Last Metro

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1044-truffaut-s-changing-times-the-last-metro


The Last Metro is an excellent example of layered storytelling. In this article, the author talks about how Truffaut uses the theater and the film to tell both a love story and a story about heroism. The play follows the story of a wife and her son's private tutor, who fall for one another while the husband is absent. Similarly, the main characters of the actual movie fall in love while Marion Steiner's husband is away. Truffaut parallels both realities so much that, during one scene towards the end of the film, he blends both realities together. The scene takes play after Bernard joins the resistance and is injured. Marion goes to visit him in a hospital and confesses her love for him, only to have him reject her. As the camera zooms out, we realize that we are no longer in a real hospital but back at the playhouse and Bernard is delivering the last lines of the play to the audience. The article ends by detailing the lasting legacy that Truffaut's technique of layered storytelling has had on both French and international cinema. 24 years later Deneuve and Depardieu reunite in André Téchiné's Changing Times. The closing scene of that movie also pays direct homage to Truffaut and his final scene.