Ferrand: "The Godfather" is showing all over Nice. It's wiping out every other movie.
Julie: Liliane ran off with the stuntman.

Joelle: Does Alphonse know?

Julie: I had to tell him.

Joelle: With the stuntman? I'd drop a guy for a film. I'd never drop a film for a guy!
director Ferrand: I speak English well, but don't understand it!
director Ferrand: Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.
Ferrand: We'll shoot the scene when you find a cat that can act!
[repeated line]

Alphonse: Are women magic?
Alexandre: In 80 movies I've died 24 times - electrocuted twice, hanged twice. I've been knifed, committed suicide, died in accidents, but never a natural death. Anyway, I don't think death is natural.
Bertrand: The way to make money is in real estate, not movies!
Bertrand: An actress who won't appear in a bathing suit is ludicrous!
director Ferrand: People used to stare at fires. Now they watch TV. We need to see moving images, especially after dinner.
Ferrand: What is a film director? A man who's asked questions about everything. Sometimes he knows the answers.
Alphonse: [after being dumped by his girlfriend] I need money to go to a whorehouse.

director Ferrand: Come on Alphonse. Go back to your room, re-read the script, learn your lines, then try to sleep. Tomorrow we work. That's what matters. Don't be a fool. You're a very good actor. No one's private life runs smoothly. That only happens in the movies. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along like trains in the night. And people like you and me are only happy in our work. I'm counting on you.
Alphonse: I'm sure Ferrand is wrong. Life is more important than films.
Alphonse: You see, I've made a terrible discovery. You can be desperately in love with someone you despise, whose every gesture, word and thought you detest!

Julie: What right have you to say that? Say you made a mistake but never be ashamed of having loved. By despising Liliane, you're merely degrading yourself.

Alphonse: Maybe you're right. Anyway, my love affairs have always ended badly. I thought women were magic.

Julie: Of course they're not magic. Or men are too. Everyone's magic, and no one is.
Madame Lajoie: What is this - filmmaking? You call that a business? You've no morals. Everybody sleeps with everyone! What is it but a dirty lie. You call that normal? Filthy cinema - you're a plague on the world! You smell of filth! You'll pay for your sins! I despise you!
Ferrand: Walter, have a look. The pictures of Julie.

Walter, le chef opérateur: I remember her in that movie with the car-chase.
Alphonse: Do me a favor. Walk ahead so I can watch your ass.

Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: Like this?

Alphonse: Yes, like that!
Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: I saw you!

Alphonse: Saw me, what?

Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: You're hot for the maid.

Alphonse: I am?

Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: Bastard! She's your type. A bouncy little duckling.
Alexandre: Remember when we first met in Hollywood?

Séverine: No dates! Never mention numbers! Or I'll tell everyone you had a facelift!

Alexandre: Not yet. It's coming!

[Séverine laughs]
Séverine: Isn't he adorable? When did I work with him...? Oh, Mamma Mia, 20 years ago in Hollywood! We were there at the same time. You know, he was a real ladies man. In Hollywood, they called him the continental lover. I loved him, too.

Odile, la maquilleuse: Is he married?

Séverine: I don't know if he is now. He was married and divorced twice. Maybe he lives with someone. No one knows. He's very secretive.

Odile, la maquilleuse: He has a moustache in the movie. I like it.

Séverine: Moustache or not, he is still playing lovers! And look at me... I'm only cast as the neglected wife! Desperate... tragic... a real pain...
Le producteur de films érotiques: [to Ferrand] I'd like you to meet two German girls. They're sisters: Greta and Diana. She was in a big German political film. Do you do any? She was in an erotic film. Why don't you do one? I have a good script about pollution.
Ferrand: Quiet! A full rehearsal. Let's go, Séverine.

Séverine: "I don't understand you Alexander! You're - "

Alexandre: "Peculiar"

Séverine: Oh, yes.

Ferrand: It's all right! Take it from the top, right away. Let's go, Séverine.

Séverine: "I don't understand you Alexander! You've been peculiar, lately. Walking out on dinner last night! That was an insult to Julie." Damn! I said Julie instead of Pamela.

Ferrand: Not to worry.

Séverine: I've got an idea! I'll use numbers, the way I do for Fellini! Instead of "I don't understand you Alexander..." I'll say, 22, 83, 16, 72, 5, 3, 18, 9, 14, 7, 9. 17, 10, 10, 4, 18, 69...

Ferrand: Impossible, Séverine. In France, we have to say the lines.
Séverine: It's not my fault!

Ferrand: Cut! Once more.

Séverine: It's not my fault if I'm confused! I don't know if she's Odile, the actress. Or, Odile the make-up girl! In my day, acting was acting and make-up was make-up! No wonder I'm confused!
Ferrand: She's always around!

Joelle: She's Lajoie's wife.

Ferrand: She thinks she's a crew member?

Joelle: No, she thinks women are after him! She makes his life hell. He's too weak to dump her. We call them "The Sorrow and the Pity"!
Alexandre: How's your mother?

Julie: Very good. I told her we were working together. She sends her love.

Alexandre: Marvelous woman! Everyone in Hollywood loved her. Too bad she quit when she did.

Julie: But she's still very busy.

Alexandre: She hated the way we shoot movies - in bits and pieces! I remember escorting her to the premiere of her first big Hollywood movie. A fantastic evening! When the film ended, she sat there, then turned to me and said: "I did all that? All I remember is the waiting."

Julie: It's so true!
Alphonse: Let me ask you, are women magic?

Lajoie, le régisseur: No, they're not. Neither are men. If a woman says she's known outstanding men, it means she's slept around.
Alphonse: Alexandre, excuse me. Can I ask you something?

Alexandre: Yes.

Alphonse: In your opinion, are women magic?

Alexandre: Some are, yes. Others, no!
Alexandre: Actors are so vulnerable!

Dr. Michael Nelson: Of course they are. Everyone is afraid of being judged. But actors are always being judged. In your work, and in your life!

Alexandre: Yes. We wonder what people think of us, if they love us. It must be the same for all performers. As a child, when Mozart was asked to play, he'd reply: "Gladly, but first say you love me."

Dr. Michael Nelson: And in your job, you're always kissing.

Alexandre: As you say, yes, we do a lot of kissing. The handshake was invented to show you're unarmed, friendly. We went one better: we show our love.
Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Why did you let me know, puss? You got me in trouble.
Alphonse: Bernard, are women magic?

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Not women, their legs! That's why they wear skirts.
Ferrand: We do the kitchen scene tomorrow.

Julie: Can I have my lines?

Ferrand: After dinner tonight.

Julie: That's not much time!

Ferrand: It's not written yet. Read it once and put it under your pillow. In the morning, you'll know it by heart!

Julie: Optimist, huh!
Joelle: How about Alexander? He fooled everybody. We all expected a Lolita and a handsome Romeo got off the plane!
Joelle: The scene needs a new idea. Call your co-writer!

Ferrand: I thought of it. He's in Japan. He's adapting Turgenev's "First Love". Set in modern Japan. Great idea!
Joelle: Back to work! You dictate, I'll type. We promised it to Julie tonight.

Ferrand: Okay, back to the kitchen. No more guilt or sense of shame. They decide to run away like thieves in the night.

Joelle: "Pamela" could actually say that! We must show that she's completely lucid. She loved the son, now she loves the father. That must come across.

Ferrand: Yes. Julie explained it very well. Here's her interview in the morning paper: "The girl realizes the boy she married is only a pale reflection to his father." She understood the script! Why? Because her mother was an actress. She knows Hollywood, where many kids try to live up to famous parents. Fairbanks, Barrymore and others.
Lajoie, le régisseur: Hey, the movie quiz!

TV Game Show Host: In what movie did Jeanne Moreau co-star with Orsen Welles, in a Shakespeare film?

Bernard, l'accessoiriste, Lajoie, le régisseur: Falstaff!

TV Game Show Host: In what movie was she Charles IX's sister and and Henry IV's wife?

Lajoie, le régisseur: Queen Margot

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Right! You know your stuff.
Ferrand: Cinema is King!
Alexandre: Any champagne left?

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: No, we'll have to move on to Pernod.

Alexandre: Champagne's gone. You won't get drunk.
Ferrand: Tell him the car crash we're shooting tomorrow will be in American night.

Julie: What is American night?

Ferrand: A night scene shot in daylight with a special filter.

Julie: Ah, day for night.
Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: You've all got sex on the brain. Dirty talk all day long!
Julie: He loves you and wants to marry you.

Liliane, la stagiaire scripte: He mentioned marriage, I didn't! Just the word gives me the creeps. Anyway, he needs a wife, a mistress, a nanny, a nurse, a sister. I can't play all those roles!
Séverine: The actor had always dreamed of playing Hamlet. At last, he staged it and played the role! But he was so bad, he was booed every night. One night he was fed up, he stopped in the middle of "To be or not to be", turning to the audience, he said: "I didn't write the shit."
Séverine: What a funny life we lead! We meet, we work together, we love each other and then, as soon as we grasp something - it's gone.
Joelle: Everyone's nuts on this movie!
Alexandre: Movie people may be more obvious about it, but love makes the world go round!
Alexandre: There was an Austrian actress, Hedy Lamar, became a big Hollywood star. She really missed the rainy climate of her native Tyrol. So, in her garden in California, she installed a rain-making machine.
Joelle: Like the chef in "Rules Of The Game", "I cater to diets, but not fad!"
Julie: I'm sick of disguises. I'm quitting movies. I know that life is rotten.
Ferrand: Let's go before it gets dark!
Le reporter TV: [Last lines] Wasn't it a hard film to make? Lots of trouble during the shooting?

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Not at all! It went fine! And we hope audiences enjoy seeing it as much as we enjoyed making it!
Bertrand: That's not nice or friendly. Aren't we one big family?

Alexandre: So were the people in Greek tragedies!
Bernard, l'accessoiriste: Joelle, if you're in the mood...

Joelle: For what?

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: We're all alone here...

Joelle: Okay, you're on!

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: What?

Joelle: All bark and no bite! But when it's time for action...

Bernard, l'accessoiriste: You're willing?

Joelle: Yes. But we haven't got all day. - - Move it!
Interviewer: Can you tell us about your new movie?

Julie: "Meet Pamela" is the story of a British girl who falls in love with her husband's father. I think it's based on a true story.
Stacey: I don't know why Ferrand cast me? He can't stand me1

Joelle: Who told you that?

Stacey: I know he thinks I'm a lousy actress. Just between us, maybe he's right. No, he didn't cast me! Was it the producer? Something's peculiar about this film.
Georges, le compositeur: [First lines] Let's all be quiet and play well. Slowly and relaxed, in my tempo. From the beginning. Strike up together. Here you can speed up. Don't leave any gaps. There, now all together. Hold that last chord. No sentimentality. Just play the notes.

Day for Night Quotes

Extended Reading

Day for Night short comments

Marlon 2022-03-19 09:01:11

In that pile of books, there are Buñuel, Dreyer, Lubitsch, Bergman, Godard, Hitchcock, Rossellini, Howard Hawks, Bresson... (There seems to be Wells, David Lean, Fritz Lang, Jacques Rivette?)
Johan 2022-03-24 09:03:48

Inside and outside the play: Severa and Alexander are husband and wife in the play, and the wife is left out; outside the play is an old lover. Alphonse and Julie are husband and wife in the play, and the wife falls in love with her father-in-law; Julie married a doctor but committed adultery with her husband Alphonse in the play. She said this line in and out of the play: Maybe he will forgive me, but I will not forgive myself easily. Alphonse is a bastard who can do whatever he wants. The actor is so morally corrupt