DAY FOR NIGHT 1973lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2011/11/day-for-night-1973.html

I really love movies, but films about the making of films tend to pose their own unique brand of problems forfilmmakers.For one, the process of making films is so fragmented that it doesn't easily lend itself to gripping cinema. Quickbursts of frenzied activity book-ended by long stretches of people sitting around while carpenters, painters, andelectricians ply their trade isn't exactly fodder for edge-of-your-seat entertainment.

Secondly, no matter how high the stakes are ratcheted up for dramatic purposes (delays, budget cuts, tantrums,infidelity, accidents, natural disasters, death), it's hard not to make moviemaking come across as little more thanelaborate dress-up and make-believe...or worse, the non-essential work of over-privileged individuals in a rarefiedenvironment. In spite of how large the entertainment industry looms in our culture, there's no getting past the fact thatin the grand scheme of things (and compared to the work of teachers, surgeons, law enforcement, and fireprofessionals), making movies doesn't seem all that important. Whenever the plot presents an obstacle threateningto shut down a film within a film, the more impassioned the characters' reactions, the more apt we in the audienceare likely to think, "It's just a MOVIE for chrissakes!" A real killer to audience involvement.

Lastly, those who endeavor to make films about moviemaking are inevitably faced with a Catch-22: play up itsobvious appeal (the excess, glamour, and unearned cultural privilege; the ugly guys with access to impossiblybeautiful women; the insane amounts of money spent and wasted) and you ignite audience resentment. Emphasizethe art vs. commerce conflict; the hypocrisy, greed, and compromise, and you create a world inhabited by people theaudience couldn't care less about. You can't win!

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Artifice & Illusion: Day for Night creates its own magic by revealing what's behindthe curtain.

Day for Night. The film takes its title from the cinematic practice of using filtersto create the effect of night during the day. This very old-fashioned Hollywooddevice (the French term for it being "The American Night") has been renderedobsolete thanks to CGI, but is on prominent display in virtually every Roger

Corman film from the 60s, and in a great many 70s TV shows and TV movies.

Ever narcissistic, Hollywood has been making films about itself since the days of the silents, but it took French NewWave director François Truffaut to make what I consider to be the best film I've ever seen about filmmaking,Hollywood-style, with 1973s Day for Night.

François Truffaut as film director Ferrand

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Jacqueline Bisset as movie star Julie Baker

Jean-Pierre Léaud as leading man Alphonse

Valentina Cortese as former international leading lady, Severine

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Jean-Pierre Aumont aging matinee idol Alexandre

Perhaps what all those other films needed was the kind of distancing perspective offered by this, Truffaut'sthoroughly delightful valentine to cinema. Set in a small studio in Nice, France, Day for Night is almost Altman-esquein its gentle look at the intersecting lives, personalities, and conflicts involved in the making of an utterlyunremarkable melodrama titled, "Meet Pamela."The shooting of a formulaic film in the old-fashioned, studio-bound style that was fast growing obsolete in the '70s,affords Truffaut the opportunity to pay loving homage to American movies and the directors who influenced him in hisyouth. Correspondingly, he offers film fanatics like me an endearingly idealized portrait of the job of making moviesthat fuels my still-in-need-of-nurturing romantic notion that films are made by and for the dreamers of this world.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMAs a movie geek and fan of Robert Altman's ensemble films, Day for Night has built-in appeal for me merely due toits premise: a character-based, insider view of the world of moviemaking, from the first day of shooting to the wrap.Whereas Altman would have used it as an opportunity for character assassination and a chance to grind his anti-Hollywood axe (love Altman but never enjoyed 1992's sour The Player), Truffaut is like a host giving a tour of hishome and introducing us to his family. The tone is lightly comic, sincere, and loving, with Truffaut poking affectionatefun at the individuals who make it their life's work making fantasy look real. With its ups and downs and myriadproblems (director Ferrand/Truffaut never even finds much rest in sleep), it's obvious that there is nothing else in theworld that he'd rather do.

Jean Francois Stevinin as the assistant director and Nathalie Baye as theimmanently resourceful script girl.

Truffaut greatly assists in our easily identifying the various members of the filmcrew by having them wear the same clothing throughout the month-long shoot.

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Nike Arrighi, the makeup artist

Dani as the reluctant assistant and even more reluctant girlfriend to the leadingman.

PERFORMANCESUnderstandably, everyone who sees Day for Night falls instantly in love with Valentine Cortese's superb performanceas the insecure leading-lady, Severine. The sequence in which the increasingly flustered actress flubs take after takeof a scene due to two troublesomely similar doors, is deservedly one of film's highlights. As for me, the first time Isaw the film the strongest impression I came away with was a heavy-duty crush on François Truffaut. With hischarmingly receding hairline, matinee idol profile, soft-spoken, sweet-natured, manner (he even wears a tie towork!), he was like the Dr. Kildare of directors to me.Brilliant, dedicated and patient, yet never less than 100% in control, Truffaut's Ferrand was my romanticized ideal ofwhat a movie director should be: an intelligent and sensitive artist with a respect for his craft and his actors. (I lookat what pass for directors today and find little to admire. The Brett Ratners, Quentin Tarantinos, and Eli Roths notonly look as though they'd fallen several rungs down on the evolutionary ladder, but often behave accordingly.)

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Star Quality...take your pick

THE STUFF OF FANTASYTruffaut, a student of Hitchcock and masterful storyteller in his own right, really brings a sense of fun to the manner inwhich he introduces the viewer to the closed-off world of filmmaking. By treating it as merely the day to day work of agroup of professionals in a specialized field, he achieves what I most admire in art and poetry of any kind...he makesthe mundane look extraordinary.Aware that the vast majority of the population has no idea of how the films that have infiltrated their fantasies andculture are actually made, Truffaut is like a magician revealing the tricks of the trade. But whereas a magic trick isspoiled when the smoke clears and the mirrors are exposed, Truffaut somehow makes the job of moviemakingappear more magical and fantastic with each behind-the-scenes detail he pulls out of his hat. Indeed, a recurringvisual motif in Day for Night is to have scenes end with a pre-fade-out "reveal" disclosing some unexpected plotpoint or character revelation. The device recalls the "Voila!" moment of a magic act.

Parts of Day for Night were filmed on the immense abandoned set for the 1969film, The Madwoman of Chaillot

THE STUFF OF DREAMSI've been a fan of film for as long as I can remember, yet after all these years, movies still have the power to feel likemagic. Clueless as to how an actor achieves something along the level of Heath Ledger's performance in BrokebackMountain, it feels like a form of magic to me. Unable to wrap my mind around how Roman Polanski, a director in hislate 70s, continues to make films so sharp and surprising...that feels like magic to me. That the images in DarrenAronofsky's Black Swan were able to move me alternately from goose bumps to tears; that is magic.

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Day for Night is filled with references to Truffaut's own films and passions. In thisshot, Truffaut pays tribute to the directors that have influenced him by having

fictional director Ferrand peruse a stack of books on cinema.

A film like Day for Night comes from a place that understands that movies get under our skin and become parts ofour lives, and are therefore worthy (even in the acknowledgement of their sometimes prosaic gestation) of beingregarded as art. Collaborative, sometimes compromised art, but art capable of inspiring in us the kind of passion thatthe late, great François Truffaut never seemed to have lost.

Dreams are what Le Cinema is for...

Copyright © Ken Anderson

About Ken Anderson: LA-based writer and lifelong film enthusiast. You can read more of his essays on films of the’60s & ‘70s at Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For

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