TRUFFAUT'S DAY FOR NIGHT (1973)

Day for Night (La Nuit Americaine) released in 1973, is famed French director Francois Truffant’s homage to movie making.

This is a movie about making movies.  Truffaut plays Ferrand, the director of a melodrama called Meet Pamela (Je Vous Presente Pamela) about a young man whose father abandons his mother and runs off with his hot young wife.

The action in “real life” among the cast and crew mirrors what’s going on in the film.  The actor who plays the jilted husband in the movie, Alphonse (played by Jean-Pierre Leaud), is sleeping with the script girl who he wants to marry.  But Alphonse’s girlfriend runs off with the stunt man leaving Alphonse devastated.

The sexy leading lady, Julie (played by Jacqueline Bisset), had a nervous breakdown and an affair with her doctor who left his wife and children to marry her.  When Alphonse freaks out over his girlfriend abandoning him Julie sleeps with him out of sympathy.  Mistaking this for true love, Alphonse calls Julie’s husband back in the United States and tells him that their marriage is over.   Needless to say, Julie almost has another nervous breakdown.

Severine (Valentina Cortese)

Alphonse’s on-screen father is played by Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont) an aging leading man and sex symbol who is, a la Rock Hudson, secretly gay.  The jilted mother played by Severine (Valentina Cortese)  is an aging Italian bombshell who has turned into a sad alcoholic with a son who is dying of cancer. 

   

We see all aspects of movie making: sets, trick camera shot, stunts, fake snow and on location shooting.  There is a cat who fails to like the milk out of the saucer on cue. We also see aspects of the behavior of movie crews like recreational sex.  The title “Day for Night” refers to the process where a scene is shot in daylight using a filter to make it look like night.  Called “day for night” in the U.S. and Britain, in France the technique is known as La Nuit Americaine or “American Night.”

Ferrand (Francois Truffaut) and crew on the set of "Meet Pamela"

According to Roger Ebert, “Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) was one of the most beloved of filmmakers, a man whose own love of film was in such details as the old-fashioned iris shots he borrowed from silent films (That’s a shot where the screen seems to screw down to circle one detail, before going to black). . . Truffaut was a founder of the New Wave generation – French film critics who celebrated Hollywood’s veterans in the 1950s and then made their own films. . . . In 25 years he directed 23 films. Why did he make so may? I think because he loved to be on the set.  The young actor in “Day for Night” is heartbroken after his girl runs off with the stuntman.  Truffaut’s character consoles him: “People like us are only happy in our work.”

I enjoyed Day for Night a lot and would definitely recommend it.  It’s currently available on DVD and on Amazon Instant Video.  I watched the movie in the original French with subtitles.  The film was released in the United States in a dubbed English version.