Day for Night
by François Truffaut
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Actor: Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye, Valentina CorteseDirector: François Truffaut
Brand: BISSET,JACQUELINE
Writer: François Truffaut
Writer: Jean-Louis Richard
Writer: Suzanne Schiffman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-03-18
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Day for Night
DVD Review: Truffaut's Meditation on Movie Making
Summary: 4 Stars
"Day for Night," ("La Nuit Americaine," 1973), is a widely-distributed French film by one of the leaders of the French "nouvelle vague" (New Wave) school of filmmaking, Francois Truffaut(Francois Truffaut's Adventures of Antoine Doinel (The 400 Blows / Antoine & Collette / Stolen Kisses / Bed & Board / Love on the Run) - Criterion Collection). It is a comedy/drama, a movie for people who love movies, made by a director - Truffaut--who certainly loved movie-making, and who plays the director, Ferrand, struggling to complete his movie within the movie while in the midst of a storm of financial troubles, and personal and professional problems among cast and crew.
The cast is certainly distinguished. The lovely Jacqueline Bisset (The Deep) stars as Julie Baker, the troubled American film star whom the company needs to make a financial success of the picture they are making. The veteran Italian actress Valentina Cortese (The Girl Who Knew Too Much) plays Severine, veteran actress; the veteran French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont (Heartbeat) plays Alexandre, veteran actor. They've previously worked together in Hollywood, we are told, and, apparently, are also better-acquainted than that, although Alexandre's sexuality will come into question during the making of the movie. Jean-Pierre Leaud,(Bed & Board: Domicile Conjugal) whom Truffaut frequently used to play a young man not unlike himself, plays Alphonse, an erratic, irritating, talented, selfish and spoiled young actor. Nathalie Baye(Catch Me If You Can (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition)), now a very popular leading French actress, in her first job fresh out of the Academie Francaise, France's most distinguished acting school, plays the script girl Joelle. The French veteran Jean Champion plays Bertrand. Graham Greene, the great English novelist, (Our Man in Havana (Penguin Classics)), who sometimes lived on the Riviera, and whom Truffaut was anxious to meet, plays an unaccredited cameo as an insurance man: Truffaut wasn't informed of his identity until later.
The film's score, a tuneful beauty, is by Georges Delerue. The script was written by Truffaut, with his frequent collaborator Suzanne Schiffman, and Jean-Louis Richard; it was, of course, directed by Truffaut. It's one of his last films, and was meant to be, with the theater-oriented The Last Metro: The Criterion Collection [Blu-ray], one of a group of films saluting the French lively arts.
The picture is set largely in the south of France, at the famous -within France, at least - Victorine Studios, an old facility whose still-standing streetscapes, used in earlier movies but never torn down due to the expense involved, quite likely enabled Truffaut's movie to be made, from the financial point of view. It deals accurately, lovingly, with the difficulties involved in making a picture, from finding a cat that can act, to the death of a principal actor during filming. It shows Ferrand, the director, as a deaf man who lives what he does, and is willing to deal with any difficulties involved. At one point, he explains to his troubled people that real life is not like the movies, things just don't happen as neatly. However, Ferrand is also, as is Truffaut's director in "The Last Metro," willing to use any scrap of the turmoil of his cast and crew, and/or to create more turmoil, if it will strengthen his product.
In sum, the movie's rather mild, as movies go, but it has some really hilarious scenes -- check out the poorly performing cat. And there's rarely been a more clear-eyed, meticulous, or affectionate portrayal of movies as they are made. So it's still worth seeing.
Description of Day for Night
A film about the people involved in making movies. Leaud stars as a young man intoxicated with the cinema and the people surrounding it.Genre: Foreign Film - French
Rating: PG
Release Date: 18-MAR-2003
Media Type: DVD
François Truffaut's lavish and fun 1973 comedy-drama about a film production is a clever hall of mirrors, with Truffaut himself playing a director, and his most important actor in real life, Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows), portraying Jacqueline Bisset's immature costar. Day for Night is full of tales undoubtedly told out of school and repeated here in camouflage, and one can't help but be impressed with the stylistic and technical means by which Truffaut captures the adventurousness of a full-budget shoot. The cast is very good all around, with actors in some cases playing fictional thespians and in other cases playing members of the crew. A sequence set to thrilling music by Georges Delerue celebrates the whole art of filmmaking as seen from an editor's perspective--it makes one want to drop everything and shoot a film of one's own. --Tom Keogh
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