It may not be as sublimely rich and ultimately haunting as Federico Fellini's `8 ' but truth be told `La Nuit Americaine' is an astonishing film that is as clever as it is honest in its depiction of the art of filmmaking.

Director Francois Truffaut plays Ferrand, the director of the production `May I Introduce Pamela?' which stars an American actress named Julie. The film follows Ferrand's struggles with his cast, which include the diva who can't remember her lines, Severine as well as the green and somewhat unconfident Alphonse. What is also shown is the behind the scenes action, the production crew working together (and against one another), the numerous problems that can arise for any number of reasons (the cat scene is my favorite in the film) as well as actors interactions with one another and how that can affect the finished product.

It is a different approach to the same subject as `8 ', a film that tackled the creative side of filmmaking as apposed to the production side. Here Truffaut shows us what goes into taking what is on the printed page and transferring it onto the silver screen. It's a very large feat, and he delivers it rather well.

Some have stated that the film starts off slow, and sadly there are some slow spots throughout, but overall the film is redeemed by a witty script (which allows us to get to know each and every player intimately) as well as some superb performances. Standouts here include Valentina Cortese (who was nominated for an Oscar) as well as Jean-Pierre Leaud. Cortese is wonderful as Severine, displaying the true anxiousness from realizing you are past your prime yet refusing to acknowledge it. She is marvelously entertaining here.

Yes, it plays out like a realistic soap-opera, focus being on the word `realistic' so don't worry; this film feels nothing short of legit.

This is a very smart and very entertaining film that should be high on the lists of any lover of film, for it is an ode to the wonderful art of making that said film. This film should come with the tagline `please try at home' for this is a film that will make you appreciate film to a degree that you'll ache to try your hand at filmmaking. Truly Truffaut crafts a stunning portrait of his own career and gives us all something to talk about.

This is a wonderful love letter to the movies from Francois Truffaut who not only directs but also delivers a terrific performance as a movie director. Truffaut's character is directing what seems to be a fairly banal love triangle story. The very first scene is magical. We see a Paris street with a cafe, a square, people walking their dogs, chatting, cars driving by -- the camera picks up a couple of the characters and you wonder who the film will be about. Then someone shouts "cut" and we realize that this is a movie scene in which every tiny detail has been orchestrated. They play the scene again, but this time we hear the director's instructions and see the cameras moving around.
The director has to manage all kinds of personal dramas on his set -- the aging actress soused on wine who can no longer remember her lines, the spoiled male lead who is so childish and narcissistic as to be absurd, the fragile English star (played by Bisset) with the older husband -- and the lesser characters -- the stage hands, personal aides, the director, the stuntman -- each with their own little stories.
This is a mesmerizing glimpse of how movies get made by one of the true masters of the genre.

"Day for Night" is the 4th or 5th movie by Francois Truffaut that I have seen. The other movies were good, some even very good, but I came away from them with the impression that they were over-rated. If anything, I thought "Day for Night" was under-rated. It has a subject matter that had me sceptical; a movie made about making movies. I have seen a number of movies on that subject ("8 1/2", "Contempt", etc) and I have certainly read more than enough books where the author makes himself (or herself) the main character in the story. At times these semi-autobiographical works are very well-done but too often, it seems that the writers/directors have a better impression of themselves than I did. Too often, the audience is left to observe (from afar) a world we don't belong in. I think that is the beauty of "Day for Night". Truffaut gives us the impression that we are participants rather than an audience. We may not have any specific responsibilities on the set but we are in the midst nonetheless.

My second impression of the film was the completeness of the experience. In a two hour movie, I learned more about film-making than I proably would have in a 5 hour documentary (and had more fun in the process as well). Truffaut has a gift of including so many aspects of the process and he does it all with the personal touch of a cast that seems anxious that we get the most out of the experience. There is plenty of humor, more than enough drama, and it all is woven together in a tempo that eliminates boredom or confusion. There is always something that catches our focus just long enough to make us understand the purpose and just short enough to avoid overstating the point. The way the different characters weave in and out of the different events give "Day for Night" a multi-dimensional aspect as well.

"Day for Night" moves along as well as just about any picture I've seen. Kudos to the film editor in an off-camera lesson in the art. I got to the end of the film in a very happy frame of mind. It was a sense of satisfaction that is so often missing in most movies. "Day for Night" is a classic!

In his films he shows considerably more technical skill, overall, than his great rival, Jean-Luc Godard; but even when Godard woefully misfires, as in some of his early films, he's at least striving for something. Truffaut, by comparison, likes shiny, pretty things, and anything that disturbs that safe universe is averse to him. Thus, his 116 minute long, 1973 filmic take, Day For Night (La Nuit Americaine), on the behind the scenes goings on at the making of a movie amount to little, as neither the exterior film, the interior film, nor the extra-exterior of the viewer watching the film, satisfies on any level. The characters on all levels are rather vapid, if not outright cardboard characters, and it's a tossup as to which set of characters are more vapid- those who portray actors in Day For Night (whose title derives from film scenes that are shot day for night, wherein a filter is used to give the look of night while shooting in daylight, yet the metaphor of which is pointless to the actual film), or those the actors portray within the interior film Meet Pamela (Je Vous Presente Pamela- literally May I Introduce Pamela). On either level, the action is purely melodramatic. Critics argue the film shows how much Francois Truffaut loves film. So? Love without action or meaning is rather sterile- the perfect description for this well made but dull and simply pointless film. There have been many films made about the making of film, or meta-films on the subject, even going back to the silent era. But, the two most interesting comparisons to be drawn with this film would be from films released a decade earlier. One by Truffaut's rival- Godard, who made Contempt (Les Mepris), and the other by Federico Fellini: 8 (Otto E Mezzo).... Still, despite its awards and reputation, Day For Night is not near a great film, merely an adequate one, whose greatest failing is its being too long for its banal and lightweight screenplay to sustain itself. If it lost 30-35 minutes it could have been more successful. Then again, I may as well grow wings, for the screenplay aspect of films was never high on the list of the French New Wave filmmakers, who were birthed out of the atrocious Cahiers Du Cinema magazine on film theory. The filmmakers who came from this milieu (Truffaut, Godard, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol) were generally not good writers (with the exception of Louis Malle), even if they were competent technical and visual stylists. Their writing, as critics, was routinely bad, consisting of purple prose that dealt with the criticism of intent, rather than substance, and was usually only undershot by the often worse ideas they espoused.
Thus, Day For Night's failure is no surprise. It is too prosaic, flat, and hollowly predictable to succeed as great art, even if it is an interesting diversion, at times. Compared to a film like John Cassavetes Opening Night, which similarly details the dramatic goings on of a stage production, it is fey and forgettable. Say what?

Day for Night has not aged quite as well as some of Truffaut's other films, since it feels like an homage to a bygone era, but that is partly because it has influenced so many subsequent portrayals of what goes on behind the scenes during the making of a film, and it is partly because the filmmakers wanted to make an homage to an older style of filmmaking. Tom di Cillo's "Living in Oblivion" for example is the American indie version of Day for Night -- more cynical, even more funny, but not nearly so complex or profound. Day for Night almost wants to be a tragedy, and while the fact that the film gets finished in the end lends the film a comic dimension, it is clear that Truffaut knows life is never so neatly packaged. That is, in fact, the central theme of the film: that life is unpredictable and often tragic, but cinema makes magic of tragedy, and is worth the sacrifice that are made for it. The acting is very real and compelling -- especially when you recall that most of the actors play essentially two roles: their stage role and their character. The film itself seamlessly moves between scenes that are shot for the film within a film and scenes shot of the filming process and of the lives of the actors and crew. I did enjoy the fact that Truffaut included himself as the director of the film with the film that he was also directing; I also enjoyed a great deal the glimpse into what seems to be his process of working with actors and improvising in response to the demands of situations.

My only complaint is that there are a few fairly heavy-handed elements in the film, that belie Truffaut's otherwise light and subtle touch. At a few moments in the film we can hear what a character is thinking through voiceover -- and it seemed somewhat sporadic and inconsistent rather than the result of a coherent approach. When Truffaut (playing a director) falls asleep he hears voices (usually his own) and then dreams -- and the dreams are always of a little boy walking down the street in black and white. The dreams don't fit as clearly or as lightly into the film as similar sequences in Fellini's 8 1/2 (a film that this film is obviously comparing itself to at certain points). Though it seems that the boy in the dream must be the director, it wasn't clear to me what the dreams revealed other than: this is someone who, from an early age, was fascinated by film (and, possibly, felt guilty about "stealing" from Orson Welles). But I'm not sure why we needed three separate dream sequences (or any at all) to convey what seemed already clear -- at another moment the director opens a package of books and they are books about several of the great western directors including Orson Welles, Fellini, and Cocteau. Even that seemed a bit heavy handed -- was the point to make a comparison or to suggest a feeling of inadequacy?

On the whole, though, in spite of a few reservations that may be peculiar to me, this is an excellent film that belongs especially among the very great films about film: 8 1/2, Stardust Memories, Living in Oblivion, Beware of a Holy Whore, State and Main, and a few others. Highly recommended for lovers of film.