Day for Night, written by Jean-Louis Richard,
Suzanne Schiffman and François Truffaut, directed by the latter
9 out of 10
Notes and
thoughts on other books are available at:
- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVa4_CsRStSBBDo4uJWT8BSWtTTn0N1E
and http://realini.blogspot.ro/
Day for
Night or La Nuit Américaine is one of the most acclaimed films.
It is
included on the All-TIME 100 Movies list:
The motion
picture was also nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Director and
Writing.
It won the
Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the BAFTAs for Best Film, Best
Director and Supporting Actress.
The narrative
is perhaps as complex as possible, with the problems of making a film
intersecting with personal issues.
We learn
how difficult it could be to handle the crew, sometimes –or most of the time-
superfluous stars.
There are
scenes wherein not only humans have to be persuaded, cajoled but also cats,
which do not obey the script.
Many scenes
are funny, in the beginning, the younger and middle aged stars are asked about
the story of the film they making and the younger says “it is about a young man”,
while the mature: “it is about a middle aged man”.
La Nuit Américaine
is about the making of a film called Je Vous Presente Pamela and the effort
involved…logistics, stuntman, stars and their idiosyncrasies.
In fact, I
have learned from a stunning book called Adventures in the Screen Trade about
what real stars can be up to.
Dustin Hoffman
and his shenanigans on the set of Marathon Man, Robert Redford and his bad behavior after Bud Cassidy
and The Sundance Kid and preparing for All The President’s Men, Al Pacino and
others.
In the film
within the film, a woman marries a young man only to find that she really
loves- or is just infatuated?-with the father.
The audience
learns about the problems that one actress has with remembering her lines and
the solution they resort to.
This happened
in another way with Marlon Brando, who, at a later stage in his career refused
to memorize any lines and asked to have them written, on the forehead of the other
actors if need be…the last story might be untrue though.
In Day For
Night the lines for the forgetful star are plastered around the set and she can
read them as she moves around.
Jacqueline Bisset
is beautiful, charismatic and at times ingénue as Julie Baker, an actress
married to a much older man.
Jean-Pierre
Aumont, fabulous at a tender age in Four Hundred Blows, is Aphonse, who has the
role of the young husband in the film within the motion picture, but on the
set, he falls in love with a woman who runs away.
So Julie
Baker tries to comfort the young man who, after his lover had departed with the
stunt man, falls into a depressive state.
Julie and
Alphonse end up spending the night together and the older husband, an Anglo-Saxon
doctor is called to solve the problem.
It is bizarre
and outré to see how difficult it could be to manage- finally, the director
looks like he has to be a good manager- a team in which one has a funeral and
he has to go away, another two have sex on the way to the set, where the crew
had been waiting for them to bring in props and whatever else was necessary…
François
Truffaut has the role of a…director, Ferrand, who has to show Julie Baker how
to keep her head or hand, but also to listen to various members of the crew and
their chagrins and pains, anxieties.
At one
point, there is a major problem with one of the leading actors, playing the
father and the director says that there is always this worry that the film
cannot be finished or is compromised by the inability to use the star to the
end.
Many references
are made to other classics: Citizen Kane, Godfather- which is in cinemas at the
time of production and is all that people want to see.
A jealous
wife is present on the set, as she needs to continuously supervise her husband
and she delivers a wild attack on those who make motion pictures.
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