Day for Night
Francois Truffaut’s “Day for Night” is, very possibly, one of my favorite films about the making of a movie I’ve ever seen, and easily one of my favorite experiences watching a Truffaut film. Watching this film for the first time after rewatching his “Fahrenheit 451” adaptation, it was striking just how much more comfortable Truffaut as a director was with this film than he was in making that movie. This was so much fun to watch.
“Day for Night” is about the production of a film called “Meet Pamela,” a familial melodrama directed by Ferrand (Truffaut himself). When the film begins, Ferrand is orchestrating a key scene between Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Truffaut’s “400 Blows” star) and Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), his on-screen father. Truffaut shoots the scene as if we are following a crane capturing the action, and we follow the shot being created while Ferrand shouts out directions. As they are watching the dailies, they find out that an accident at the lab has rendered the footage unusuable. That will be only one of the first complications that will befall this production as it goes about its business, including the leading lady (Jacqueline Bisset’s Julie Baker) arriving on the set.
I’m a sucker for movies about the moviemaking process- “Ed Wood,” “Bowfinger,” “The Bad & the Beautiful,” “8 1/2” and others are just a bunch of fun for this geek. I feel like Truffaut’s film probably was the template for a lot of them to come after it, and one I really had on my brain as the film went along was David Mamet’s “State & Main.” While we often get glimpses of supporting characters in these types of movies, both “State & Main” and “Day for Night” really go out of their way to make sure no, one character stands out, and many people in the ensemble have their moment. There’s Liliane (Dani), who hooks up with Alphonse; Joelle (Nathalie Baye), the script supervisor; Severine (Valentina Cortese), an actor who plays Alexandre’s wife, among others. There are scenes like Severine’s, where she is struggling through personal pain to try and make it through a scene. The first time we see Liliane and Alphonse together is sweet and lovely. And Joelle has plenty of wonderful moments as Ferrand’s right hand woman as they try to keep things going.
Truffaut was famous for saying, “I demand that film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.” “Day for Night” is all about express a little bit of both of these things. Truffaut is a rare director who is just as much at home in front of the camera giving a real performance as he is behind the camera directing people like Aumont, Bisset and Leaud (who looks eerily like a younger Truffaut, making the fact that he was Truffaut’s stand-in as Antoine Doinel all the more logical). There’s a light touch in how he tells this story that resonates even in some of the more serious storylines and moments, all with the expressed purpose of showing us about as unfiltered a look at the art of making movies, and the difficulties that can arise, as any director ever has. This is probably Truffaut’s most beautiful, finest film.
