Day For Night

Truffaut's celebration of his calling is a cleverly-composed, typically felicitous deconstruction of the world of movie-making and picked up the 1973 Best Foreign Film Oscar. It will, however, be of more interest to film buffs or those who enjoy a peek backstage more than the general viewer as it quite episodic and with no dramatic action to speak of.

Truffaut himself plays Ferrand, a director shooting a film in Nice called Meet Pamela and trying to keep it all together despite the fact that his highly strung Hollywood star, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset) is on the edge of crack-up, his co-lead (Valentina Cortese) is over-fond of the bottle and his male lead (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is trying to stop his girlfriend running away with a British stuntman. It’s enough to drive a person crazy but would Truffaut have it any other way? The answer is a resounding “no".

FYI:  Graham Greene appears uncredited as the insurance agent towards the end of the film

 

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