{"id":3984,"date":"2020-12-16T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/?p=3984"},"modified":"2020-12-15T15:21:57","modified_gmt":"2020-12-15T21:21:57","slug":"la-nuit-americaine-day-for-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/la-nuit-americaine-day-for-night\/","title":{"rendered":"La Nuit Am\u00e9ricaine \/ Day for Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first came to Winona State University, I hadn\u2019t decided what I wanted to do for a major and never really felt compelled towards any specific field. First, I started with a Pre-Pharmacy major, then Pre-Law, next TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and eventually a general English major. I came to realize that, even though each major interested me, they weren\u2019t something that I could picture myself doing for the rest of my life. Afraid that I wasn\u2019t going to graduate in time \u2014as I was already at the end of my sophomore year\u2014 I decided to try out one last major: Film Studies. Since then, I would have never guessed I would be so thrilled that I have found something that ignites my passion, and also introduced me to one of my new favorite film movements. That is why, as the last film I will be covering from the French New Wave, it is with a heavy heart that I introduce Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s 1973 film, La Nuit Am\u00e9ricane,<\/em> or Day for Night<\/em> in English. Despite my melancholy, the film isn\u2019t actually sad, but rather quite enjoyable.<\/p>\n

The title for the film La Nuit Am\u00e9ricane<\/em> (American Night) was the French name for a filming technique \u2014known as “day for night” in English\u2014 which made scenes shot during daytime seem like nighttime through a filter on the camera lens or after being edited in post-production. Today\u2019s cameras can easily adjust to the night sky\u2019s underexposure, and even the cameras in our smartphones can take away most unwanted shadows. Yet, in 1972, sometimes filming was made easier by using the day for night technique, and helped save time and money. Truffaut\u2019s film didn\u2019t have much to do with the technique at all. In fact, the storyline was an original screenplay that came to him while he edited another one of his film\u2019s, Two English Girls,<\/em> in 1971. However, the name symbolizes something more than just the technique; while the film technique is used to mask the correct time of day, the actual film unmasks<\/em> filmmaking, so the plot becomes the opposite meaning of the film\u2019s title.<\/p>\n

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With some simple color correction, this shot from Mad Max: Fury Road<\/em> (2015) has been transformed into nighttime.<\/p><\/div>\n

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There is a French phrase, “mise en ab\u00eeme”, which means telling a story within a story, or a picture portrayed within a picture; thus, Truffaut\u2019s film uses mise en ab\u00eeme, and the film can sometimes get a little confusing. Day for Night<\/em> fully shows what It\u2019s like to work on a set and film a full feature-length movie from different perspectives of everybody working, such as the actors, the director, the script girl, the props man, and several other employees. As a familiar face closely associated with Truffaut, Jean-Pierre L\u00e9aud plays his traditional role as a naive, somewhat childish bloke named Alphonse. Truffaut even stars in the film as the director named Ferrand. The movie within Day for Night<\/em> is titled Pamela<\/em>, and the story follows a young man and woman in love. They plan on getting married, but the young woman eventually falls in love with the man\u2019s father, and the two run away together.<\/p>\n

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The movie crew being filmed as they film Pamela.<\/p><\/div>\n

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I will only be mentioning the characters by their real name for simplicity since they have their name in Pamela<\/em> and their name in Day for Night,<\/em> which could bring even more confusion on top of the already convoluted plot. Of course, making movies can\u2019t be made without some small bumps in the road, and Truffaut made sure there were plenty shown in the film. Some of them included L\u00e9aud\u2019s character having relationship troubles with his girlfriend which led to L\u00e9aud\u2019s co-star, played by Jacqueline Bisset, cheating on her husband with L\u00e9aud out of pity. An actress forgets to mention she is pregnant and towards the end, the father in Pamela<\/em> dies while still finishing the film, but due to an unrelated car crash. The film even shows the smallest problems that can arise, like having to use the assistant director\u2019s car because the stunt cars aren\u2019t colored as Truffaut wanted and would be too expensive to paint the right color, or a scene where a kitten wouldn\u2019t go towards a milk saucer to drink from it for a scene.<\/p>\n

Besides the layered storylines and intertwining problems, there is a ubiquitous theme that suggests finishing the film is more important than personal life concerns. Even though L\u00e9aud\u2019s character is heartbroken and wants to leave after his girlfriend runs off with a stunt double in Pamela<\/em>, Bisset\u2019s character tries to convince him to stay and finish the film. Otherwise, he would be a fool. Additionally, Nathalie Baye\u2019s character in the movie says something along the lines of, “I would dump a boy for a film but never a film for a boy.” Despite the negative connotation of putting your work ahead of your personal needs, there is logic behind the theme because the plot shows how much effort must be put into a film. Movies can\u2019t be made within a few weeks if they\u2019re going to be great. Life happens which messes up schedules, plans and getting the perfect results needs every ounce of consistent attention. In general, though, Day for Night<\/em> is just a fun film to watch. This film showed me some of the lesser-known, behind the scenes techniques of filmmaking. For instance, did you know that if there is snow in a film shot during the warmer months, they use a bunch of soap bubbles? At least, in Day for Night<\/em>, they use a huge truck similar to a firetruck with a hose and a big pouch at the end that spurted out tons of white, foamy bubbles. Here I was, thinking that fake snow was only made from some sort of white flakes or dust.<\/p>\n

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Jean-Pierre L\u00e9aud and Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut discussing angles to hold the fake gun with the “snow” in the background.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even though this film has been considered one of Truffaut\u2019s best films, not everybody thought so. Jean Luc-Godard \u2014a close friend and one of the leading auteurs alongside Truffaut in the movement\u2014 had nothing nice to say about Day for Night<\/em>. As I mentioned in my essay about Godard\u2019s last French New Wave film Tout va Bien<\/em><\/a>, his personalized style became much more political and militant by the end of the 1960s. On the other hand, Truffaut went on to make more aesthetic films by the late 1960s. Godard described Truffaut\u2019s film as dishonest and wrote several slanderous and resentful letters to him about how Truffaut didn\u2019t portray filmmaking correctly. Godard thought the film created a deceptive appearance that filmmaking was all about the aesthetic, and anybody could make a film if you had just the right touch. I think this is true in some respects, but Godard believed that films could not be made at all without big budgets and a substantial personal influence in the filmmaking community. Truffaut was furious and wrote back plenty of letters calling Godard out on all of the “incorrect” ways he made films too. Eventually, both auteurs got so heated that Godard ended up dragging Jean-Paul L\u00e9aud in some of his letters, even though L\u00e9aud had nothing to do with their quarrel and worked a great deal with both of them. Additionally, Godard mockingly asked for money to make his films if Truffaut seemed to have so much of it. The divide between the two eventually marked the end of the film movement.<\/p>\n

Without the movement\u2019s ring leaders, the French New Wave had no direction and faded into nonexistence. Nevertheless, lasting from the late 1950s through the late 1970s, the movement and its films embodied freedom, love, existentialism, boundless creativity, and intrepid originality depicted through characters and plots that never copied or followed in each other\u2019s footsteps. The French New Wave was flexible and had more than enough room for all different kinds of film styles as French culture ebbed and flowed. Indeed, the imprint of the film movement had become so deeply rooted into cinematic history that the legacy of the French New Wave period still lives on today, and has been placed in the hall of fame as one of the most pivotal film movements in cinematic history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my last film in the French New Wave series, It is with a heavy heart that I introduce Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut\u2019s 1973 film, La Nuit Am\u00e9ricane, or Day for Night in English. Despite my melancholy, the film isn\u2019t actually sad, but rather enjoyable. Day for Night fully shows what It\u2019s like to work on a set and film a full feature-length movie from different perspectives of everybody working on set, such as the actors, the director, the script girl, the props man, and several other employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":3991,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,80],"tags":[30,16,266,176,258],"class_list":["post-3984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issues","category-left","tag-1970s","tag-criticism","tag-day-for-night","tag-french-new-wave","tag-mina-tham"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2020\/11\/Day-for-Night-group-camera-1280x600-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3984"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4051,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3984\/revisions\/4051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.winona.edu\/povwinona\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}