La nuit américaine (1973)

Director:

François Truffaut

Writers:

Jean-Louis Richard (writer)
Suzanne Schiffman (writer)

Release Date:

7 September 1973 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Comedy

Tagline:

A movie for people who loves movies.

Plot:

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

Plot Keywords:

Director | Actor | Pregnancy | Press Conference | Filmmaker

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 10 wins & 5 nominations

Cast

Jacqueline Bisset	...	Julie
Valentina Cortese	...	Severine
Dani	...	Liliane
Alexandra Stewart	...	Stacey
Jean-Pierre Aumont	...	Alexandre
Jean Champion	...	Bertrand
Jean-Pierre Léaud	...	Alphonse (as Jean-Pierre Leaud)
François Truffaut	...	director Ferrand
Nike Arrighi	...	Odile
Nathalie Baye	...	Joelle
Maurice Seveno	...	TV Reporter
David Markham	...	Doctor Nelson
Bernard Menez	...	Bernard the Prop Man
Gaston Joly	...	Lajoie
Zénaïde Rossi	...	Madame Lajoie

Also Known As:

Day for Night (USA)
Effetto notte (Italy)
The American Night (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

115 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French | English

Color:

Black and White | Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:L | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Chile:14 | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | UK:PG | USA:PG | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Alpes-Maritimes, France

Company:

Les Films du Carrosse

Trivia:

A sequence uses a scene with a cat drinking milk from a discarded room service tray from Truffaut's film La peau douce (1964) as its inspiration, this time showing the audience the multiple takes required to get the cat to go to the tray and drink

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: During the filming of the car crash scene, when the stunt man backs up the car driving through the the open door, and when he jumps free as the "driverless" car supposedly heads for the cliff where it will crash, someone else is visible inside the car, actually driving.

Quotes:

[repeated line]
Alphonse: Are women magic?

Movie Connections:

Edited into Day for Night: Truffaut in the USA (2003) (V)

Soundtrack:

Grande Chorale

Delicate but penetrating

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.