Event
Film 101: Day for Night
1973 | Comedy, Drama, Romance | French with English subtitles | Dir. François Truffaut
Plot:
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.
Conversation:
A delightful look at the microsociety of a movie shoot on location, where offscreen psychology and scandal are filtered through an “on-screen” melodrama. The film ended the friendship between Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. We’ll discuss why Godard thought the film was a “lie,” how it fits into the history of the New Wave, and what it can tell us about moviemaking as something that takes place in a particular place.
About Film 101: Behind the Scenes:
One of cinema’s great subjects is filmmaking itself. That might seem narcissistic, but behind-the-scenes films are a great way to figure out how movies work. In these five films, we’ll examine some of the great “movie-movies” of all time. We’ll consider both how these films work and how these moviemakers think they work. We’ll pay special attention to the star-making process, and to the question of how film thinks about its media “rivals” like radio and television.
