Day for Night | | Cast : | François Truffaut, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud | | Director : | François Truffaut | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Widescreen | | Released Date : | September 07, 1973 | | DVD Released Date : | March 18, 2003 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), French (Original Language), English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | March 29, 2005 | | Summary | Are Women Magic? Truffaut's films are! | Content
 | This is the question Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Leaud) keeps asking all the male characters in the film, trying to find the meaning of women, as he hopes to figure out his own relationship with the script-girl, who has just been found kissing the movie's stills guy. Ahhh, but then he finds the luscious Jacqueline Bisset, who is at odds and struggling with her own relationship with a wealthy older American. While this movie is about making movies, it still revisists Truffaut's main theme in most of his films: the relationships between men and women.
A brilliant movie by a brilliant director (the best, actually). The opening one minute tracking shot of the "movie within the movie" emptiomizes Truffaut's own unique style: a bus zooms by as we seemingly focus on the main character? A woman dressed in red walking a busy street? No.... an elderly couple walking their dog? No... Jean-Pierre Leaud coming up the steps of a subway stop? No... a red convertible pulling up and parking? Still no... but alas, after nearly one full minute of the camera looping around this busy Parisian street, we finally land on the intended main character of the scene, Jean-Pierre Aumont, as he gets slapped by an approaching Jean-Pierre Leaud. This opening sequence sets the tone for a truly original film about film.
I love the camera style of Truffaut, where either at the beginning of a scene, or in most cases after it, he will pan off of the main characters or action, and sneakingly dwell on some other non-significant character or scenery.
Even though we don't make movies like they used to in 1972, this is still a fascinating look into the movie making world of the time, with all it's facets, responsiblities, and relationships. Very humorous at times, it is a true pleasure to sit back and enjoy this Oscar winning film, from a director who is unequaled in the history of films. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 28, 2005 | | Summary | One Of Truffaut's Best | Content
| Near the beginning of this film a character says real estate is the place to make money, not the movie business, but he continues to work in the movies because he loves it. That is what Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night" is all about. People who love movies making movies.
I saw this film years ago, but, it was the English dubbed version. I found the dubbing distracting and it had an effcet on my overall feeling of the film. When the movie became released on DVD it included the sub-titled version. I am reviewing this version. By seeing the film with sub-titles I now think it is one of Truffaut's best films only behind "400 Blows".
Maybe you're thinking I'm crazy. Can seeing a movie sub-titled really make that much of a difference? You have no idea. Just think about it. Now we can hear the original actors. We can hear the emotion they put in their lines. It is much different that hearing someone else plainly saying their lines. It is almost like seeing the film for the first time.
As we watch "Day for Night" we see what it takes to make a movie. All the problems that can occur, amd unfortunately for Truffaut, everything that can go wrong, does. People die, actors get pregnant, crew memembers fall in love, actors forget their lines, and film footage is destroyed. But as the saying goes, "the show must go on". And why does everyone keep going on? Because they love movies. It's one of the many reasons so many people have called this one of the greatest films about films in a class with "8 1\2", "Contempt" and to a lesser extent one of my favorites "Stardust Memories".
"Day for Night" won the Academy Award for "best foreign film"in 1972 and two years later was nominated for "best picture". Film critic Gene Siskel even hailed it as the best film of 1974.
Bottom-line: One of Francois Truffaut's best films. And it may as well be one of the greatest films about the movies. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 19, 2004 | | Summary | Exhilarating and joyous comedy! | Content
| This an affectionate satire on the art and the madness of making movies . Lighthearted, charming beauty, faultlessly acted by Truffaut himself and a cast hyper inspired.
Fundamental issue in Truffaut cinematography .
Art Cinema in its highest level .
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| Rating | | | Date | September 08, 2004 | | Summary | Day For Night | Content
| Francois Truffaut is the wall between the traditional cinema and the self-conscious cinema. He is the most minimalist of the ideological filmmakers and the most radical of the artisans, his delicate touch: that most tender style that finds seemingly impossible intersections between theatre and cinema, Hitchcock and Rossellini, language and film-noir. `Day For Night' is a film that celebrates, not the making of forgettable, commercial cinema as it has been suggested, but the actual process of making a film. In `Day For Night' Truffaut has managed to make a film that separates the creation of art from the result of the creation. Truffaut is saying that everything is art before it is finished and distributed. No other filmmaker has made a more luscious poem to the making of films than Truffaut, for he is interested in the process and not the result. Most filmmakers whose films are dubbed `films about cinema' or `films about the making of a film' are most often films about everything except the making of a film. Truffaut's film radiates with purity: if he had not been interested in making a film about the actual process of making a film than he wouldn't have ended his film simultaneously with the end of the actual shooting of the film that they are making. That is what is most poignant and poetic about Truffaut's direct and minimalist approach to cinema in `Day For Night': when the film ends, everyone is separated again. He sees cinema as a beautiful collective dream. Truffaut's fetishistic interest in obsessive love (Antoine Doinel's obsessive love of Balzac in `400 Blows' resulting in a small fire, Adele Hugo's obsessive simultaneous love for a man and for writing that drives her to insanity in `Adele H.', Truffaut's love of children in `Small Change') is ever present in `Day For Night'. In one poignant, self-conscious scene, Truffaut himself tells Jean-Pierre Leaud, `We are only happy in our work', it's a beautiful scene, and one that summarizes `Day For Night': it is a film about making a film in which the characters are making a film, it is about itself. Jean-Luc Godard has been quoted by saying, about `Breathless': `I thought I was making `Scarface' and I ended up making Alice In Wonderland'. Truffaut, like Godard, tricks the audience into thinking that they are watching `Scarface' only to make `Alice In Wonderland': he uses the form of films that are made with technique only to make films made with emotions. What is most poignant about `Day For Night' are Truffaut's evocative, melancholic scenes of framing a scene, or editing a sequence, another filmmaker would have concentrated on the audience's response to the film, something more important than the actual film. Not Truffaut. It is the ending of a beautiful collaboration, and when the film ends the actors leave, the sets are destroyed, the film is forgotten and nothing is innocent once more. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 18, 2004 | | Summary | Buy this now, while you still can. | Content
| If you're thinking about it at all, you should pick up this DVD in any store that still carries it. It has recently gone out of print.
I read a news article in July saying that the estate of Truffaut sued Warner Bros. to stop making this DVD. Apparently Warner had the rights to the film for 30 years, which ended May 24, 2003. Warner released this DVD in the US on March 18, 2003, and the Truffaut heirs say this was knowingly done to get in before the deadline. Apparently excess stocks of books and movies are usually allowed to be sold even after rights have been lost. However, the Truffaut estate claims Warner released this DVD so close to the expiration of their rights that they are abusing this. They want a large amount of money and for the DVD to be pulled from stores, because they say Truffaut and his estate never got much if any money from Warner Bros.
As a result, this well made DVD, which for the first time offers the film in the original French, has quietly disappeared from the market. I've seen copies still on the shelves in stores in my area. If you want it, pick it up now, before it's going for $100 at ebay. |
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