Day for Night (1973, dir. François Truffaut, France) by Patrick McElroy

Legendary filmmaker and former film critic Francois Truffaut once said, “I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; I am not interested in all those films that do not pulse.”

Rarely has the agony of making movies been expressed greater than in his 1973 masterpiece Day for Night, which was released fifty years ago today. The film explores the making of a cliched melodrama, where Truffaut plays a director, along with his actors played by Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Truffaut regular Jean-Pierre Leud, and all the crew members, many of whom are played by real members.

Through vignettes we witness all the mishaps of the production, such as actors forgetting their lines, attempting to get a kitten to drink milk, and the behind-the-scenes drama of the actor’s romantic life.

When Truffaut made this film, he had been at a low point creatively, his previous films such as Fahrenheit 451, The Bride Wore Black, Mississippi Mermaid, and Bed and Board had all been unsuccessful. Many of these were seen as a betrayal of the French New Wave movement which was rooted in experimentation – he was now going a classical route.

He would then make a film like his earlier work that was more personal and dearer to him, showing his passion for film, and the battle to make one, from not just the director’s point of view, but from everyone involved.

Unlike his other films, he uses more of a handheld style, that differs from the dizzying shaky cam of today, but instead utilized a stabilizer that was a pre-cursor to the Steadicam. He used it to capture these long shots, that show the intimacy, and hecticness of the process, where you feel as if you’re intruding on the characters.

Using Eastman Color, he captures certain colors with an almost pastel type of look – the reds have a sharpness to them, the blues pop out, along with pinks, oranges, greens, and greys.

The film also has many great characters, but I think my favorite one is a veteran actor played by Aumont, who’s witnessed more history than the rest of the younger crew and is quietly gay with a secret partner. It was progressive of Truffaut to have two gay characters who weren’t stereotypical and weren’t being persecuted by anyone.

One of the aspects that doesn’t get talked about as much is the humor in this film, perhaps the funniest sequence is where Cortese’s actress character can’t figure out which door to enter when filming her scene, which is both frustrating and real.

But the main theme of the film is passion – it’s what brings all these figures together to make a movie where we never know the outcome, but it’s the process of these people who’ve dedicated their lives to it that’s important.

The key scene in the film, and perhaps in Truffaut’s career is a dream sequence of the director when he’s a child in the middle of the night stealing lobby cards from Citizen Kane from his local theatre. This shows not just the purpose of Truffaut’s career, but the purpose of art, which is to steal from something you were passionate about at a youthful age.

Patrick McElroy is a movie writer and movie lover based in Los Angeles. Check out his other writing at: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.mcelroy.3726 or his IG: @mcelroy.patrick