Day and Night-French Style-Francois Truffaut’s Day For Night (1973)-A Film Review   

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

Day for Night, starring Jacqueline Bissett, Francois Truffaut, written and directed by Francois Truffaut, 1973  

In the old days, the stretch between the early 1960s and early 1970s, around Harvard Square on the days, or rather nights, when you were not listening to folk music at one of the myriad coffeehouses around the Square or stretched out on Cambridge Common listening to some up and coming young rock and roll talent blast away you would in the interest of having a cheap date based on  your low side funds wind up taking your consort to the Brattle Theater or some such place (sometimes local churches or the various houses at Harvard also ran films) to watch a film. Not usually one of the then current American Hollywood productions, a place which seemed to be in a trough in the movie-making cycle, but some film noir revival with entries like The Maltese Falcon or To Have Or Have Not or foreign, mainly French films, like those of Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut (at one time friends but because of differences about the film under review that friendship was busted up). At that time anything by a French director like this one by Truffaut, Day for Night, was an automatic go see, whether it was up to snuff or not.   

This one was, was up to snuff, although not for the powerful story line like there was in say his 400 Blows but for the almost parody-like way that he was putting on American movie-making (the whole bit about shooting night scenes in a studio during the day that was taboo in French films then but a process which produced the English title). Not a parody of the great American-made films but the melodramas Hollywood was increasingly churning out to satisfy the midlands mainstream audiences. So this is a film about making a film, a run of the mill film for mass distribution starring older faded stars who still had some box office appeal and about younger stars who seem to have lost their way.         

The most interesting parts of the film centered on the problems that any such production is liable to encounter from cranky stars to an inability to get scene sets to work the way the director expected them to. Of course it helped to have a real director, Truffaut himself, directing this film within a film to push the film forward. Other than the inner workings of a film though there is plenty about the lives and loves of those behind the scenes you know the ones whose names and job descriptions like script girl or best grip you see at the beginning or ending of a film.

You know watching this film some forty years later and still finding it interesting tells a lot about how good it was. Maybe though back in those cheap date consort nights I wasn’t always totally focused on the screen, okay. Some say this is the greatest film ever made about making a film. Perhaps. But I think that it had to do more with Truffaut paying homage to the ups and downs of his craft, and it showed.