Ill-Informed Gadfly

From François Truffaut, the most accessible of the French New Wave directors, comes a jaunty and bemused look at the moviemaking process. It’s like a livelier, less pretentious version of “8 1/2″ — Truffaut even throws in a few black-and-white dream sequences. “Day for Night” mines humor from the mediocrity of the film within the film, “Meet Pamela,” a domestic potboiler about an English bride who runs off with her French husband’s father. It’s liberating for Truffaut that there’s nothing special about the movie that he, playing a thinly veiled version of himself, is supposedly making; he’s free to explore the personal and professional lives of the people who make it. And while he shoots “Meet Pamela” with pedestrian, static setups, the world behind the scenes comes to life with grand visual panache, celebrating the dedication and camaraderie of the actors and crew. Yet there’s no particular sense of urgency in watching people make a middling movie, and that’s why “Day for Night” is a minor work for a director who made at least one seminal, ahead-of-its-time bombshell (”The 400 Blows”) and one unqualified masterpiece (”Jules and Jim”). It’s mildly surprising that “Day for Night,” released in 1973, was so revered in its day — it won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film as well as numerous critics’ awards. Yet it has honesty and texture to spare as it shows the roiling emotions of talented, creative people in the stressful but exhilarating environment of a movie set. Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud (star of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series), Nathalie Baye, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont and Truffaut himself are effortlessly authentic. Truffaut creates a down-to-earth director who’s constantly putting out fires and dealing with minor frustrations, like a kitten that won’t hit its mark (”Get me a cat who can act!”) or the volcanic unpredictability of his actors. Bisset is warm and vulnerable as a movie star with a troubled past who’s married to a Svengali-like psychiatrist; Aumont exudes calm and generosity as a veteran actor comfortable in his own skin; and Cortese shows the psychic turmoil of an actor passing uncomfortably into late middle age, who uses booze to dull — and fuel — her insecurities. The DVD has some fun and illuminating special features, including a few brief archival interviews with Truffaut himself, who says “Day for Night” was propelled by his love of cinema. He’s not lying.