Day for Night1973
Day for Night (1973)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: A sweet counterpoint to Godard's Contempt, Truffaut's Day for Night is a congenial tribute to the self-afflicted madness that is making a movie.
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Movie Info
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Cast
as Julie
as Alexandre
as Séverine
as Alphonse
as Stacey
as Bertrand
as Joelle
as Lajoie
as Director Ferrand, Ferrand
as Lilianna
as Insurer
as Bernard, the Prop Man
as Arthur
as 1st Assistant Director
as Odile, the Makeup Girl
as Mme. Lajoie
as Dr. Nelson, Julie's Husband
as TV Reporter
as Boy with Cane in Dream Sequences
as English Insurance Broker
as French Insurance Broker
as Walter (Cinematographer)
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Critic Reviews for Day for Night
All Critics (39) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (1) | DVD (2)
Day for Night is tender but too fan-magazinish in approach, too tenderly shallow for its own good.
A glorious ode to the fleeting, addictive and irreplaceable joys of cinematic collaboration...
It is a Pirandellian affair, an elegiac celebration of a dying kind of cinema, a meditation on the connection between film and life by Truffaut...
It is a breezy, richly enjoyable if not especially profound film about cinema: it conjures the ambient, dizzy sexiness of movie artifice, and it's also notable for a remarkable cameo by Graham Greene.
It's a hilarious and informative movie, and in the pantheon of films about filmmaking, it strikes a neat balance between the operatic neuroses of '8 1/2' and the warm, pastel-hued nostalgia of 'Singin' in the Rain'.
Truffaut is looking at the world from inside a glorious obsession: everyone outside looks a little gray and dim.
Audience Reviews for Day for Night
It's very interesting that the English release of this film was not a direct translation of the French title which would have been "The American Night" Truffaut brings a nice mix of humour into yet another film about film making.
Super Reviewer
A great view about the charm, conflict, love, family and life in cinema. A cinematography poem to the artists of the seventh art. A better and more serious version of 'Noises Off' with very good actings of all the cast. Fresh.
Super Reviewer
From the opening credits to the last frame it is great fun to see behind the scenes of the making of a movie. What is going on in the cast's and crew's private lives and how it affects the movie being made was the most interesting thing though. The many uninterrupted tracking shots following Truffaut as a writer/director named Ferrand, who for all intents and purposes is Truffaut, are amazing in their fluidity as he answers production questions from everyone who crosses his path. Jacqueline Bisset as a visiting American/British star in the French production of Meet Pamela is beautifully natural in her role. Jean-Pierre Aumont as the mature actor is also likable and charming. Nathalie Baye stands out in her hard working, strong, and attractive role as a script girl who seems to have more responsibilities than the assistant director. Jean-Pierre Leaud and Dani are good as a young immature couple, he the other lead with Bisset's and Aumont's characters, she getting an assistant continuity job through him. Valentina Cortese is an aging actress who is turning more and more to drink. Bernard Menez, the prop man, is quite funny. There are producers, other actors, more crew, paparazzi, and extras as well. Movie sets are controlled places where stories are committed to celluloid, not like real life. Still unexpected occurrences like trying to film animals, actresses becoming pregnant, emotions becoming unstable because of actors' private relationship troubles, and sudden death lead to changes being made to the script all along the way. One theme is the love of movie making, which we see throughout. Another is relationships between the sexes. When Alphonse (Leaud) asks Julie (Bisset) his repeated question "Are women magic?" she replies, "Everyone is magic. And no one is." By giving the actors and the crew the same attention, by giving the making of Meet Pamela the same attention as the off camera lives of those involved, and by giving several actresses roles as strong or stronger than many of the men have, Traffaut shows that he truly believes "Everyone is magic. And no one is."
Super Reviewer
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