Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Day for Night (1973)
This film says more than what the visuals tell us. The cinema comments on life and lifestyles. This film comments on actors. The obvious one is the main male actor, Alphonse. When he and Liliane, his girlfriend, are discussing what they would like to do at night, Alphonse wants to go to the movies. This shows that he is obsessed with his art. At several other junctures during the film he does the same thing, say that he is going to go catch a film. This shows why the artificial world is better than the real world, because, even though he is a sought after actor, he wants to perfect his art by watching other movies and other actors. It does show the theatricality of the actors in real life at several other points in the film.
As this film shows the behind-the-scenes aspect of filmmaking, it is showing filmmaking in its most basic form. The fly-on-the-wall style makes it feel, not like a documentary, but like media coverage of the filming. This also shows how artificial the whole thing is right from the first scene. After the first run through of the first scene, ending with a slap from Alphonse on Alexandre, the suave, older main actor, Ferrand calls “Cut. We’ll do it from another angle”. From this first cut, when the actors are forced to do the scene again, we know that this is a film on the behind the scenes look of a movie. With the cast being told when to move and cars in the street being told to drive at a certain speed so that they do it perfectly, and the crew buzzing around behind the camera, we know that this is set up. We know this is a film set and that the actors on the set are actually playing actors.
“Day for Night” is shot intermittently as a documentary/news report and a feature film. It has interviews with the cast and crew during shooting placed next to shots when the cast and crew are in their downtime. The use of the hand held camera to give the film a documentary feel is vital to retain the fly-on-the-wall feel of the movie. Speaking into the reporter’s camera, the speakers are relaxed and comfortable. When it shifts back to the behind-the-scenes look, the frenetic pace and stress the characters are under made abundantly clear. This is especially obvious in Truffaut’s Ferrand as he is the director and the controller of everything that is happening on the set.
This film deals with people. Mostly they are actors but there are the portrayals of real people too. The actors though are very extravagant. Their movements, their speech, everything they do is much more pronounced than the non-actors, such as the Doctor husband of Julie, the American actress, and the wife of the production manager. In fact, several sources see Julie’s husband and the production manager’s wife as the villain’s of this film, if there are any, because of they are boring. The actors in “Day for Night” are much more melodramatic than these ‘normal’ people. Ferrand, at one point likens making a movie to taking a stagecoach trip through the old West - "At first you hope for a pleasant trip. Then you simply hope to reach your destination".
The camera work in this film is good. It is good enough that you don’t even notice the camera for most of the film. This is the mark of a true genius of filmmaking. The type of camera movement follows the focal character around. This is good otherwise you would not get the whole meaning of the story as all the characters are vain and overly theatrical outside of the filming and this is what the movie is trying to show – that during shooting, everything is perfect, but outside that there is chaos in people’s lives. Even within the confines of this movie, we see that. No one has their lives in order.
"Day for Night," is Truffaut looking at the world from inside his glorious occupation; everyone else looks to be a little boring. This film has great fun showing outsiders of the movie industry into the glorious world of film; how movies are made, how rain and snow are made for movies, how animals are directed, how acts of God can affect a script. But this film also deals with the major concerns of people working in a job they love do only doing that, at the expense of everything else in their life. I enjoyed this movie, even though it was a movie we watched in a University subject. I was pleasantly surpried by this and found it to be a good film. I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars. I don't think I'd watch it if it wasn't for Uni but I'm glad I've seen it now.
