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Movie of the Week #1 - Day for Night (1973)
This is the first movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. Day for Night won for Best Foreign Language Film
I found this little intro from TCM by Steven Spielberg
Is it a worthy award winner? Have you seen other films by Truffaut? How does it compare to other films about filmmaking?
Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.
The rest of the schedule is:
- 6th of November: Drive My Car
- 13th of November: L.A. Confidential
- 20th of November: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- 27th of November: West Side Story
I’m excited - I did suggest this and of the 5 films, it’s the one I’m least familiar with.
I’ve seen Truffaut’s The 400 Blows twice and I knew him from Close Encounters and his interview book with Hitchcock. In recent years he seems to have lost favor more than his other “French New Wave” contemporaries. So I’m interested to see if this holds up.
This will be a great journey!
Thanks for organizing this @winther.
I've seen Breathless (1960) which Truffaut wrote the original concept for.
I think Day for Night is trying to convey the absurdity of cinema. A script for a film (in this case the movie within the movie) tries to be profound but even the unscripted lives of the actresses and actors are more profound.
Some of the examples that come to mind are:
Séverine breaks down during an early scene. The few lines she says "out of character" are more vibrant and emotional than the scene itself--"I don't understand you Alexander! You've been peculiar, lately".
The swimsuit secretary scene. Things are planned out long in advance and also changed on a whim.
The love bungalow / cat scene. Sometimes scripts have really esoteric things going on. Sometimes montage like this is worth the extra effort / luck to film but a lot of the time it's just vapid nonsense that wastes the crew's and the audiences' time. What is the cat offering that scene?
The tub butter is not in the script but it is the most necessary item. Absurdity meets real life. Re-molding the sticks of butter into tub butter is the most believable part of the film--and it is not in the script as the film makes it clear.
Some memorable quotes:
The film is really good at showing the pressure, planning, and time-tables that filmmaking requires.
The director's flashback to taking off all the Citizen Kane posters is really funny--there is definitely a Welles connection here.
It is interesting that F for Fake also came out within the same year as Day for Night. Both films have a similar level of craft and polish.
That wasn't an angle I considered but it makes perfect sense. The movie production we see here doesn't exactly look like it is a very good movie they are making and there doesn't appear to be a clear vision for the director. They more or less just roll with it.
I am writing this as the credits roll. I wanted to get my thoughts down quickly, and while I could be wrong, I don't feel this is the type of movie that will grow on me over a couple of days. It is pretty much what it is.
Reasonable entertaining with all the meta "behind the scenes"-scenes showing the crazyness of a movieset. It has a very fast paced chaotic vibe with tons of big and minor things going on, but everyone is quick to find solutions and just move on.
It may not be totally fair towards a movie from 1973, but recently I have gotten tired of these self-indulgent movies about movies from the industry. Especially after seeing Babylon recently which was simply way too much. I liked this one better. At least it felt more authentic, and less a "love letter to cinema", but more just showing what it is at face value and not romanticizing anything. Because it is isn't exactly glamour we see here. It is crazy work that destroys people.
Still, for me, the best "cinema love letter"-type movie is still Cinema Paradiso. This was a fun little quirky thing, but I really need more than something that feels like it is mostly made for people who work in the industry.