Day for Night (Truffaut, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30pm
This film, also screening on January 7th, 15th and 25th, is part of the Francois Truffaut season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Time Out review:
If we’re to learn anything from François Truffaut’s delicately
cynical, New Hollywood-style satire from 1973 on the joys and pains of
movie making (re-released in conjunction with the BFI’s current Truffaut
season), it’s that we must view directors as social and professional
chameleons. They must tap in to the emotions of their cast and exploit
real suffering for the good of their camera. They must stand their
ground with money men, sometimes employing visual trickery and snap
decisions to preserve their integrity. Most of all, they must suppress
the cosmic fury that comes when a leading lady arrives on set drunk or a
trained kitten refuses to hit a mark.
It’s a hilarious and
informative movie, and in the pantheon of films about filmmaking, it
strikes a neat balance between the operatic neuroses of ‘8 1/2’ and the
warm, pastel-hued nostalgia of ‘Singin’ in the Rain’. Also of interest –
and a devious nod back to his ’60s heyday – is the manner in which
Truffaut captures these behind-the-scenes shenanigans, employing gliding
crane shots and flashes of abrupt editing to make us fully aware of the
majestically artificial way the world is depicted by filmmakers.
Truffaut
stars as indefatigable director Ferrand, shooting a fusty melodrama
called ‘Meet Pamela’ and wearing the same sports jacket, shirt and tie
combo as he would in ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. He delivers
the same coolly detached performance too, though it works a lot better
in this context. The fact that his childish lead (Jean-Pierre Léaud, of
course) is too often in a strop to concentrate on the part, or that his
star (Jacqueline Bisset)
is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown are accepted as part and
parcel of the business. But as Ferrand makes sure he’s seen in
possession of a stack of serious film tomes and has nightmares about
being trapped outside a cinema showing ‘Citizen Kane’, the point is that
even if the end result is a piece of trash, a director always strives
to be an artist.
David Jenkins
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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