Review of Day for Night (1973) by Hugo S — 02 May 2008

LA NUIT AMÉRICAINE (1973).

Directed by Francois Truffaut.

Starring Jacqueline Bisset, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Pierre LéaudIts night. A kid dressed in black walk down an alley. His walking stick resonate loudly on the brick street. George Delarue's music is suspenful, the mood is kinda creepy. He gets to the end of the alley, stops in front of a gate, moves his arms through bars to pick still pictures of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. What else could we expect ? Its a Francois Truffaut movie.It would be not knowning Truffaut to call this piece pretentious or self-indulgent. Its very authentic, satirical and fun. Everyone pretty much plays themselves to an exagerated level, or if they dont they play someone that really, kinda exists in Truffaut's surrounding.With a pseudo-documentary approach, Day For Night follows a crew shooting a film in Nice, France, their personal problems sometimes bring them down but in the end, moviemaking keeps them together.This film is Francois Truffaut's love letter to cinema. Godard had made a film about moviemaking, Trufaut needed his as well. He takes time to show us the process behind shooting a film, how he, himself as a director deals with unexpected problems on a set but also show us his admiration for other great director, including his friend Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks and more.La nuit Américaine in French or Day For Night in English both means the same thing, not in words but in expression, used in a process of shooting a film during the day with a filter that makes it look like its at night. Akira Kurosawa used that process a lot, among others.La nuit Américaine is an interesting and refreshing reflexion on cinema as a media, but also comparing the French way, even the Truffaut way, with other cinema, like Fellini's or the Americans. This really is a film for any true movie lovers and especially for anyone who one day wanted to go behind the camera, or already tried. Its also very much of a Truffaut film, with Jean-Pierre Léaud, playing another version of Antoine Doinel, in some way, who has a lot of issues with women. «Are women magic ?» he keeps asking.There are many subplots going on within the cast and crew of the film, but they never take too much place as they so often do in movies in that genre - a lot have been made since Day For Night - but Truffaut keep the focus on his first statement. He loves cinema no matter how hard it can be to make it sometimes. Funny, realistic, thoughtful, Day For Night is one of the best films about the moviemaking process.