La nuit américaine
France,
1973, 115 min
Shown in 1973 / 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
François Truffaut
- scr
-
François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard, Suzanne Schiffman
- cam
-
Pierre-William Glenn
- editor
-
Jann Dedet, Martine Barraqué
- mus
-
Georges Delerue
- cast
-
Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut, Natalie Baye, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Valentina Cortese, Bernard Menez, Alexandra Stewart
- prod co
-
Les Films du Carosse; P.E.C.F.; P.I.C.
- source
-
Warner Bros. Classics, 15821 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 525, Encino, CA 91436
-
COMMENTS
François Truffaut and Jacqueline Bisset attended screening in 1973. Selected by Lotfi Mansouri in 2001 for Indelible Images.
OTHER
A lighthearted and captivating classic of the French New Wave, this love song to cinema itself takes viewers behind the scenes of a film-shoot plagued by bad luck and a dizzying array of petty arguments, drinking bouts and enjoyably doomed love affairs. Truffaut fittingly plays the filmmaker, a man heroically (or blindly) attempting to give some class to a routine romantic comedy while everything around him collapses; at one point he wearily observes that a director is merely “someone who is constantly asked questions.” Jean-Pierre Aumont and Jean-Pierre Léaud portray the two leads, with Léaud dazzling in his typical role: a ratlike, sex-obsessed whiner throwing fits and smoking incessantly in eye-catchingly foppish outfits. Everything that can go wrong does: A cat botches several scenes by refusing to drink its milk; the shoot’s grande dame botches several scenes by refusing to stop drinking her liquor; the heroine isn’t quite over her mental breakdown; Léaud’s lover runs off with the stunt man and a main character dies in an accident. A series of lovingly crafted gags and witticisms, Day for Night is one of Truffaut’s most charming films, and one of cinema’s most entertaining winks at itself.
FACTOID #130
Spike Lee has attended the San Francisco International several times. He came, film reels in hand, for the world premiere of She’s Gotta Have It in 1986. He returned in 1994 with Crooklyn, which starred Oakland’s own Delroy Lindo. And in 2007 he received the Festival’s Film Society Directing Award.
