Day for Night

Pros: Everything - a must for dyed-in-the-wool Truffaut admirers.
Cons: Nothing.May strike others as a dull exercise on nothing.

On the film set of ‘Je vous presente Pamela / Meet Pamela’ in Nice, the boozed-up veteran actress Severine (Valentina Cortese) continues to flub her lines and movements on the scene's third take. Soon, the lovesick young actor, Alphonse ...

Pros: Provides a few insights into the headaches of filmmaking
Cons: Amateurish appearance, unappealing characters, soap-opera-like proceedings

Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) was one of the seminal figures of the French New Wave as well as the foremost advocate of so-called auteur theory that glorifies the role of the director as the central creative force in the making of a film. Day for ...

Pros: lo-tech realism, wonderful ensemble cast, beautiful soundtrack
Cons: none

Several years after Truffaut died, I came across a book which was a collection of letters he had written during the course of his lifetime to friends and family. Those letters forever sealed in my heart my belief that his death was an enormous loss...

Pros: humor, characters, script
Cons: dubbed, exaggerated situations

Director Francois Truffaut (1932-1984) is regarded as one of the greatest French directors. His most famous film is his first feature, The 400 Blows (1959). To American audiences, he is probably most familiar as an actor, in a supporting role in...

Pros: Fun, tightly scripted movie
Cons: Too bad it had to end

Francois Truffaut's Day for Night is titled La Nuit Americane in French. I am not sure why this is, but perhaps it refers to the American role in popularizing movies, the art of illusion and fantasy. The idea for the film was several years in the making...