Day For Night

Movie tells you much about movies

JEAN-PIERRE LEAUD and Jacqueline Bisset in "Day For Night."

If you like movies, you will LOVE “Day For Night.”

I did the first time I saw it years ago and now, thanks to a Turner Classic Movies' recent tribute to director Francois Truffaut, I got to see it all over again.

The title describes a technique of shooting a scene during the daytime and through darkroom manipulations make the film look like it happened at night.

You see, “Day For Night” is a movie about the making of a fictitious movie and the pitfalls and joys. It is not all glamour and stardom.

The film is interesting because it not only shows filming techniques, but shows how the movie cast and crew quickly become family for the short time they are together, then go their separate ways.

In one scene, a woman is supposed to be living in an apartment across from her in-laws, except there is no building. So the crew built a tree-fort like structure with a bay window. Shooting at the correct angle looks it appears to be an apartment.

Often when two people in a moving car are filmed, it's with a blue screen. The background, like city streets or back roads, is added later. But it looks fake. In “Day For Night,” the car is towed by a truck with the film crew in front and one actor fakes driving. More realistic and pretty sweet.

Of course, “Day For Night” was filmed in 1973 and technology has changed filmmaking a great deal.

The movie within “Day For Night” is called “Meet Pamela,” the story of a woman and her new husband who meet her new in laws and she falls in love with her father-in-law. The movie ends tragically in more than one way.

The delicious Jacqueline Bisset plays the actress who is Pamela, while her husband is played by Jean-Pierre Leaud. The father-in-law is played by Jean-Pierre Aumont.

While the plot of the in-movie is rather pedestrian, the story of the those involved in making the movie is much more interesting.

The Bisset character is married to a doctor who helped her out of her depression. Her movie husband is a needy, whiney sort who is in love with the girl who uses the clapboard to announce the next scene. He always wants her within his sight, so naturally when an Englishman flies in to do a particularly dangerous car-crash stunt, the girl runs off with him.

So the movie husband can't go on. He's going to walk out of the picture. The Bisset character shows a little too much sympathy for him and ends up spending the night. He then repays her kindness by calling the doctor husband and tells him he just slept with hubby's wife.

Truffaut plays the director and the production goes on while coming apart at the seams.

There are many fine backstories that make this comedy-drama a lot of fun.

It's probably Traffaut's best work. See it in the day or night. It's worth it.

DAY FOR NIGHT

Written by Jean-Lois Richard and Suzanne Schiffman

Directed by Francois Truffaut

5 stars out of 5

Rated PG for mild sexual themes

Runtime: 120 minutes

Midnight in Paris

A magical film about Paris

Sony Pictures Classics

OWEN WILSON and Carla Bruni in "Midnight in Paris."

Maybe because I recently visited Paris, I was quickly drawn to Woody Allen’s romantic comedy “Midnight in Paris.

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First off, Owen Wilson can be an annoying actor. Heck, he gets annoying in this film.


But  with the backdrop of Paris, and the plot and the dialogue, I soon forgot any annoyances.

 Even though many characters in the “modern Paris” part are annoying. They are snooty, one upping each other.


Wilson and his girlfriend, played by Rachel McAdams, are staying in Paris. He operates a nostalgia shop back in the states, selling old radios and the like. (Only in movies can you operate a little shop and make enough money for an extended trip to Paris.)


McAdams plays Inez, a rich girl whose parents show up in Paris. Mimi Kennedy plays her snooty mom who likes only expensive jewelry and Kurt Fuller is the dad. He doesn’t like his future son-in-law and hires a detective to follow him during his long nightly walks.


The couple also run into her old friend, played by Nina Arlanda, and her boyfriend, played by Michael Sheen.


Sheen’s character is especially annoying, because he knows everything about everything, from history to art to wine. He argues with French tour guides.


So it is a welcome respite when Wilson’s character decides to ditch the gang and walk back to the hotel. Where he ends up getting lost.
But a 1920s-era taxi pulls up and offers Wilson’s character a ride. And that’s when the magic begins.


He ends up at a hotel where he meets F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, played by Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston, as well as Ernest Hemmingway, Gertrude Steid, Salvador Dali, T.S. Elliot and a host of intellectuals and artists. Yep, his taxi takes him back in time to the era and the place he most covets, Paris in the 1920s.


And there the usually goofy Wilson gets to hobnob with the elites, the people who are his heroes, living in their era, young and witty and drunk.


Pill as Zelda is especially fun and entertaining.


Every day, Wilson returns to his life of modern antagonists, knowing at night he will catch that taxi and go back to a more magical time and place, with people he has become friends with, who know and respect him and don’t downgrade him for his opinions.


Time travel movies are difficult to do and often come out worse for the wear. But Allen’s talents shine through. And even though he doesn’t appear in the film, it has his trademark characters and dialog.


I was especially impressed with Carey Stoll as Hemingway, who stresses novels about strength and honor and being valiant and not fearing death.


There are some scenes that could have been omitted. The Wilson character tries to steal his girlfriend’s pearl earrings to give to his 20s friend, Adriena, and that ends disastrously. That should have been cut. It is totally out of character and doesn’t progress the plot.


But overall, it’s a good story, it’s Woody Allen, it’s lots of loving shots of Paris, there’s conflict, there’s romance. It’s a pretty nice package, all tied with a pretty bow.


Annoying, yes, but pretty special as well.



MIDNIGHT IN PARIS


Directed and written by Woody Allen


Rated PG-13


Runtime: 100 minutes


9 stars out of 10