Day for Night (1973)

 Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night"

Francois Truffaut's 1973 film "Day for Night" can best be described as a 'celebration of filmmaking,' if you want to be lazy about it. While it does pull back the curtain to 'filmmaking' and gets the rocks off of every film major wanting to turn professional, "Day for Night" certainly provokes thoughts on cinema's importance or lack thereof. One thing it certainly did was signify the definitive ending to one of cinema's greatest partnerships.

Jean-Luc Godard and Truffaut had a dynamic partnership starting out at Cahiers du Cinema, where they worked together studying filmmaking and writing reviews. They collaborated in writing Godard's first film, "Breathless," and are endlessly compared to one another due to their personas as spearheading the New Wave movement. However, at the end of the 1960s, both the New Wave movement and their perspectives on life and film began to evolve, resulting in them growing further and further apart.

This slow divide between the two ruptured after Godard walked out of a screening of Truffaut's "Day for Night." He felt betrayed by Truffaut and called him a 'liar.' Why did Godard feel this way? After Godard released his 1967 film "Weekend," he stopped making fictional narratives all together. He instead began to inundate himself with political movements, workers' unions, and anti-capitalist ventures. He began to feel that cinema should be for the oppressed and any attempts to buy into the neo-con capitalist studio function was a betrayal of art and humanity.

So, it comes as no surprise that Truffaut's continued production of often sentimental or 'innocuous' narratives steered Godard's perspective of his old friend into the negative. There were even some films like 1970's "The Wild Child" that, to the laymen eye, could be viewed as sympathetic towards the establishment and colonial power. While I don't necessarily agree with this notion, it's not completely without merit to reach a conclusion that Truffaut lacked the political determination of revolution as much as his contemporary. 

Without a doubt, the two had steered into wildly different perspectives in the intentionality of their art. However, what is it about "Day for Night" that caused such a visceral reaction by Godard that he felt the need to advertise this now conclusory divergence? Perhaps it is because the film is the exact subject matter and philosophy that both Godard and Truffaut dedicated their lives to, and thereby would be a completely philosophical, political, and even spiritual source of emotional reactiveness. 

"Day for Night" centers on a film production in progress, where Truffaut himself stars as the film's director. While this may draw some to parallel the film to Fellini's "8 1/2," make no mistake: Truffaut's film and Fellini's are wildly different. As we continue with the production, life (as it so naturally does) gets in the way. The off-camera dramas and personal conflicts take center stage, as the production itself becomes more of a feat of dedicated work. Enjoyable work, but tiresome and often strenuous work nonetheless. 

From students working on films on their college campuses to grand auteurs making films for the Hollywood studio system, every person involved in the work of filmmaking could look to this film and point to the screen in the same way a Marvel fan spots Easter eggs. However, it would be such a lackluster artistic venture if all Trudeau wanted to do was to demonstrate the dynamics of making a film. Rather, it seems Truffaut is commenting on what film even really is and what its meant to serve as.

Of course, the actual film that is being made in the context of the film is nothing short of melodramatic dribble. Titled "Meet Pamela," the film-within-a-film centers on an adult woman who decides to leave her much younger and immature lover for his father. While this is the perfect concoction for a box-office rom-com or a daytime soap opera, it almost seems like the film they are attempting to make is not exactly the crowning achievement of cinema, per se.

However, what this film-within-a-film is able to demonstrate is how much our personal lives seep into the art we make, regardless if that's the writer/director themselves or the crew members just trying to get through another shooting day. The real emotional turmoil happening on the periphery of the camera may just be small vignettes, but they also directly impact both the subject matter of the story, along with its emotional complexity. There is even a scene in which Truffaut's director uses an exact conversation in confidence between himself and his lead actress as lines in an upcoming scene.

While watching "Day for Night," the exact making of the film becomes so much less interesting than the actual personal lives and dramas of its participants. This is, of course, ironic given that these asides aren't actual dramas, but concocted dramas that are meant to serve as the story of the film we're watching. The viewer believes themselves to be abandoning their attention to the meta-textual construction and engaging with the 'off the screen' drama, despite this drama being a construction in and of itself.

To me, this brings the thematic postulating of the New Wave movement to its conclusory illustration. What much of what the New Wave did thematically was deconstruct film. Throughout the 1960s, many films, including some not exclusively linked to the French movement, were modern, post-modern, and metatextual works that broke down what art is and implored the viewer to consider its construction, even comment on the construction of a work as the viewer watches.

This is exactly what "Day for Night" does, but with a greater sense of conclusory sentiments. Truffaut seems to be not only demonstrating a film's construction in and of itself through the actual act of working on a motion picture, but he uses that construction in direct parallel with that construction's relationship to human life itself. Regardless of whether what you are creating has any direct correlation to your life or the perspective you have of life, it is inextricably linked to emotion and perspective regardless. 

While I do think Godard himself could find aspects of this thematic relevance to be admirable, I think his perspective on the film still aligns itself to the notion that Truffaut lacks any sort of commentary of relevance. While I think that is on some parts true, I think Truffaut's attempts to explore the confines of the work that he is so inundated with from day to day allows for viewers to comb through the fabric of this thesis and find the strings of art so profoundly tethered to human life.

Because of this, I don't think that's why Godard was infuriated with the film. I think its a far more simple explanation. I think Godard didn't feel that Truffaut was political enough, in general, and that "Day for Night," and it's perceived 'celebration of filmmaking' had no moral center or political driving force. Once again, I think this is categorically untrue.

While "Day for Night" might not be as overtly political as the agitprop Godard was churning out at the time, it certainly practices its thematic interests in political commentary with the upmost subtleties. As we go through the various dynamics of character relationships, we ascertain certain political structures inherently. More specifically, thematic observations reveal the various social structures in human relationships, whether it be class dynamics, gender, sexual orientation, and even artists' relationship to the concept of 'the studio.' 

Our director in the film desperately wants to make "Citizen Kane," as made aware by his dreams. However, the resulting film, as previously discussed, is no "Citizen Kane." In fact, finding out the director's lost past of film appreciation, along with the studious books on directors that he keeps (even a book on Godard!), makes the result of his work that much more disconnected from his hopes and ambitions. By examining this, we can ascertain Truffaut's thoughts on the artist and their relationship to what is expected out of their work. A director having to align himself with something he is spiritual unmotivated by is nothing short of political and social commentary, wouldn't you say? This is what I mean by 'subtleties.'

If anything, the film reveals a level of wokery even Godard could smirk at if he wasn't so far up his own you-know-what. (I love Godard, but he is a bit of a self-important snob). In the landscape of social and political subtleties that Truffaut lays out, he also evens the playing field. We have a director feeling like a shill to a corporate expectation, sexually liberal women defying patriarchal expectations, non-heterosexual men coming across difficulty in the legal aspects of marrying his male companion, and an aging woman not being categorized simply as an 'aging' Norma Desmond character. Truffaut assembles his characters into an array of perceived categorization that each one seems to defy simply by exercising their multi-faceted individuality outside of any categorical perspective placed upon them.

While Godard's contempt (see what I did there?) for the film may be easily understood given the contextual perspective he was coming from at the time, I would argue he was more upset at the general division between him and his former friend. In fact, Godard's stringent adherence to politically-charged Eisenstein-esque films muddied up the waters of more subtle filmmaking that could have been possible for him. 

I don't think Truffaut is completely void of criticism for his passiveness towards the changing landscape of New Age post-60s capitalism, but I do think his continued works aren't devoid of philosophical, political, and spiritually relevant themes in the slightest. "Day for Night" is simply his exercise in hyper-fixating on the nature of his own profession and perhaps even a spiritual search for meaning in his own work. 

Even the title of the film, "Day for Night" in English and "La Nuit Americane" are both references to a Hollywood filmmaking practice in which filters and other enhancements are made to make a daytime shoot look like its taking place at night. It's a term that is contextually packed with notions on the faux nature of film and its lack of adherence to truth. The real revelation of the film is whether you still believe that artifice can still contain truth, and vice versa. The film may as well be called "truth for fiction."