Rating: PG
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Release Date: 03/18/2003
SubTitles: French/English/Espanol
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 116 Minutes
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
Known to English-speaking audiences as
Day for Night,
La nuit américaine was director
François Truffaut's loving and humorous tribute to the communal insanity of making a movie. The film details the making of a family drama called "Meet Pamela" about the tragedy that follows when a young French man introduces his parents to his new British wife.
Truffaut gently satirizes his own films with "Meet Pamela"'s overwrought storyline, but the real focus is on the chaos behind the scenes. One of the central actresses is continually drunk due to family problems, while the other is prone to emotional instability, and the male lead (
Truffaut regular
Jean-Pierre Leaud) starts to act erratically when his intermittent romance with the fickle script girl begins to fail. In addition to all this personal drama, the film is besieged by technical problems, from difficult tracking shots to stubborn animal actors. The inspiration for future satires of movie-making from
Living in Oblivion to
Irma Vep,
La nuit américaine was considered slight by some critics in comparison to earlier
Truffaut masterworks, but it went on to win the 1973 Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
