Plot
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
Release Year: 1980
Rating: 7.4/10 (5,034 voted)
Director:
François Truffaut
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Jean Poiret
Storyline Paris, 1942. Lucas Steiner is a Jew and was compelled to leave the country. His wife Marion, an actress, directs the theater for him. She tries to keep the theater alive with a new play, and hires Bernard Granger for the leading role. But Lucas is actually hiding in the basement... A film about art and life.
Writers: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman
Cast: Catherine Deneuve
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Marion Steiner
Gérard Depardieu
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Bernard Granger
Jean Poiret
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Jean-Loup Cottins
Andréa Ferréol
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Arlette Guillaume
Paulette Dubost
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Germaine Fabre
Jean-Louis Richard
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Daxiat
Maurice Risch
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Raymond Boursier
Sabine Haudepin
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Nadine Marsac
Heinz Bennent
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Lucas Steiner
Christian Baltauss
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Bernard's Replacement
Pierre Belot
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Desk Clerk
René Dupré
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Valentin
Aude Loring
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Alain Tasma
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Marc
Rose Thiéry
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Jacquot's Mother
/
Concierge
(as Rose Thierry)
Taglines:
A story of love and conflict.
Release Date: 19 February 1981
Filming Locations: Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Technical Specs
Runtime:|
France:
(director's cut)
Did You Know?
Trivia:
Sacha Guitry (1885 - 1957) was a noted French film actor, director, screenwriter and playwright.
Goofs:
Crew or equipment visible:
In one scene in the cellar, during a conversation between Marion and Lucas, we can see the sound recordist hiding himself in a corner of the cellar.
Quotes: Marion Steiner:
It takes two to love, as it takes two to hate. And I will keep loving you, in spite of yourself. My heart beats faster when I think of you. Nothing else matters.
User Review
The best of Truffaut's late films.
Rating: 8/10
Francois Truffaut follows in the tradition of Jean-Pierre Melville by
adapting a popular genre as a serious allegory for the darkest period in
French history: the Nazi Occupation. Just as Melville used the gangster
film to examine notions of legality, legitimacy, authority and criminality
in a period when the Resistance were outlaws and the police rounding up Jews
for the death camps, so Truffaut takes the beloved putting-on-a-show
warhorse, and uses it as a metaphor for the conditions of life in Occupied
France: the need to act, adapt and continually discard roles. When
Depardieu's character leaves to fight for the Resistance, he puns about
exchanging his make-up (maquillage) for the maquis.
What Truffaut is most interested in, as in all his films, is the effect
this need for constant dissembling has on individual identity and
relationships. This wonderful romantic comedy plays like a mature update of
'Casablanca', richly stylised, bravely open-ended, with Truffaut's moving
camera wrenching spirit from the claustrophobic confines.
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