I went into the source for Libs/ftplib.py  and I noted that line 423 is: 

if self.debugging > 2: print('*retr*', repr(line))

so I changed the debuglevel to 3, as such:  ftp.set_debuglevel(3)
and I got these last 4 lines:

-rwxrwxrwx   1 nobody   nogroup      6465 Dec 28 13:53 test9_sm.flv.jpg
*retr* ''
*get* '226 Transfer complete\r\n'
*resp* '226 Transfer complete'

First line, the last line of the listing.
second line, the debug, showing the last  line read
third and fourth lines: the program actually completed and didn't hang!

still digging