One of the most personal and crowd-pleasing films of the great François Truffaut’s late career, the dazzlingly subversive wartime melodrama The Last Metro (Le dernier métro) will screen tonight at 6:00pm as part of our ongoing series 50 Years at the New York Film Festival. Coming from the 18th edition of the festival in 1980, the film stars our upcoming Chaplin Award Gala honoree Catherine Deneuve in one of her greatest performances as the wife of a Jewish theater director in Nazi-occupied Paris.

The story is based on a Theatre Montmarte production in 1942—a time when both Paris and the theatre were under the heavy surveillance of Vichy collaborators—and focuses on the different troupe members’ more intimate and peculiar acts of valor. Though The Last Metro has the form of a more or less conventional melodrama, it discreetly refuses to exercise its melodramatic options, and also scarcely recognizes the lovers of the love story. The film became one of Truffaut’s biggest “hits,” earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film and 10 French César awards, including Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress.

Reviewing the film upon it’s inital NYFF screening in the fall of 1980, The New York Times wrote; “The Last Metro is about lives surrounded by melodrama, being lived with as little outward fuss as possible—the courage goes without saying, or is acknowledged only obliquely.” 

For more information on our 50 Years of the New York Film Festival series, including new editions to the lineup by Clint Eastwood, Andrei Tarkovsky, Raul Ruiz and Michael Moore, as well as tickets and showtimes, click here.

Below is a full list of all the films that played alongside The Last Metro at the NYFF '80!
Melvin and Howard
Jonathan Demme, USA, 1980. 

The Handyman (L’homme a tour faire
Micheline Lanctót, Canada, 1980.  

Masoch– The Confessions of Wanda Van Sacher Masoch
Franco Brogi Taviani , Italy, 1980.

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter 
Connie Field, USA, 1980. 

Bye Bye Brasil
Carlos Diegues, Brazil, 1980 

The Orchestra Conductor (Dyrygent)
Andrzej Wajda, Poland., 1980

Special Treatment (Poseban tretman)
Goran Paskalejević, Yugoslavia/USA.

Confidence (Bizalom)
István Szabó, Hungary, 1979

One Day Like Another (Ekdin pratidin)
Mrinal Sen, India, 1980

Handicapped Love (Behinderte liebe)
Marlies Graf, Switzerland, 1979

Sunday Daughters (VASÁRNAPI  SZÜLŐK)
István Kardos, Hungary, 1980

Camera Buff (Amator)
Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland, 1979

Europa 51
Roberto Rossellini, Italy, 1952
(A NYFF Retrospective)

The Martin Scorsese Color Show:  Once Upon a Time in The West, (C’era una volta il west)
Sergio Leone, Italy, 1969.
*(Presented as part of Scorsese’s campaign for preservation of color films)

The Color of Pomegranates
Sergei Paradjanov, Armenia, 1969-72

Kagamusha (The Shadow Warrior)
Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1980

Everyman for Himself (Sauve qui peut/la vie
Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland, 1980

Loulou
Maurice Pialat, France, 1980

The Constant Factor (Constans)
Krzysztof Zanussi, Poland, 1980

Tih Minh
Louis Feillade, France, 1918
(A NYFF Retrospective – in a sense, a continuation of Les Vampires)

A Program of Three Featurettes:
New York Story
Jackie Raynal, USA, 1980
Rush
Evelyn Purcell, USA 1980
Night at O'Rears
Robert Mandel, USA,1980

SPECIAL EVENT:  BRITISH FILM NOW
Gamekeeper, Ken Loach
Bad Timing, Nicolas Roeg
Long Shot, Maurice Hatton
Moon Over the Alley, Chuck Despins 
The Tempest, Derek Jarman;
Bleak Moments, Mike Leigh
Bloody Kids, Stephen Frears;
The Bill Douglas Trilogy, Richard Woolley
Brothers and Sisters, Richard Woolley