A Noite Americana

La Nuit Américaine is an interesting movie with celebrated French director Francois Truffaut playing a director making a movie. He proves to be a modest and convincing actor himself while patiently weaving a tale about how movies are made and how intense the emotional interactions among those making the movie can be.

Don't give up on this one too soon. It starts slow and seems almost amateurish because of the relatively low-tech way the film within the film is being shot. Truffaut gives us a glimpse of how the production crew works together (and sometimes at odds) while showing us some of the things that can go wrong while making a movie. He begins with the technical details of the production but before long begins to concentrate on the personalities of the movie-makers and their individual stories. Each story is carefully crafted in a somewhat leisurely way almost like the characterizations in a soap opera (without of course the phony drama and mass market sentimentality seen on TV). Truffaut's fine sense of emotional conflict and how conflict might be resolved makes the various stories touching without being maudlin.

Jacqueline Bisset who stars as English actress Julia Baker who plays the title role in the film within the film (May I Introduce Pamela?) doesn't make her appearance until about a fourth of the way in. She is a delight as an actress with a heart of gold recovering from a nervous breakdown married to an older man whom she does indeed love. Jean-Pierre Leaud, whom most viewers will recall as the running boy in Truffaut's The 400 Blows, plays a young and not entirely confident actor who gets jilted by the script girl who runs off with the stunt man during production. Bisset's warm and sisterly befriending of Leaud is, shall we say, entirely French (which gets her into trouble with her husband). This really is a skillful showcasing of Bisset since she gets to play something like an ingenue with her husband and the older woman with Leaud. Be careful you might fall in love with her.

Valentina Cortese in a fine supporting role does a most convincing job of playing the temperamental Italian actress just past her prime who quaffs champagne while working, who forgets her lines and can't find the right door, but when properly indulged gives a great performance.

My problem with this movie is I saw the dubbed version and of course that is disconcerting because one is constantly trying to reconcile the visualized actor with the dubbed one. To see Jacqueline Bisset who is beautifully fluent in both English and French speaking French while at the same time hearing someone else speaking English for her is just a bit too much to take. I understand that the DVD version is in French with subtitles. I would recommend that you get that and not the dubbed video.

Truffaut is the kind of director who allows the audience to penetrate not only his characters to see what makes them tick, but also the stars who play those characters. He does a particularly beautiful job with Bisset who is warm and wise and something close to heroic, and with Leaud whose childishness seems natural and whose pettiness forgivable. Don't believe those reviewers who think this is a slight film. It is carefully crafted and very well thought out and is a fine example of the work of the one of the great directors of the French cinema. See it for Truffaut whose delicate genius is evident throughout.

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A film-within-a-film that lacks the common pretension that appears in the genre. In most of these sorts, there is a certain air that "film" is a higher form of art than any existent today. What "Day for Night" straight-facedly states is that the actor's day is nothing more than the daily "grind" of the common worker, and that the director is nothing more than the "general manager," who is bombarded with questions at every turn. This film more than others clearly gives light to the famous quote of Orsen Wells -- that to make a film is comparable to playing with the world's "largest train set." What impressed me most with this film was its approach to the art form without tending toward unnecessary flourishing. In other words, it is a film about films, and nothing more. It's almost as if Truffaut desired to say, "This is what it's all about, and no joke." The film does not attempt to preach, condescend, or embellish, as most of today's "film-within-a-film" types ordinarily do. It is, in short, a delight for the eye, an excitation for those who love the art, and a pleasantry for those who enjoy sitting in one place for nearly two hours.

This is the Art of Film, by one of film's greatest admirers and pupils.

Many movies have been made about moviemaking but none surpass Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) for its humanity, its warmth and its genuine feel for Director François Truffaut's approach to his art and craft. The film follows Truffaut, in effect playing himself, as he makes a somewhat banal little romance called "Meet Pamela" (Je Vous Présente Pamela) with Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Pierre Aumont, Valentina Cortese (who was nominated for and should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress) and Jean-Pierre Léaud. It conveys the chaos of filmmaking process in front of and behind the camera and behind the scenes.

There are occasional false notes - the production manager's wife who insists on being on the shoot and watches disapprovingly as the cast and crew move in and out of each other's rooms, as funny as she is, simply doesn't ring true to the film - but in so many more cases, the details, the emotions, the mad combination of giddiness, passion and meticulousness that are needed to make a film, are captured so as to make you forget the slightly dated early 70s look. And Jacqueline Bisset is timelessly stunning in this film.

Minor notes: The movie launched the film career of Nathalie Baye as the continuity girl - her first major role; Graham Greene, the great English novelist (The Quiet American, Brighton Rock, etc.) had an uncredited cameo as the Insurance Agent - Truffaut directed the scene but did not know who the actor was until after the shot was in the can; Maurice Séveno, who appears briefly as a TV reporter, was a well-know French TV news anchor in the 60s and 70s; the score by Georges Delerue, who collaborated on many Truffaut movies, is lovely without being cloying.

In Nice, the Studios La Victorine is producing the film "Je Vous Presente Pamela", about a French man that marries the English Pamela in England and brings his wife to France to introduce her to his parents. However, his father and Pamela fall in love with each other and she leaves her husband to live with her father-in-law. The producer Bertrand (Jean Champion) and the director Ferrand (François Truffaut) invite the British Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who had a nervous breakdown and married her Dr. Nelson (David Markham), to the role of Pamela.

Along the shooting, the cast and crew are lodged in the Hotel Atlantic and Bertrand and Ferrand have to deal with problems with the stars Severine (Valentina Cortese), an aging artist with drinking problems that affect her performance; the immature, spoiled and needy Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud); Julie that is emotionally unstable. But in the end, they succeed to complete the film.

"La Nuit Américaine" is a film about making a film and a great tribute to the cinema. This is one of my favorite Truffaut's films and the last time I saw it was on 08 January 2001.

It is impossible to highlight performances in this film, but the mesmerizing beauty of Jacqueline Bisset shines. Jean-Pierre Léaud performs his usual role of an insecure man, using the same gestures of Antoine Doinel.

In 1992, Louis Malle explored the storyline of "Je Vous Presente Pamela" in "Damage". My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "A Noite Americana" ("The American Night")

When making movies, it appears, there's many hurdles, the behaviour of the crew can make blood curdle, you need to keep hold of your senses, repair, rebuild, renew strained fences, as you spin, rotate and turn around in circles. Most common are the fraught relationships, musical chairs and their resulting partnerships, bonds are formed and bonds are broken, sometimes strong, quite often token, but they're guaranteed to challenge, the film script.

François Truffaut genially introduces us the often chaotic and unpredictable world of filmmaking, the perpetual challenges from the people, product and process, and the diplomatic way all manner of banana skins are traversed. Highly amusing, and with many parallels to more ordinary lives and livings, it's sure to bring a smile to your face.