Femme Fatale

Film: Out of the Past
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I like film noir. I like it as a genre and I like what filmmakers did with it before they realized it was a genre they were creating. Out of the Past is one that I knew nothing about until I found it on the library shelves today, and I was immediately attracted to it. I dig Robert Mitchum as an actor. He played a villain like no one else, and even in cases where he played the hero, as in this film, there’s something of the heavy about him. Mitchum always comes across to me not as a man playing a role, but as a man existing in a real world. He was always a compelling screen presence, and when he’s on camera, I want to watch him.

Out of the Past is in many ways a stereotypical noir, succeeding as a film not because it plays with the genre, but because it toes the noir line diligently, faithfully, and very, very well. Jeff Bailey (Mitchum) runs a gas station and dates Ann (Virginia Huston) on the side. Then one day, a man from his past shows up at the gas station. This is Joe Stephanos (Paul Valentine), who works for one of Bailey’s old clients, who wants to see him. Jeff takes Ann with him on a drive up to Lake Tahoe, and he tells her about his past.

It seems that once upon a time, Jeff Bailey was actually Jeff Markham and he was a private detective. A criminal named Whit (Kirk Douglas) hired him to find his girlfriend, Kathie (Jane Greer). Kathie shot him and ran off with $40,000; he doesn’t care about the money, but wants the girl back. Jeff follows her trail and catches her in Acapulco, and he immediately falls for her. They decide to give Whit the slip and head up to San Francisco. It’s here that they run into Jeff’s old partner, Fisher (Steve Brodie), who wants the money Kathie stole, although she claims she didn’t. To get out of it, Kathie kills Fisher and runs off.

From here, of course, it gets a lot more complicated because it’s a film noir. The essence of film noir is to get as complicated as possible before anything gets resolved, and that certainly happens here. We get double-crosses and more murders, and a lot of bad acting on the part of our femme fatale, Kathie. As it turns out, she’s a vicious little woman, the cold heart of any film noir, and hers is the coldest in recent memory.

But if Kathie is the cold heart of the film, it is Mitchum’s portrayal of Jeff that is it’s warm soul and center. He plays Jeff not as one of his typical villains, but as a man truly wanting only the life that he wants. But he’s also a man who gets in deeply over his own head and becomes unable to do anything except follow the path in front of him. He’s easy to root for, even when it becomes increasingly obvious that any good options for him are closing off and there’s no way out for him. Mitchum plays an interesting hero.

Out of the Past is as good a film noir as I’ve seen. It doesn’t have the same cultural weight as a film like Double Indemnity, but it’s no less entertaining and no less worth watching. The story is one that manages to be both believable and gripping. Even better, Kathie is so dangerous and so smooth about it that we don’t really understand the threat behind her until Jeff has realized it as well. We fall into the same trap he does, believing that a pair of soft eyes must similarly represent a soft heart.

I’m sold. This one moves near the top of the list when it comes to the genre for me, and I think it will be quite awhile before another film challenges it. Out of the Past hits on every cylinder, and is as gutsy and compelling today as it was when “noir” was a French word instead of a style of film.

Why to watch Out of the Past: Films noir don’t get much better.
Why not to watch: They also don’t end happily.

Munchausen

Film: Little Big Man
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

For whatever reason, there are some films that I just have trouble getting through. Little Big Man is one of those movies. I don’t have a reason for it. I’ve checked it out of the library probably four times and in fact had to renew it last week because I just couldn’t get myself to put it in the DVD player. So I finally did if for no other reason than that I could finally stop checking the damn thing out of the library.

We meet Jack Crabb (Dustin Hoffman) at the tender age of 121 as he is being interviewed about what the Native Americans were like. He immediately turns the conversation to the topic that he wants to talk about. Crabb claims that he is the only white survivor of the slaughter at Little Big Horn, and essentially decides to tell that story. Of course, he’s not going to simply jump into that story; he’s going to start at the beginning and take most of two hours to get us to that part of the story at the end.

We go back 111 years to when Jack was a mere 10 years old and moving west with his family. His family is attacked by the Pawnee and wiped out or dragged off except for him and his sister Caroline (Carole Androsky). They are rescued by the Cheyenne and Caroline escapes. Jack is raised by the tribe, specifically by Old Lodge Skins (Chief Dan George), who christens him Little Big Man. The two separate and find each other again for the rest of the film. They split the first time when he is 16 and is attacked by the U.S. Cavalry. He reveals his actual race and is thus “rescued” and turned over to a white couple to be raised. The relevant person here is Mrs. Pendrake (Faye Dunaway), who is obviously attracted to the young man. He leaves, mostly because he can’t reconcile her talking about piety while attempting to seduce him.

He turns to selling snake oil with Mr. Merriweather (Martin Balsam) and the two are eventually run out of town after being tarred and feathered. But one of those running them out of town is Caroline, and suddenly Jack is back with his sister, who teaches him to be a gunslinger. But he’s also scared of killing anyone, and when he meets Wild Bill Hickock (Jeff Corey), he gives it up and is deserted by his sister. He tries running a store with a new wife (Kelly Jean Peters) but goes bankrupt and then heads west. They are attacked by natives and his wife is taken, and once again, he finds himself back with Old Lodge Skins.

And so it goes. He eventually finds Olga, who is now married to his Cheyenne rival and is terribly henpecked. He finds a new Cheyenne wife, who also forces him to marry her three sisters. But then much of the tribe is wiped out by Custer’s 7th Cavalry (Custer is played by Richard Mulligan, and he continually crosses paths with Crabb/Little Big Man). Over and over again, he runs into the same people and then parts from them. Eventually, he gets his revenge on Custer by essentially forcing him into the battle at Little Big Horn, but none of it seems worth it to him at the end.

This is a strange film in a number of respects. There isn’t a particular plot here—we aren’t really going anywhere in particular except eventually to Little Big Horn. There is, I think, a message here, but this is more or less a character student of Crabb/Little Big Man. And while it is essentially the story of his life and a study of him as a person, there is a great deal of evidence that most of it is entirely made up and is nothing more than an increasingly ridiculous fable created by Crabb for a gullible audience. A great deal of this is because of the coincidences that would make Dickens blush. After a number of years, Crabb runs into Wild Bill Hickock again, and is there when Hickock dies. His dying wish is for Crabb to pay off a prostitute…who just happens to be Mrs. Pendrake. It really gets sort of silly.

And so, while the story is important in the sense that it’s what we’re watching, the film lives and dies on the performances. Dustin Hoffman is good. He’s not exceptional, but he’s good here. Chief Dan George, though, steals the film from everyone else. Most of the white characters are caricatures, and act as caricatures, and I think that’s intentional. We’re supposed to have our loyalties and sympathies with the natives here.

It also has a real issue with tone. A number of sequences in the film are very funny, but the film turns very dark in the last half hour. It’s difficult to mentally switch gears from a very entertaining sequence in which Little Big Man is forced to satisfy his three sisters-in-law sexually followed by a massacre. It’s difficult to know where to stand on what is going on because it moves from humor to tragedy suddenly and without warning. I realize that’s realistic, but I’m watching a film—I don’t specifically want realism.

Ultimately, it was sort of a “meh.” I don’t see a reason to watch it again.

Why to watch Little Big Man: The story is frequently a lot of fun.
Why not to watch: It’s also frequently depressing.

A Different Sort of Drug

Film: The Hurt Locker
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

About a year ago, one of my students asked me if I had seen The Hurt Locker yet. I hadn’t at the time and he told me that I shouldn’t bother. According to him, the film did not accurately depict his experiences in Iraq. Then again, one of my current students actually was a bomb disposal expert in Iraq, and he says the film is the real deal. Since I’ve never been in the military or been anywhere close to an active war zone, I can’t really speak to the realism of the film; I can only discuss it as a movie.

What we have is less a plot than a series of intense events that lead us to a particular place. In a sense, the film is a character study of one man in particular, but also of a personality type—a look at a genotype of soldier.

We start with a bomb disposal squad consisting of three men. Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) has the important job of communicating with the man on the site of actually disposing of IED (improvised explosive devices) and providing cover. Sanborn is by-the-book and based on his line of work, doesn’t like mavericks or surprises. Also providing cover is Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), a nervous guy who frequently second- and third-guesses everything he does. These two are lead by Staff Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce) who has the same sort of attitude in life as Sanborn. In the first bomb disposal we witness, Thompson is killed by a phone-detonated bomb, a death that Eldridge blames himself for, since he was in a position to shoot the bomber.

Enter Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) who is everything that Sanborn hates. He is wild and reckless, taking chances simply to take them and unwilling to leave a zone with a known bomb in it despite the risks to himself and his team. He clashes with his team, particularly Sanborn, but he’s also very good at defusing and detonating enemy ordnance. This fact alone is what keeps him alive when Sanborn has the chance to literally frag James at one point.

What we see are snapshots of the last month of the team’s tour in Iraq. We see them go out on several bomb disposal missions, each one more dangerous and touchy than the last. It soon becomes evident that James isn’t specifically reckless, but more or less addicted to the adrenaline of life in Iraq. He collects pieces from the bombs he dismantles, for instance, because he enjoys looking at and holding things that could have killed him and failed. He continues to take risks that put him in danger, and more seriously, put the lives of everyone around him in danger, a fact that Sanborn especially takes issue with. Eldridge worries, but is more concerned with his own inability to pull the trigger when it needs to be pulled.

One of the many times things come to a head is when the team goes out on a mission with Colonel John Cambridge (Christian Camargo) in two. Cambridge frequently speaks with Eldridge to help him over his problems and guilt, and when Cabridge is killed by an IED, Eldridge feels additional guilt. Eldridge is later wounded when James leads the team on a mission and exceeds their authority.

The entire point of the film, everything that we as the audience are to get from the film, can be summed up in the opening moments before the film really starts. The film begins with a quote from New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges: “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” The quote fades, but leaves the last four words. War, then, is the drug of choice for Sergeant First Class James.

And really, what we see is his addiction. We see him in the moment, defusing bombs and in the moments just after, and it is very much like he has injected himself with the best thing in the world. Then, later, after the drug wears off, there’s nothing left for him until the next mission.

What impresses me the most about this film is the near constant level of tension. We spend all but a spare couple of minutes near the end in Iraq, and most of that we spend in the field on missions with the team. There is very little time spent anywhere safe, and in many respects we experience the same level of adrenaline that James finds himself addicted to. It’s incredibly effective and intense, never really giving us a let up until those moments at the end following yet another close call and the end of the rotation for James and Sanborn.

I have to say I’ve always liked Kathryn Bigelow as a filmmaker. I love Near Dark and Strange Days, and I certainly know more than a few people with a soft spot for Point Break. I can even see elements of those films in this one. But The Hurt Locker is Bigelow’s move into the real big time, her entry into not just films that are exciting and fun, but films that are truly meaningful and artistic, films that have something to say more than action and stunts. It doesn’t surprise me that this film is as lauded as it is.

Again, I’ve never been in the military or near a combat zone, so I don’t know what it’s really like. I can’t speak to the realism. But I can believe this as a story and I can believe this as a real possibility of soldiers in combat.

Why to watch The Hurt Locker: It actually matches the tension of the film La Salaire de la Peur.
Why not to watch: Depending on which veteran you ask, your realism may vary.

I'll Do What I Want

Film: Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (My Life to Live)
Format: Streaming video from HuluPlus on rockin’ flatscreen.

My wife Sue got a chunk o’ cash for her birthday recently and she bought herself a Roku box. It’s pretty sweet. It does the same NetFlix thing that the Wii does, and also allows us to watch HuluPlus and a few other free television and movie channels on the flatscreen just like normal people. So today I tested it out, and I have to say that HuluPlus on television trumps HuluPlus on the laptop.

Anyway, Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (My Life to Live) reacquaints me with Jean-Luc Godard. I think it’s safe to say that two years ago, I had never watched a Godard film, and now I have more than a half-dozen under my belt. The more I watch Godard’s films, the more I appreciate what he was trying to do with film in general. This film is another experiment of his, and it’s an experiment that, in the main, works. It is just as the French title suggests, a compilation of twelve short films about the same characters that show snapshots of a woman’s life. In those snapshots, we get her whole story.

Nana (Anna Karina) is unhappily married and decides to leave her husband and small child so that she can pursue an acting career. However, money isn’t easy to come by and her job at a music store doesn’t pay very much. So she makes a career move into prostitution and deals with her various clients and her pimp, Raoul (Sady Rebbot). Throughout, Nana attempts to determine if she is actually happy and actually living rather than simply continuing to exist. That’s really all there is to it.

Godard is a smart filmmaker, and was smart when he made this film. Vivre sa Vie is early in his career (only his third full-length feature), but it shows the deft hand of someone much more seasoned behind the camera. In one sequence, for instance, we hear Nana asking Raoul about what it really means to be a prostitute—how much can she make, how often will she be working, does she get days off, can she refuse clients—while we see her with a series of men. It’s a montage that really works; we get the sense of her being with a huge number of men, but we see none of the sex. Instead, we see dressing and undressing, sheets being folded down, money exchanging hands. It becomes a sort of rhythm.

Karina is the heart and soul of the film, and it is she who must carry it. She is on screen for virtually the entirety of the film, and while we never get her thoughts or ideas unless she speaks them, we are the closest to her throughout the story. She has the perfect look for the film to inspire the sort of sympathy that Godard wants. She is unquestionably beautiful, possessed of a near-perfect head of bobbed hair and deep, soulful eyes. More importantly, she is able to project a sort of constant innocence despite her career change. In one scene, a client asks for a second girl and then rejects Nana, and her reaction to this spurning is one of real emotion.

The film is not perfect, though. One particular fault is essentially built into the narrative. Since we see only bits and pieces of her life over the course of 80 or so minutes, changes occur that we do not witness. Her life and attitudes change and we are forced to pick these up on the fly as the scene changes from one moment to the next. A young man playing pool in one scene, for instance, has suddenly become a love interest for Nana later. For us, the time between these events is measured in minutes. For them, it could well be weeks or months, and we’re given no clues to determine the actual truth.

Second, the ending is abrupt and surprising, and not specifically in a good way. The ending isn’t inappropriate in any way, but it comes completely out of nowhere and gives us as the audience almost no time to react to it before the screen turns black. Again, I’m certain this was intentional on the part of Godard, but it does make the viewing experience unsatisfying at the end, at least for me.

The title is worth some exploration as well. On the surface, it would appear that Godard is allowing Nana the ability to chose the life she wants, and if that happens to be prostitution because the money is better, so be it. However, throughout the film, Nana’s choices seem almost predetermined. As soon as she sets off on her own path, her life is decided, and her life to live is lived at the behest of others and from choices beyond her control.

Vivre sa Vie is worth watching, though, because like many of Godard’s early films, it expanded the world of cinematic language. His experiments, while not always 100% successful, worked often enough to make anything he touched at least worthy of consideration. That’s true of this film, too.

Why to watch Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux: It’s supremely fascinating.
Why not to watch: The end.

Narcissism

Film: Chicago
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I will freely admit that I went into Chicago prepared to hate it. It seemed to me to be a distillation of everything I dislike in a movie sort of all at once. I already have problems with musicals, and Chicago features Renee Zellwegger (aka LemonFace), an actress I tend to dislike on sight. In fact, I blame her for duckface pictures. And yes, “hate” is a strong word, but as this blog sometimes shows, I’ve never been afraid of a strong opinion.

As it turns out, I didn’t hate Chicago, but I also didn’t like it very much. Before I get to the specific reasons why, let’s talk story.

Roxie Hart (Renee Zellwegger) is married to Amos (John C. Reilly), a working class schlub. While he works as a mechanic, she’s off making the beast with two backs with furniture salesman Fred Casely (Dominic West). Part of that is, for her, because it’s more fun than waiting around for her sadsack husband and part of that is because Fred claims to have connections in Vaudeville. One night, they see Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta Jones) perform just before Velma is arrested for killing her husband and sister since she caught the pair also making the beast with two backs. Not too long after this, Fred dumps Roxie and she retaliates by shooting him. Amos takes the rap until he discovers that she was cheating, and he sends her off to the big house.

In prison, Roxie meets Velma, and the two dislike each other immediately. She also encounters Mama Morton (Queen Latifah), the prison matron who can get anything for a price. She introduces Roxie to Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a high-priced criminal lawyer who has never lost a case for a female client. He accepts Roxie’s case, putting Velma on the backburner, causing more bad blood between the pair.

Eventually, Roxie’s case goes to trial (she keeps her name in the papers by faking a pregnancy), Velma cuts a deal to get Roxie convicted, Amos gets screwed out of everything, Billy makes money, and the film ends with Velma and Roxie performing on stage as a duo, out and proud of having committed their crimes. After all, that’s Chicago.

So let’s talk good and bad here. I’ve mentioned above that I dislike Renee Zellwegger intensely, and that’s something difficult to get beyond. She’s not terrible here, but I still don’t like her very much. She’s a score in the negative column. In the positive column, though, is Queen Latifah. I don’t care how many accolades she gets as an actress, the woman is underrated. Her big number is one of the best ones in the film both because she’s got the pipes to pull it off and because she has the sex appeal to really work it. Also on the positive side is the fact that Rob Marshall trusted his cast to sing for themselves. It works in the case of John C. Reilly’s rendition of “Mr. Cellophane.” It doesn’t work so much when it comes to Richard Gere. He tries, but he’s not quite there. (I’m aware that many people may say the same thing of John C. Reilly, but it worked for me.)

Also to the positive here is the way the film is staged. We get a blend of numbers that function both to drive the story and give us insight into the characters, but also work as fantasy, as a behind-the-eyeballs look at what characters are thinking. When Amos confesses, for instance, we see Roxie singing a number about how much she loves her husband and how great he is to her. This shifts immediately when he discovers the truth. The singing here is essentially in her head—her costuming changes to that of a singer on stage, and the performance is on stage as well, and when the number ends, she’s back in the scene in the apartment in the clothes she had been wearing. The musical number is essentially what’s going on in her head rather than what’s going on in reality. It’s a neat mixture of diegetic and non-diegetic information—what’s real for us as the audience is not real for the characters on screen. This happens multiple times, to best effect with Mama Morton’s sexually-charged prison song, and again when the other female prisoners confess their crimes.

This, more than anything, is the biggest positive for this film. The staging of the film is incredibly inventive and beautiful to watch. “We Both Reached for the Gun,” for instance, is a film highpoint, with Roxie sitting on Billy’s lap as a ventriloquist dummy and the reporters shown on puppet strings pulled by Billy to get the press he wants. It’s the sort of thing that makes the movie version of any stage production viable—the way this is depicted in the film would be impossible on stage, but there is very much a sense of the stage here—it’s a near perfect mix of live theater and technical film wizardry.

If this is the high point, though, the low point is the characters themselves. With the single exception of Amos Hart, these characters are terrible people. Roxie Hart is a slut, offering sex to virtually anyone and anything that can get her ahead. She’s selfish, conceited, and willing to step on anyone and anything to get ahead. It’s a statement that could be made of about 90% of the characters in the film, in fact. These people—Roxie Hart, Velma Kelly, Billy Flynn—are sociopaths. To get Roxie off, Billy Flynn manipulates evidence, panders to the jury, has his client commit perjury, and destroys the career of the district attorney. Why would I root for this guy? Why would anyone want me to be happy when Roxie gets everything she wants? She’s a terrible human being.

And ultimately, that kills my opinion of the film. The characters are narcissists and sociopaths, guilty of awful acts and proud of having done them. Chicago is visually dazzling (often with skimpy, sexy costumes), but morally reprehensible. I can’t get past that.

Why to watch Chicago: More flesh per square inch than you’d expect.
Why not to watch: Bad behavior is not just rewarded, but lauded.

What Does Fried Dino Taste Like?

Film: Jurassic Park
Format: DVD from personal collection on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’d love to say that in 1993 when Jurassic Park came out I was a kid. Sadly, that’s not true. In 1993, I celebrated my second wedding anniversary. I wasn’t a kid. That didn’t make too much of a difference, though—I still really wanted to see giant, realistic dinosaurs on a giant screen. And so I went. You better believe I went and saw Jurassic Park during its initial run in theaters. I won’t kid you, here. Seeing giant friggin’ dinosaurs doing what they have always done in movies but looking like I imagined they’d really look was awfully damn cool.

I’m going to work on the assumption that you’ve seen this movie but may not have seen it lately. So here’s the quick and dirty. A rich guy named John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has a cool idea. He sends out teams to find ancient, prehistoric mosquitoes trapped in fossilized amber. From them, the blood of their last meal is extracted, and since we are talking about prehistoric insects, we’re talking about dinosaurs. The DNA is then extracted from the blood, and using frog DNA to cover any gaps, real, living dinosaurs are created, with the goal being a huge zoo/amusement park called, well, Jurassic Park.

So, Hammond brings in some experts from a dig he is financing, specifically paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotonist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) as well as chaos-loving mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). He also brings his grandchildren Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex (Ariana Richards). And, of course, all hell breaks loose. What fun would it be if it didn’t?

The hell breaking loose comes from the actions of park systems designer and programmer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), who has some unidentified money problems. He is being offered a significant amount of money to bring out some dinosaur embryos to a rival company. When he attempts this, he shuts down most of the safety systems in the park. This means that the dinosaurs—particularly the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the velociraptors are free to move about and threaten the people. And, while running from the dinos, the scientists discover that despite all of the precautions, the dinosaurs have started mating.

The film, as is typical for Spielberg, sports a fantastic cast of players. In addition to those mentioned above, we get Samuel L. Jackson pre-BAMF as one of the main security experts in the park and Bob Peck as Muldoon, the big game hunter who works in the park to keep the dinosaurs in line. I had forgotten (or more likely never knew) that B.D. Wong shows up here for a cup of coffee as a scientist, too.

Despite the cast, Jurassic Park is essentially a big-budget B-movie. Man makes dinosaurs, dinosaurs escape, man runs from dinosaurs. The sell here isn’t the inspiring or terrific plot, but the dinosaurs themselves, looking more realistic than anyone had ever seen before on the big screen. Now, almost 20 years later (and yes, that’s hard for me to believe), they still look great. This is a film to watch on a large screen, HD if you can get it, and really experience the dinosaurs the way they were intended. The acting is good overall, but this is a film that sells itself from start to finish on the special effects and the overall look.

Jurassic Park does suffer from one of Spielberg’s frequent tropes. Our two paleoscientists, particularly Dr. Grant, has a hypothesis about dinosaurs. It’s his belief (one that actually is gaining credence these days) that dinosaurs didn’t so much evolve into reptiles, but into birds. Because Dr. Grant is a good guy in this film and is trying to save the two kids lost in the park, his hypothesis proves correct. This became a much larger problem in the sequel to this film, but it still exists here. People who we want to root for are always right in anything they think and try. They don’t make mistakes or have incorrect hypotheses.

But it doesn’t really matter. Jurassic Park is fun and scary. This is the movie that introduced those of us who aren’t paleontologists to the terror that are velociraptors. It’s also the film that made dinosaurs cool for the masses again. And they are cool.

Jurassic Park, as I’ve said, is all about the special effects. It helps that it really seems like the science would work, too. I have no idea if it is possible to create dinosaurs in the way described here, but for the layman like me, it sounds official and like it would work. I respect the hell out of it for that—it works on science and not magic, even if the science isn’t totally realistic.

So is it good? Yeah, it is. It’s fun and scary and exciting, and it’s not really meant to be anything more than that. Watch it on the biggest screen you have available, and if it’s been awhile since you’ve seen it, remember how much damn fun this movie really is.

Why to watch Jurassic Park: Giant realistic dinosaurs.
Why not to watch: It follows the Spielberg morality rule, although the sequel is far worse.

What's Behind "Behind the Scenes?"

Film: La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

On a long enough timeline, every director will do a film about films and filming. Altman did with The Player, Fellini did with 8 ½, and recently Scorsese did with Hugo. Francois Truffaut did with La Nuit Americaine (Day for Night) in the early ‘70s, and in many ways his film is the quintessential meta film about filming. We have a crew making a movie about a woman who falls in love with her father-in-law. We see a couple of the important parts of the film as it continues, but mostly, we see the cast and the crew and experience the problems and frustrations of the filming process rather than the joy. Were some of the events not so tragic, these moments would be wonderfully comic. Instead, they are comedic with a large dose of tragedy in places.

Francois Truffaut directs the film and is also a major player in the film as Ferrand, the director of the movie within the movie. Much of the time on and off the set is spent with him as he attempts to navigate the process of completing the project. We see him deal with problems at virtually every level, from set design to casting decisions to the surprise pregnancy of a minor cast member, love-stricken stars, and a fragile female lead. It is completely unromantic and completely believable. His job appears to be little more than putting out fires constantly, swapping schedules, rewriting script pages, and wondering how he can complete the film in the time available.

His cast of players are just as believable as he is. His young male lead, Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Leaud), is smitten with the script girl Lilianne (Dani) and proposes to her, but she can’t remain true to him, running off with the stunt man instead. This leads Alphonse to a one-night stand with his on-camera wife Julie (Jacqueline Bisset), who is emotionally fragile and recently married to her doctor. The other female lead, Severine (Valentina Cortese) has faded and is fading rapidly, unable to remember a line. Instead, she wishes simply to say numbers so it looks as if she is speaking and then record in post. During all of this, Ferrand deals with rewrites on the script, animals that won’t do the job they are supposed to on camera, and a crushing schedule that forces changes in how the film is shot. Tragically, something happens to his second male lead (Jean-Pierre Aumont) that threatens the entire production.

In a large way, it’s difficult to see exactly why Truffaut continued to make films if this one was a capsule of his typical experience. Nothing in the production within the film goes the way he wants or needs it to, and every shot that we see is fraught with problems and endless retakes. Many of these retakes we sit through, seeing the same actors walk the same path and say the same lines. This happens repeatedly throughout La Nuit Americaine as if to emphasize that the most common emotion on a movie set is not something emoted by the actors but pure boredom. For Ferrand, though, the emotion is frustration, and it is near constant.

The thing about Truffaut is that I find him immediately and consistently likeable. It may simply be my own bias coming through based on his role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but I’ve always liked him on camera. He seems very genuine to me, as if he is not acting, but simply existing as his real self while a camera happens to be there. He’s just as likeable here and for exactly the same reason, although in this case, it’s likely he wasn’t acting so much as just relying on experiences he’d had in the past.

And yet, with all of the problems experienced on and off the set, there is a real sense of joy in this film. Despite everything, there is pleasure in the work of creating a film for Truffaut, and this comes through completely in his character of Ferrand. There is a particular feeling of pleasure in the struggle of getting through one more scene or jumping over one more hurdle and moving on to the next day. Ferrand expresses doubts in his film in one scene in the middle—his writing partner is working on a better project in Japan—but is continuing because of the irrepressible need to keep creating and to keep his flawed vision alive.

La Nuit Americaine does kill the magic a little. When we see the problems it takes to get a particular shot, it’s impossible not to wonder how much trouble Truffaut had in real life getting the same shots for the real film. I assume that in time, that opinion will fade, but I know that it’s a question I will have for the next half dozen movies I watch at least. How much am I not seeing? How much work and detail went into a scene? How many takes? I’ll never know, of course, but it’s something that I’m now made acutely aware is a question that can be asked.

Truffaut was a special filmmaker, and La Nuit Americaine is a special film. For anyone interested in film at all, particularly in what happens just off camera or when the camera stops rolling, this is the number one film to watch.

Why to watch La Nuit Americaine: One of the better odes to the film process ever made.
Why not to watch: It kills the magic to see the same scene over and over again.