Day for Night
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Movie Reviews of Day for Night
Movie Review: The best film about filmmaking...
Summary: 4 Stars
If you have any interest in filmmaking, just buy this film. Don't even debate the question. Day for Night is the best film about filmmaking there is. We have Truffaut playing a thinly veiled characterization of himself. Of course, Jean-Pierre Leaud is there as well as an immature actor. Plus, Jacqueline Bisset at her most beautiful. The film captures the French's love of film - from the way that Truffaut collects film books to the way that Leaud spends every possible moment going to the movies. The best line of dialogue is when Truffaut says "When I begin, I try to make the best picture possible. Half-way through, I just try to finish." Anyone who has ever worked on a film set will see that some things are eternal - the way all actors are children, and all the drama that develops. More than anything else, the film captures the sad quality of making and losing a family. A film crew comes together for about a month, spend all their time together, become very close, and leave for the next project. No wonder no one in show business is normal.
I watched the dubbed version of this film. I usually prefer subtitles, but in this instance the dubbing was perfectly acceptable.
Movie Review: A Delightful Film by a True Film Master = a True Delight
Summary: 4 Stars
This DVD of Francois Truffaut's charming 1973 classic "Day for Night" is a wonderful little movie - very bright, funny, warm, cute, inviting, entertaining, informative, and fascinating. In the mold of other great films about making films, such as Fellini's "8 1/2" and Godard's "Contempt", Francois Truffaut let's us visit the set of a French film crew at work - with himself playing the deaf director in charge. Francois Truffaut does as much acting in this film as directing. Indeed, just four years later, he'd star in Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" as the French scientist Lacombe. It's a sheer joy from start to finish and the humanity shines throughout. I loved this film.The DVD is a nicely mastered picture with some pleasant extras, such as a documentary on the film by film scholar, Annette Insdorf (who always gives a wonderful introduction to any French film masterpiece).
Francois Truffaut makes wonderful movies and this is one of his best! An adorable movie by anyone's standards.
Movie Review: Ok
Summary: 3 Stars
In his films he shows considerably more technical skill, overall, than his great rival, Jean-Luc Godard; but even when Godard woefully misfires, as in some of his early films, he's at least striving for something. Truffaut, by comparison, likes shiny, pretty things, and anything that disturbs that safe universe is averse to him. Thus, his 116 minute long, 1973 filmic take, Day For Night (La Nuit Américaine), on the behind the scenes goings on at the making of a movie amount to little, as neither the exterior film, the interior film, nor the extra-exterior of the viewer watching the film, satisfies on any level. The characters on all levels are rather vapid, if not outright cardboard characters, and it's a tossup as to which set of characters are more vapid- those who portray actors in Day For Night (whose title derives from film scenes that are shot day for night, wherein a filter is used to give the look of night while shooting in daylight, yet the metaphor of which is pointless to the actual film), or those the actors portray within the interior film Meet Pamela (Je Vous Présente Pamela- literally May I Introduce Pamela). On either level, the action is purely melodramatic. Critics argue the film shows how much François Truffaut loves film. So? Love without action or meaning is rather sterile- the perfect description for this well made but dull and simply pointless film. There have been many films made about the making of film, or meta-films on the subject, even going back to the silent era. But, the two most interesting comparisons to be drawn with this film would be from films released a decade earlier. One by Truffaut's rival- Godard, who made Contempt (Les Mepris), and the other by Federico Fellini: 8½ (Otto E Mezzo).... Still, despite its awards and reputation, Day For Night is not near a great film, merely an adequate one, whose greatest failing is its being too long for its banal and lightweight screenplay to sustain itself. If it lost 30-35 minutes it could have been more successful. Then again, I may as well grow wings, for the screenplay aspect of films was never high on the list of the French New Wave filmmakers, who were birthed out of the atrocious Cahiers Du Cinéma magazine on film theory. The filmmakers who came from this milieu (Truffaut, Godard, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol) were generally not good writers (with the exception of Louis Malle), even if they were competent technical and visual stylists. Their writing, as critics, was routinely bad, consisting of purple prose that dealt with the criticism of intent, rather than substance, and was usually only undershot by the often worse ideas they espoused.
Thus, Day For Night's failure is no surprise. It is too prosaic, flat, and hollowly predictable to succeed as great art, even if it is an interesting diversion, at times. Compared to a film like John Cassavetes Opening Night, which similarly details the dramatic goings on of a stage production, it is fey and forgettable. Say what?
Movie Review: Backstory
Summary: 3 Stars
A low-key, amiable behind-the-scenes pastry from Francois Truffaut about a film's clumsy production.
Props go awry, actors flake out, love is won, lost, teased. Truffaut directs onscreen and off.
This is amusing and always engaging, and certainly worth seeing, but neither the fictional film at the center nor the general article amount to very much. Most absorbing when it depicts just how hard moviemaking is (Valentina Cortese's breakdown is excruciating; a problem with a kitten, hilarious). Also noteworthy for its sprawl and ensemble work, both of which are Altman-esque.
Movie Review: smile! you're on candid camera!
Summary: 3 Stars
truffauts somewhat overrated movie about making a movie. why do people who make movies believe that making movies is an interesting enough topic to make movies about -- over & over & over? not saying its bad, just saying its nothing as special as those who appreciate "cinema" would have us believe. sorry.