Anniversary of the Day for Night
On May 15, 1973, François Truffaut's film "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival as part of an out-of-competition screening.
Perhaps not everyone knows that Truffaut's film owes its name to an expression from the slang of French filmmakers, who by "la nuit américaine" mean a technique used since the days of silent films to shoot night scenes in broad daylight. For such filming, either special filters are used, or the diameter of the light beam entering the camera lens is reduced. The idea to make a film about the shooting of the film came to François Truffaut in 1971 while working on the film "Les deux Anglaises et le continent (Two English Girls)". It is assumed that the impetus for the birth of this idea was the novel by Paul Brodeur "The Stunt Man", published in 1970. In 1980, the film on this novel, starring Peter O'Toole, was directed by Richard Rush.
In early 1974, "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" received two nominations for the American Golden Globe Awards, but won neither. In the most important category - Best Foreign Film - the Hollywood Foreign Press Association found the film "Der Fußgänger (The Pedestrian)" by Maximilian Schell more worthy of the award. But the Academy was of a different opinion and awarded its Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)".A year later, "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" again received three Academy Award nominations but won none. In the most important nomination - Best Director - François Truffaut lost to Francis Ford Coppola, the director of the second part of the film "The Godfather". In the same 1974 the film "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" received three British BAFTA awards, including in the most important nominations - Best Film and Best Director, surpassing in these nominations the film "Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie)" and its director Luis Buñuel.
The movie "American Night" caused universal delight among film critics. According to famous American film critic David Sterritt,
"Day for Night is a tribute to cinema's capacity for creating grand illusions - fictions, fantasies, and visions that move and fascinate us (if they're properly done) even though we know they aren't real. ...major theme of Day for Night - the interplay between the hard, often tedious, highly physical labor of making movies and the magic that results when everything goes right."
Roger Ebert, who gave the film the maximum possible 4 stars and included it in his list of "Great Movies", in his review from 1973 compared it to other films dedicated to filmmaking:
"Movies about movies usually don’t quite get things right. The film business comes out looking more romantic and glamorous (or more corrupt and decadent) than it really is, and none of the human feeling of a movie set is communicated. That is not the case with Francois Truffaut’s funny and touching film, “Day for Night,” which is not only the best movie ever made about the movies but is also a great entertainment."
A similar opinion was given by the Russian film critic Aleksandr Fedorov:
"Truffaut's film does not pretend to be philosophical depth or innovative form. The language of "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" is soft, lyrical. The world of cinema, the world of author-director relations (here Truffaut acted as if he were himself) and his characters shown in a series of everyday troubles, minor conflicts, inevitable romances. Everything that happens on the screen, as if, illustrates the famous Akhmatov's lines: "If only you knew from what litter flowers grow, not knowing shame"..."
The film "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" played a special role in the relationship between the two great French directors: François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. For a long time they were friends and like-minded people, collaborating in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma and forming, together with several other French directors, an art film movement in French cinema called "New Wave". But Jean-Luc Godard's attitude to the film "La nuit américaine (Day for Night)" turned out to be extremely negative, which he told in a letter to his friend. In this letter, Godard accused Truffaut of a deceitful portrayal of filmmaking, that Truffaut, allegedly, in an effort to please the tastes of the broad masses of cinema audiences, betrayed the principles that they professed together, collaborating in Cahiers du cinéma.
Truffaut was terribly offended by this letter and in a reply he called Godard petty and pretentious, that he only pretended to be poor, although in fact he was the richest of their circle of friends. At the end of the letter, Truffaut bluntly called Godard "shit". It is believed that it was this quarrel that ended their friendship. Godard later greatly regretted his letter, especially after Truffaut's early death in 1984.
Jacqueline Bisset became the undisputed highlight of the film. Meanwhile, her participation in the film was the result of an accident. Initially, François Truffaut planned to shoot in this role Jean Seberg (who, in particular, played in the film by Jean-Luc Godard "À bout de souffle (Breathless)", but for some reason they could not find her in order to convey an offer to participate in the film. In order not to break the planned filming schedule, the role in this film was offered to Jean Seberg's partner in the shortly before released George Seaton's film "Airport" - Jacqueline Bisset.
Moviegoers highly appreciated this film by Francois Truffaut. 66% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated this film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, Francois Truffaut's film "Day for Night" rating according to FilmGourmand version was 10,134, thanks to which it took 36th Rank in the Golden Thousand. These indicators are the highest among similar indicators of films produced in 1973 by world cinema. On this basis, we can conclude that "Day for Night" is the best film of world cinema in 1973.
