Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, July 6, 2009

LE DERNIER METRO / THE LAST METRO (1980)

This late masterpiece from François Truffaut about a Paris theatre company trying to stay up & running during the Nazi occupation was just too damn enjoyable to get the critical attention it deserved. In some ways, it’s like the so-called ‘tradition-of-quality’ pics Truffaut had lustily attacked as a young film critic. But it also has the personal touches you find under the surface professionalism & genre forms that he championed in his beloved Hollywood auteurs. There are tips of the hat toward Hitchcockian suspense & Lubitschean comic sexual egoism here*, but Truffaut revels in his own touch, shown in the effortless manner he handles his cast of Janus-faced performers. (A matchless group from Deneuve & Depardieu on down.) By now, his technique is so refined you barely register that as his right hand handles a complex tale of spies, collaborators & occupying German forces, his left is juggling the jealousies & plot mechanics of an opening night theatre farce. It’s one of the great entertainments. Don’t hold that against it.

*He does miss a couple of opportunities for a bit of sexual confusion during a surprise Gestapo visit that Ermst would never have let slip by.

No comments: