Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) was one of the seminal figures of the French New Wave as well as the foremost advocate of so-called auteur theory that glorifies the role of the director as the central creative force in the making of a film. Day for Night is one of his most beloved films though perhaps lagging behind The 400 Blows in familiarity to the American audience. Day for Night is basically an affectionate celebration of the filmmaking process by a director well known for his passionate devotion to it.

The lead character, Ferrand (Francois Truffaut), is a director making a film entitled Meet Pamela at the Victorine Studio in Nice in southern France. The film-within-a-film is apparently destined to be a rather banal melodrama, but Ferrand seems to be invigorated by the process itself and reconciled to the result being artistically unassuming. He says, at one point, that “Shooting a movie is like a stagecoach trip. At first you hope for a nice ride. Then you just hope to reach your destination.” Ferrand is under pressure to complete the project within five weeks and must deal with endless production obstacles as well as a temperamental and dysfunctional cast. Some of the production foibles include destruction of a costly and difficult section of film involving a crowd scene, rented costumes returned prematurely, and a cat that won’t perform its milk-licking part on cue.

The plot of the film-within-a-film involves a beautiful young woman falling in love with her father-in-law. The woman, Pamela, is to be played by the actress Julie Baker (who is played by Jacqueline Bisset – get used to it – nearly everyone in this film has three identities. These are actors playing actors playing a character.) Julie Baker is recovering from a nervous breakdown, has married her therapist who is old enough to be her father, but nevertheless proceeds to have an affair with the leading man. The part of the her husband is played by a neurotic and impetuous young actor named Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud). The father-in-law is being played by an aging former leading-man, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont). Alexandre is in the midst of coming to grips with his homosexuality. The mother-in-law in Meet Pamela is to be played by an aging and alcoholic former star named Severine (Valentina Cortese). She is no longer able to master her lines or even which door to pass through for her entrances and exits. All of these people are rather obnoxious both as their characters in Meet Pamela and as their characters in Day for Night.

If there is something to admire about this film – and I say if – it is the wealth of ironies (which are really only apparent after one mulls it over and add little to the immediate enjoyment of watching the film). For example, Alphonse has the hots for Julie both in the film-within-the-film and in the film. Alphonse wants to bed his leading lady. Later, Alphonse settles for the script girl, Lilianna (Dani), but when she later runs off with the stunt man, the humiliated Alphonse refuses to leave his room and threatens to wreck the whole production. The director’s assistant Joelle (Nathalie Baye) was supposedly modeled after Truffaut’s real life assistant, Suzanne Schiffman. Many of the crew members for Day for Night double as crew members for Meet Pamela! The directorial approach of Ferrand for Meet Pamela was very similar to that of Truffaut’s own in making Day for Night. Both Ferrand and Trauffaut wrote script day-by-day, often presenting it to the actors only the night before a scene shoot, and drawing in part on overheard conversations among the actors on the set. Ferrand has a recurrent dream in which he steals a glossy poster for the film Citizen Kane (often regarded as the greatest film ever) from a local cinema. As a boy, Truffaut and his pals had actually stolen playbills from a movie house. I might add from my own perspective that Meet Pamela was quite obviously not going to be much of a movie when completed and Day for Night is similarly decrepit.

Day For Night would be a pretty darn good extra on a DVD – an extra about the making of a film, complete with the inside scoop about the goings-on and who was sleeping with whom. It would make a great extra, but where the heck is the main feature? Is it too late for a refund?

As a work of art, this film, in the end, has next to nothing to say. It is neither insightful nor good for laughs. It amounts to little more than self-congratulatory fluff for folks in the filmmaking industry – something akin to a cross between an amateurish daytime soap and a fictional television entertainment magazine, neither of which I would waste time watching. It could scarcely compete opposite a medium quality television sit-com. In my opinion, Day for Night belongs to the genre of film that is most consistently overrated by critics and film festival juries: films about film. By their very nature, such films flatter the egos of those in or linked to the film industry and thereby acquire unwarranted praise. Yet, according to several critics, my distaste for this film is merely evidence that I just don’t love the movies. One reviewer, for example, states that Day for Night is “a movie for people who love movies” and another that it “is a ‘must see’ for all those who love movies.” Since I found this film nearly insufferable in it insipidity, soap-opera quality intrigues, tedious pace, and tabloid-like fascination with the sex lives and neurotic peculiarities of actors and actresses, I apparently must conclude that I am devoid of love for cinema. If so, I will at least have a bit of good company. The famous film critic Pauline Kael wrote that Day for Night was a movie for the “movie-struck, the essentially naïve – those who would rather see a movie, any movie (a bad one, a stupid one, or an evanescent, sweet-but-dry little wafer of a movie like this one), than do anything else.” Right-on, Pauline.

The Cast: There’s some talent among the cast of Day for Night though the performances all seem rather uninspired to me. Jacqueline Bisset looks gorgeous even if she has been rendered neurotically unappealing. She starred in a number of Hollywood and British pictures including Bullitt (1968), Airport (1970), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Léaud had better days in The 400 Blows (1959), Alphaville (1965), Masculine-Feminine (1966), Weekend (1967), Two English Girls (1971), and Last Tango in Paris (1972). Valentina Cortese’s film credits included Juliet of the Spirits (1965). Nathalie Baye, who had her debut role in Day for Night as Joelle, went on to a distinguished career that included appearances in The Man Who Loved Women (1977), Every Man for Himself (1980), and The Return of Martin Guerre (1982).

Bottom-Line: Day for Night took the 1973 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film as well as receiving nominations for Best Supporting Actress (Cortese), Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. This movie was filmed in French. The VHS version is miserably dubbed in English but the Warner Bros. DVD provides the original language with English subtitles, a nicely restored print, and a pretty decent package of extras. There is a pretty good conversation with Jacqueline Bisset, a commentary on the film and Truffaut by Truffaut-scholar Annette Insdorf, recent interviews conducted by Insdorf, and two archival interviews of Truffaut from 1973. The running time is 115 minutes and the film is rated PG for mild profanity and a bit of sexuality.

Recommended:
No

Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older