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"I
won't reveal the whole truth about filming, but
just some real things that happened in my past movies
or in other movies."
So wrote French New Wave director François
Truffaut about his engaging tribute to filmmaking,
Day for
Night (La
Nuit Américaine). Anyone with a passing
acquaintance with Truffaut's work knows of his passion
for cinema, and this is clearly communicated through
this landmark 1973 "film within a film"; project that
mixes documentary and fiction. Like Woody Allen, the
relatively shy and melancholy Truffaut
directed approximately one feature film each year
and was as obsessively driven as "fictional" director
Ferrand that Truffaut
plays. When Ferrand declares "People like us are only
happy in our work," he's reflecting Truffaut's
inner thoughts--a film buff since childhood, Truffaut's
real life closely became intertwined with cinema.
In Day
for Night Truffaut
clearly communicates his consummate love for film
in ways certain to bring knowing smiles to all movie
lovers. The homages are laid on thickly, giving film
aficionados a chance to see references to the filmmakers
that Truffaut
admires--Buñuel, Hitchcock, Bergman, Godard, Welles,
etc. Cinematic obsession doesn't leave the director
when he sleeps either; he is haunted by a recurring
dream that eventually leads to Truffaut's real life
boyhood when he and friend Robert Lachenay would steal
glossy movie stills from Montmarte theaters. No longer
obsessed with making an artistic masterpiece, Ferrand
continues to be consumed by his schlocky current project,
and he's obviously been through the process a few
times: "Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in
the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a
pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope
to survive."
Essentially the story revolves around the crew and
actors filming a banal melodrama entitled Je
vous present Pamela (Meet
Pamela) at Victorine Studio in Nice.
Gathering in southern France for the project are slices
of real life people that Truffaut
has encountered over the years, including his young
alter ego from the Antoine Doniel series, Jean-Pierre
Léaud, who takes on the role of a boyishly
insecure and volatile actor that continues his losing
romantic liaisons. Other standard stars lead the soapish
"film within the film": an aging alcoholic
screen diva (Valentina Cortese) who can't remember
her lines or the right door to open, a middle aged
leading man (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who is tentatively
tip-toeing out of the closet, the sexy Hollywood starlet
(Jacqueline Bisset) who is recovering from recurring
nervous breakdowns. Supporting these key characters
are the requisite film crew: script girl, make-up
girl, assistant director, cinematographer, stuntman,
and dozens of others. Making the film even more personal
is the fact that many of the crew are playing themselves
as non-professional "actors."
In the hands of a lesser director, all these characters
would statically remain stereotypes, but Truffaut
works hard at the details and his penetrating camera
gets inside their heads (even if the actors themselves
aren't sure what they are communicating). Bisset,
who was a relatively inexperienced actress at the
time, relates how Truffaut
would tell her to "look this way and then that way,"
as she took the arm of her screen husband. Even though
she had no idea what these gestures meant, on screen
they work wonderfully to communicate the actress's
desires to isolate themselves from the crew. Truffaut
even shows us how he works on camera with a montage
showing the director slightly adjusting Bisset's head
angle and the way she holds her hands in another scene--so
even the most banal of projects contain small moments
of sheer artistry under such a detail oriented filmmaker.
Of course classic Truffaut
sensitivities dominate Day
for Night--the tracking shots, the
camera intimacy, the natural humor. The utter joy
of filmmaking clearly comes through unpretentiously,
making this film as relatable as his greatest film,
The
400 Blows. He treats the process
of filmmaking as truly wacky and fun, as a difficult
process to get through as "cat herding" (illustrated
literally with an uncooperative kitten), but one that
a dedicated director will see through despite any
tragic-comic events. Truffaut
even includes one ever-present character that never
appears in Meet Pamela but is only there to spy on
her husband. Throughout, her body language communicates
that she doesn't trust the crazy movie industry, and
she hilariously delivers judgment later: "What is
this profession where everyone sleeps with everyone
else?"
The "film within a film" idea has been around for
quite a while, as many early filmmakers experimented
with such concepts, the most successful coming in
1929 with Vertov's Man
With The Movie Camera (Chelovek
s kinoapparatom), but that focuses
purely on technique with no regard to creating a narrative.
Many recent successful scripts use the "film within
a film" motif--Altman's
The
Player, Egoyan's Ararat,
Burton's Ed
Wood, and the entire body of Kiarostami's
works all come to mind. But Truffaut's
Academy Award™ winning Day
for Night is the first to successfully
incorporate the conceit into a coherent narrative
that works with both critics and more casual viewers.
Much lighter than usual Truffaut fare, this worthy
film deserves continued acclaim and is a "must see";
for all those who love movies. By consummately achieving
its purposes, this comes very close to being a "perfect"
film, the one to which Alfred Hitchcock may have foretold
during his legendary interview with the great French
director:
". . . a picture that would
gross millions of dollars throughout the world!
It's an area of filmmaking in which it's more important
for you to be pleased with the technique than with
the content. It's the kind of picture in which the
camera takes over. Of course, since critics are
more concerned with the scenario, it won't necessarily
get you the best notices, but you have to design
your film just as Shakespeare did his plays--for
an audience."
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