Main Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, François Truffaut, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Dani
Release Year: 1973
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 120 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Known to English-speaking audiences as Day for Night, La nuit américaine was director François Truffaut's loving and humorous tribute to the communal insanity of making a movie. The film details the making of a family drama called "Meet Pamela" about the tragedy that follows when a young French man introduces his parents to his new British wife. Truffaut gently satirizes his own films with "Meet Pamela"'s overwrought storyline, but the real focus is on the chaos behind the scenes. One of the central actresses is continually drunk due to family problems, while the other is prone to emotional instability, and the male lead (Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Leaud) starts to act erratically when his intermittent romance with the fickle script girl begins to fail. In addition to all this personal drama, the film is besieged by technical problems, from difficult tracking shots to stubborn animal actors. The inspiration for future satires of movie-making from Living in Oblivion to Irma Vep, La nuit américaine was considered slight by some critics in comparison to earlier Truffaut masterworks, but it went on to win the 1973 Oscar for Best Foreign Film. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Review
A delightful love letter to the cinema by the great French filmmaker François Truffaut, La nuit américaine (Day for Night) is one of the best movies about making movies. Focusing on the backstage intrigues of an eccentric group of actors and technicians, Truffaut, a master of shifting tone, effortlessly guides the film from comedy to pathos and back again. It doesn't matter that the characters are making a film that is, from all available evidence, an utter stinker; La nuit américaine suggests that filmmaking, even hack filmmaking, is an inherently noble pursuit. Though he's careful not to downplay the more chaotic and even dangerous aspects of life in the film business, Truffaut clearly adores the heightened reality on display, both in front of the camera and behind it. Making a film is the only way that these characters (and by extension Truffaut) can be happy. Adding significantly to the film's pleasures are Georges Delerue's wistful score and the brilliant ensemble acting, most notably New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as the neurotic young star Alphonse; Valentina Cortese as the brittle, alcoholic Sévérine; and Truffaut himself, playing the beleaguered director. A huge international success in its original run, the film won the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar of 1973 and landed nominations for Truffaut, Cortese, and the screenplay -- all rare accomplishments for a foreign-language film -- as well as New York Film Critics Circle and British Academy awards as the best film of the year. ~ Mark Pittillo, All Movie Guide
Nike Arrighi - Monique; Bernard Menez - Property Man; Nathalie Baye - Joelle; Marcel Berbert - French Insurance Broker; Jean Champion - Bertrand; Henry Graham - Insurer; Gaston Joly - Gaston Lajoie, the Production Manager; David Markham - Dr. Nelson; Jean Panisse - Arthur; Maurice Séveno - TV Reporter; Christophe Vesque - Boy with Cane in Dream Sequences; Walter Bal - Walter (Cinematographer); Marc Boyle; Jean-François Stévenin - Jean-Francois; Pierre Zucca
Credit
Damien Lanfranchi - Art Director, Monique Dury - Costume Designer, François Truffaut - Director, Yan Dedet - Editor, Martine Barraqué-Curie - Editor, Georges Delerue - Composer (Music Score), Pierre-Wiliam Glenn - Cinematographer, Marcel Berbert - Producer, Jean-Louis Richard - Screenwriter, Suzanne Schiffman - Screenwriter, François Truffaut - Screenwriter
Representative Albums: "Serenadze," "The Mirror of My Life," "LNA Live"
Biography
La Nuit Americaine is the brainchild of singer Christian Giovoni, who was tired of working with bands to make his vision real. He hired two friends, Teresa and Emiliano, to help him make his own music and began to write for their first album. The results, Serenadze, came out in 2000 in Europe. The album gathered enough interest to allow the group to record a live album, released in the summer of 2002. They also recorded a follow up, The Mirror of My Life 3, released shortly before the live disc. ~ Bradley Torreano, All Music Guide
La Nuit américaine is a 1974Frenchfilm directed by François Truffaut. It stars Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud. In French, nuit américaine ('American night') is a technical process whereby sequences shot during the daytime are made to appear as if they are taking place at night. In the English-speaking world the film is known as Day for Night, which is the equivalent English expression.
La Nuit americaine chronicles the production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela), a cliched melodrama starring aging screen icon, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), former diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), young heart-throb Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and a British actress, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset) who is recovering from both a nervous breakdown and the controversy leading to her marriage with her much older doctor. In between are several small vignettes chronicling the stories of the crew-members and the director, Ferrand's (Truffaut himself) tangles with the practical problems one deals with when making a movie. Behind the camera, the actors and crew go through several romances, affairs, break-ups, and sorrows. The production is especially shaken up when Alphonse's fiancee leaves him for the film's stuntman, which leads him to a one night stand with Julie, when one of the secondary actresses is revealed to be pregnant, and when Alexandre is killed suddenly in a car crash.
Themes
One of the film's themes is whether or not movies are more important than life for those who make them, its many allusions both to film-making and to movies themselves (perhaps unsurprising given that Truffaut began his career as a film critic who championed cinema as an art form). The film opens with a picture of Lillian and Dorothy Gish, to whom it is dedicated. In one scene, Ferrand (played by Truffaut himself) opens a package of books he had ordered: they are books on directors he admires such as Luis Buñuel, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, Ernst Lubitsch, and Robert Bresson.
There was an interesting incident reported on the DVD. The famous writer Graham Greene has an uncredited cameo appearance as an insurance company representative in the film. On the DVD of the movie, it was reported that Greene was a big admirer of Truffaut, and had always wanted to meet him, so as it turned out, when the small part came up where he actually talks to the director, he was delighted to have the opportunity. It was reported that Truffaut was unhappy he wasn't told (until later) that the actor playing the insurance company representative was Greene, he would have liked to have said hello, as he had admired Greene's work as well.
The film is often considered one of Truffaut's greatest films. For example, it is one of two Truffaut films featured on Time magazine's top 100 list of the 100 Best Films of the Century, along with The 400 Blows.[2]
