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