Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) (The American Night) (1973)

Why not give Truffaut a big budget and let him play with it? Why not indeed. La Nuit Americaine is the director's own account of life on the set, of the process of making a film, with all of its difficulties and its perks. With the help of dozens of charming, excellently written characters and the development of many different threads to a common storyline, he exemplifies the laughter and the tears and the interconnexion of humanities that the process of flimmaking implicates. Where Godard was ambiguous and Fellini was grandieuse (I'm talking Le Mepris and 8 1/2, respectively), Truffaut is subtle, good-hearted, and intimate (as he always is). Filmmaking is a personal, consuming project, and he chooses to portray even the most technical aspects of it which, any other director might have thought, could have been unappealing to an audience. Truffaut finds the humor and soul behind every task, as he does in his absurd plot deviation about his film's star's, Alphonse's, romantic obsession with one of the girls working on the movie. Jean Pierre Leaud is just as great as he always is playing the neurotic, insecure, obsessive Alphonse with a charming sense of comedy. Jacqueline Bisset is ethereal as she drifts through the movie, in a role of another, different neurotic. The same can be said of Valentina Cortese and Jean-Pierre Aumont, whose deep conviction of their having big screen presences only causes them to become legends in front of our eyes. During La Nuit Americaine Truffaut is so full of fascination, and admiration, and pride for what he does, that in the end the feeling is that of having just heard a good friend, or many good friends, speak about their jobs as directors, assistants, actors, make-up artists, or producers. There is an endless possibility of identification with their feelings, situations, attitudes. Day for Night is a film to inhabit and love. The film opens with a fantastic long shot that I will never forget. The note is happy. The music is beautiful. La Nuit Americaine is the best form of escapism.