the hotel, Nelly tracks down her former lover, an American named Alex (Tony Roberts), for help leaving the country. Vitorri finds Nelly at Alex’s place, too, so she flees again—taking Alex’s prized Toulouse-Lautrec painting with her so she can sell it for traveling money. More chases and close encounters ensue, until Nelly finds her perfect hideaway on Martin’s private island, even though Martin has no interest in visitors. Unlikely romance blooms as various forces converge on the island, some pursuing Nelly and some pursuing Martin.

          It’s all completely outlandish, but Rappeneau presents events in such a methodical way that the story never spins out of control. Quite to the contrary, the narrative has a comfortable rhythm of intimate scenes and noisy set pieces. Rappeneau also takes full advantage of a series of dynamic locations, with scenes set in France and New York in addition to the various South American locales. Montand suits this material perfectly, his macho energy leavened by poetic sensitivity; Vannucchi is wonderful as the maniac who’ll stop at nothing to recover his runaway bride; and it’s a kick to see Woody Allen regular Roberts smoothly delivering lines in French.

          Yet the whole piece revolves around Deneuve, since only a woman of her exquisite beauty could support a plot predicated on men chasing her across the globe and tolerating her quixotic behavior. While never disengaging from her familiar screen persona of chilly sophistication, Deneuve lightens up considerably here, and it’s impossible to say enough about how ravishing she looks. Even when scampering around the island wearing nothing but one of Martin’s shirts, she’s mesmerizing. That’s why the main gimmick of the love story—the notion that Martin finds Nelly highly resistible because she’s such a pain in the ass—is so fun. The ending is never in doubt, but the path to the ending is filled with delightful detours. Plus, befitting the analogy to Blake Edwards’ work, Rappeneau stages physical-comedy scenes with the artistry and grace of a choreographer. So even though Le Sauvage isn’t about anything, it’s consistently playful, vibrant, and warmhearted.

Le Sauvage: GROOVY

Hustle (1975)

          An admirable but not entirely successful attempt at transplanting classic film-noir themes into a hip ’70s milieu, this downbeat detective thriller features the peculiar pairing of delicate Gallic beauty Catherine Deneuve and suave Deep South stud Burt Reynolds. The fact that these actors don’t exist in the same cinematic universe reflects the many clashing tonalities director Robert Aldrich brings to Hustle. After smoothly blending comedy and drama in an earlier Reynolds movie, The Longest Yard (1974), Aldrich tries to do too many things here, because Hustle aspires to be a tragedy, a whodunit, a commentary on sexual politics, and more. Since Aldrich was generally at his best making unpretentious pulp, with deeper themes buried below the surface, his striving for Big Statements is awkward—much in the same way that Deneuve’s cool sophistication fails to gel with Reynolds’ hot emotionalism, the high and low aspects of this movie’s storytelling collide to produce a narrative muddle.

          The picture begins with cynical LA detectives Phil Gaines (Reynolds) and Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) commencing their investigation into the murder of a young hooker. The victim’s father, Korean War vet Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), is sniffing around the crime as well, because he wants revenge. When clues identify lawyer Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert) as a possible suspect, things get tricky not only because Sellers has political influence but because Sellers is a patron of another hooker, Nicole (Deneuve)—who happens to be Phil’s girlfriend.

          The idea of a cop living on both sides of the law is always provocative, but in this case, Phil’s relationship with Nicole makes him unsympathetic. Tolerating her demeaning career paints him as a user, while pushing her to abandon her work suggests he’s a chauvinist; there’s no way for Reynolds to win. Nonetheless, the actor gives a valiant effort, while Deneuve struggles to elevate her clichéd role despite obvious difficulty with English-language dialogue. Inhibited by iffy writing and overreaching direction, the stars end up letting their physicality do most of the acting—Deneuve looks ravishing and Reynolds looks tough. But that’s not enough. Excepting Johnson, whose obsessive bloodlust resonates, most of the skilled supporting cast gets lost in the cinematic muddiness, and Aldrich does no one any favors by shooting interiors with ugly, high-contrast lighting. Still, Hustle gets points for seediness and for the nihilism of its ending.

Hustle: FUNKY

March or Die (1977)

          Though gorgeous to look at, thanks to sensuous imagery created by cinematographer John Alcott, the French Foreign Legion drama March or Die is an absolute mess. The story is unfocused, the characterizations are unsatisfying, the villain is laughably miscast, and the filmmakers seem confused about which characters should engender audience sympathy. The fact that the picture is more or less watchable, despite these huge flaws, is almost entirely attributable to Alcott’s photography and to the charisma of leading players Catherine Deneuve, Gene Hackman, and Max von Sydow.

          March or Die begins in a tellingly murky fashion: A few years after the end of World War I, Major Foster (Hackman) leads his troops back to France following a bloody deployment. In a tense meeting with his superiors, American-born Foster is assigned to protect a group of archeologists led by François Marneau (Von Sydow) during a dig in Morocco, where Arab locals are hostile to foreigners. Foster frets about the possible human cost, suggesting he’s a noble soldier who cares only about his men. But then, as soon as Foster starts training new recruits for the mission, he’s depicted as a heartless bastard who takes sadistic pleasure in abusing subordinates.

          Confusing matters further is a long sequence of the soldiers traveling to Morocco. One of their fellow passengers is Simone Picard (Deneuve), who falls for Marco (Terence Hill), a part-Gypsy enlisted man. Foster expends considerable energy humiliating Marco, even though it’s plain that Marco is a favorite among the men because he looks out for gentle souls like the soft-spoken musician who’s withering under the rigors of military service. Upon reaching Morocco, the troops are confronted by Arab leader El Krim (Ian Holm), who is determined to derail the French expedition. Turns out he and Foster have history, meaning a showdown is inevitable.

          There’s enough story here for a dozen movies, or at least one rich epic, but co-writer/director Dick Richards can’t corral the material. Working with co-writer David Zelag Goodman, Richards fails to guide viewers through this maze of interconnected narrative, and he fails to define his characters as specific people. There are tantalizing glimpses of internal life, like the vignette of Hackman lounging with a Moroccan courtesan, and there are poetic moments, like the final fate of the musician. However, none of it hangs together, and false notes abound.

          Hill, the Italian-born stud who starred in a string of ’60s and ’70s Westerns, is physically impressive but blank in dramatic scenes, while Holm, the Englishman best known for fantasy films like Alien (1979), derails his performance with bug-eyed overacting. Hackman plays individual scenes beautifully, though each seems appropriate for a totally different character, and Deneuve merely provides alluring ornamentation. Worse, the florid score by Maurice Jarre sounds like a satire of his legendary work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

March or Die: FUNKY