Day for Night

So, what do you do when the leading lady can only be consoled by tub butter? If you're working on a tight shooting schedule with temperamental actors (including an obstinate kitten), unscheduled matters of life and death (an actor dies, an actress becomes pregnant), and a sour Madame Defarge-like stage wife who sits on the sidelines of the set knitting and scowling…well, you bring the tub butter, since that's the least of your worries. Francois Truffaut's 1973 Day for Night is a film lover's movie, a chronicling of the making of a fictitious feature film called Meet Pamela, "directed" by Ferrand (played by Truffaut), and starring--their real names here--Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud (Truffaut's cinematic alter ego), Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Valentina Cortese (with "film crew" members including Nathalie Baye--last seen as Leonardo DiCaprio's mom in Catch Me If You Can). While it's lost a little of its freshness today (unfortunately, we now have a whole sub-genre of self-reflective films about making films), Day for Night's sense of innocence and playfulness in its episodic depictions of the trials and tribulations of a movie "family" remains intact thirty years later. Kudos to Warner for the beautiful looking digital transfer (colors are as vibrant as the characters themselves, and the image is sharp), and the solid extras, including four new featurettes (with Bissett, scholar Annette Insdorf, an appreciation with actor Bob Balaban and journalist Todd McCarthy, and a cast and crew retrospective with Nathalie Baye, editor Yann Dedet, and others) and archival footage of Truffaut. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)[Blu-ray/DVD Review—Aug. 11, 2015—Criterion, 116 min., not rated, DVD: 2 discs, $29.95; Blu-ray: $39.95—Making its latest appearance on DVD and debut on Blu-ray, 1973's Day for Night features a great transfer and an uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray release. Extras include a new interview with film scholar Dudley Andrew (21 min.), “An Appreciation” 2004 featurette (17 min.), three archival TV segments (15 min.), interviews with director François Truffaut (10 min.), cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn (13 min.), editor Yann Dedet (4 min.), assistant editor Martine Barraqué (13 min.), and costars Nathalie Baye (12 min.), Jacqueline Bisset (9 min.), Jean-Pierre Aumont (7 min.), Bernard Menez (4 min.), and Dani (4 min.), a “Dreams of Cinema” video essay (12 min.), the archival behind-the-scenes featurette “Truffaut: A View from the Inside” (7 min.), a trailer, and an essay by critic David Cairns. Bottom line: a Truffaut classic makes a welcome debut on Blu-ray.]