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Day for Night | Year: 1973 Directed: - François Truffaut Actors/Actresses: - François Truffaut - Jacqueline Bisset - Jean-Pierre Léaud It's Finally Here With Subtitles! For years i have been not watching this film -- one of my very favourites -- because it was only available on VHS in an abysmally-dubbed version. Well, now it's on DVD with the original French track and subtitles in English, and it's just as great as i've been remembering it from the last chance i had to see it theatrically. The video transfer looks excellent, the sound is good, and the film is the film. And there are goodies galore on the DVD as well; i haven't finished all of them yet. If you haven't seen this film, now is the time to do so. ((The dubbed track is included for people who simply can't deal with subtitles.)) Delicate but penetrating La Nuit Américaine is an interesting movie with celebrated French director Francois Truffaut playing a director making a movie. He proves to be a modest and convincing actor himself while patiently weaving a tale about how movies are made and how intense the emotional interactions among those making the movie can be. Don't give up on this one too soon. It starts slow and seems almost amateurish because of the relatively low-tech way the film within the film is being shot. Truffaut gives us a glimpse of how the production crew works together (and sometimes at odds) while showing us some of the things that can go wrong while making a movie. He begins with the technical details of the production but before long begins to concentrate on the personalities of the movie-makers and their individual stories. Each story is carefully crafted in a somewhat leisurely way almost like the characterizations in a soap opera (without of course the phony drama and mass market sentimentality seen on TV). Truffaut's fine sense of emotional conflict and how conflict might be resolved makes the various stories touching without being maudlin. Jacqueline Bisset who stars as English actress Julia Baker who plays the title role in the film within the film (May I Introduce Pamela?) doesn't make her appearance until about a fourth of the way in. She is a delight as an actress with a heart of gold recovering from a nervous breakdown married to an older man whom she does indeed love. Jean-Pierre Leaud, whom most viewers will recall as the running boy in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, plays a young and not entirely confident actor who gets jilted by the script girl who runs off with the stunt man during production. Bisset's warm and sisterly befriending of Leaud is, shall we say, entirely French (which gets her into trouble with her husband). This really is a skillful showcasing of Bisset since she gets to play something like an ingenue with her husband and the older woman with Leaud. Be careful you might fall in love with her. Valentina Cortese in a fine supporting role does a most convincing job of playing the temperamental Italian actress just past her prime who quaffs champagne while working, who forgets her lines and can't find the right door, but when properly indulged gives a great performance. My problem with this movie is I saw the dubbed version and of course that is disconcerting because one is constantly trying to reconcile the visualized actor with the dubbed one. To see Jacqueline Bisset who is beautifully fluent in both English and French speaking French while at the same time hearing someone else speaking English for her is just a bit too much to take. I understand that the DVD version is in French with subtitles. I would recommend that you get that and not the dubbed video. Truffaut is the kind of director who allows the audience to penetrate not only his characters to see what makes them tick, but also the stars who play those characters. He does a particularly beautiful job with Bisset who is warm and wise and something close to heroic, and with Leaud whose childishness seems natural and whose pettiness forgivable. Don't believe those reviewers who think this is a slight film. It is carefully crafted and very well thought out and is a fine example of the work of the one of the great directors of the French cinema. See it for Truffaut whose delicate genius is evident throughout. "Making a film is like a stagecoach ride into the Wild West" Day For Night (also called La Nuit Americaine) is a captivating glimpse into the mechanics of the film-making industry. It is a film within a film - the plot concerns the trials and tribulations (both human and technical) involved in the production of the fictional movie "I Want To Present Pamela". We are inducted into the world of director Francois Truffaut and his motley band of cast and crew as they cope with the seemingly endless difficulties in trying to make a film they can be proud of in a limited amount of time. There are tempestuous actors who storm off the set, canisters of film which go missing, and even the death of an actor during filming to deal with. And yet, through all this, the film itself reigns supreme. Day For Night is a French film, so unfortunately for English-speaking viewers some of the feeling is possibly lost in translation (either through dubbing or subtitling). However, the essence of the film remains, helped in no small part by some montage sequences set to Georges Delerue's wonderful orchestral score. The film was made almost thirty years ago, so looking at it from a purely historical perspective, it might seem a little dated. However, to see it merely as a representation of a point in time is to miss entirely the message contained within the movie; this message being that films are timeless. So whilst we might smile nostalgically at the clothes (most of which are unbelievably tight), the aspects of human relationships revealed are as relevant today as they were in 1973. Buy Day For Night at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Day For Night Search with the Priority Search Engine on Day For Night This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
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