Film 101 for sedentary cinephiles, Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT chronicles an in-production process of shooting a movie called MEETING PAMELA, whose barebones plot anticipates Louis Malle's DAMAGE (1992), an inappropriate love affair between a man and his young daughter-in-law , culminating in a tragic ending of perdition.
As the standard bearer of nouvelle vague, it is somehow befuddling that Truffaut's film-within-a-film is exactly opposite of the type that specific movement endorses, indeed, the opening scenes are quite deceitful until the camera zooms out, we are shown it is shot on a studio set, with scads of extras minutely doing their lifelike imitations. Which immediately intrigues us to conjecture, does Truffaut repent his attack on Cinéma de papà, the studio-bound methodology, which is disparaged by the members of Cahiers du Cinéma in its salad days? Or is it supposedly a satire on this outmoded industry by baring everything but the kitchen sink like Robert Altman's THE PLAYER (1992) and Richard Rush's THE STUNT MAN (1980)? The answer might not be what we have assumed.
Ever so thoroughgoing, Truffaut flags up the incessant hitches and incidents that can occur during the shooting, from logistics concerns, technicalities issues, to handling its high-maintenance stars with a kid glove, pandering to their whims, to make a textbook presentation of shooting a car-crash stunt, directing a cat to act proper, or simply shows the preparation of a particular set (fake snow for instance), altering lines of the script in the last minute, DAY FOR NIGHT (the title itself is a cinematic term of artificiality) persuasily weaves interpersonal tangles into the process: Séverine, a toping, over-the-hill actress (Cortese) who cannot remember her lines and keeps fluffing her scenes; Alphonse (Léaud), the young actor whose immature infatuation with the continuity girl Liliane (Dani) is a disaster-in-the-making,and the British actress Julie Baker (Bisset), who plays the titular Pamela, has her own prior nervous breakdown and becomes an unknown quantity one doesn't know what can prompt her to buckle.
Simultaneously directing and playing the character of a director (who is beset by the recurring dreams of a childhood happenstance, a CITIZEN KANE homage), Truffaut confidently conducts in a taut and faux cinéma-vérité fashion that concatenates multifarious episodes into an eloquent coherence, reveals the pains involved and the private aspects of each individuals, not in a sardonic temperament, but seen through a more matter-of-fact, even compassionate eye that injects gravitas into the laborious enterprise, the esprit de coups never deflates, even when a horrific accident nearly shuts down the whole production, there is always a way to overcome the hurdles.
Cortese harvests an Oscar nomination for her fantastic rendition of an actress whose faculty is insidiously compromised by alcohol yet her vivacious spirit lives on, Séverine's emotional strains is so acutely manifested, she might soon be shunted into oblivion, but Cortese makes sure that she has had her moments, her larger-than-life personality is both enthralling and poignant; Bisset, for all her gorgeousness, also strikes home Julie's dainty vulnerability without being too cutesy, whereas a young Nathalie Baye as Joëlle, the script girl, knows perfectly well how to balance work and pleasure without each getting into other's ways.
Male actors are considerably less prominent, Léaud doesn't sport a heart-throb panache which makes one wonder why is his Alphonse a famous actor in the first place. Aumont's marquee idol passé, Alexandre has an equivocal homosexual subplot which is shamefully underdeveloped, only Truffaut, as unperturbed as ever, both in front and behind the camera, retains his aptitude and determination grandly in this meta-reification of his noble vocation.
referential entries: Truffaut's STOLEN KISSES (1968, 7.8/10); Richard Rush's THE STUNT MAN (1980, 6.1/10); Robert Altman's THE PLAYER (1992, 8.2/10).
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