April In Paris Film Festival – Day For Night

Director: Francois Truffaut

1973, France, 116, PG

Screenwriter: Truffaut and Suzanne Schiffman.

Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Nathalie Baye, Francois Truffaut.

 

In the politics-heavy 1970s, one of the best-known filmmakers of France’s New Wave turned inward, revealing his most cherished love: movies. In Day for Night, Truffaut plays a director of a not-great script who is trying at first to make a masterpiece, and by the end, “just to finish.” Truffaut lets us into the pleasures, anxieties, and romances during a shoot, that make every cast and crew into a (dysfunctional but loving) family. Jean-Pierre Léaud, who starred in seven Truffaut films starting with The 400 Blows, pokes gentle fun at himself as a self-obsessed actor. While it seems that everything that can go wrong during filming does, Day For Night reveals the miracle of brief moments: a cat drinking from a saucer of milk, to the golden hour before sunset, that make movies an ineffable pleasure.

Winner, Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture. “The greatest film ever made about filmmaking? For some (comme moi), the answer will always be Day for Night… a glorious ode to the fleeting, addictive and irreplaceable joys of cinematic collaboration.” – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times.