Cinema: "Day for Night"

DAY FOR NIGHT

Year: 1973

Director: François Truffaut

Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut

Running time: 115 minutes

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  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.

Film screenings are held in educational purposes – brief commentary before and discussion after the film. English subtitles, free entry!