Truffaut's film about making a film is rather like a documentary. There's no real drama, no real comedy, and in fact it made no emotional impact on me. The closest the film comes to being dramatic is one scene where we're told that one of the characters died off screen, and another in which an actress had been drinking and can't remember her lines, but even these are less weighty than what you might see in a made-for-TV movie about a runaway teenager.
There's also a brief dream sequence in which the director as a boy steals movie stills from Citizen Kane, as Truffaut's alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud did fourteen years earlier in The 400 Blows — a far, far better film. Speaking of Jean-Pierre Léaud, in 1973 he appeared not only in Day For Night but starred in Jean Eustache's masterpiece La Maman et la Putain. Check it out just to compare the performances, and the relative power of the two stories.
Truffaut's friend and colleague Jean-Luc Godard reportedly walked out of Day For Night and then wrote him a letter saying that the film was "a lie", and the two never spoke again. I managed to watch the whole movie, but won't bother to a second time. Three stars for the physical beauty of Jacqueline Bisset, Dani, and Nathalie Baye.
There's also a brief dream sequence in which the director as a boy steals movie stills from Citizen Kane, as Truffaut's alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud did fourteen years earlier in The 400 Blows — a far, far better film. Speaking of Jean-Pierre Léaud, in 1973 he appeared not only in Day For Night but starred in Jean Eustache's masterpiece La Maman et la Putain. Check it out just to compare the performances, and the relative power of the two stories.
Truffaut's friend and colleague Jean-Luc Godard reportedly walked out of Day For Night and then wrote him a letter saying that the film was "a lie", and the two never spoke again. I managed to watch the whole movie, but won't bother to a second time. Three stars for the physical beauty of Jacqueline Bisset, Dani, and Nathalie Baye.