Day for Night
June 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Warner Home Video isn’t generally known as a safe haven for foreign films, yet it has just created its own little mini film festival of note by releasing two remastered foreign-language Oscar-winning movies on DVD.

The most important movie, Day for Night (La nuit américaine), won the golden statuette in 1973, along with numerous additional awards. It is Francois Truffaut’s delightful and very personal movie about making movies. It was amazing 30 years ago and no less eye opening and amusing today.

Truffaut’s plot involves the making of a pulp love story called Meet Pamela, in which a young man brings his new wife home to meet Mom and Dad, only to have his father start a torrid affair with her. The script of Day for Night studies the filmmaking process and lovingly examines the relationships of the cast and crew while everyone is on location.

Jacqueline Bisset, radiant in her every scene, plays an English actress making her first appearance in a foreign film. Jean-Pierre Aumont holds forth as a steady and respected actor who we discover is gay and has a handsome younger lover who joins him during the filming. Valentina Cortese received several awards for her portrayal of a vibrant but booze-addicted Italian actress, who is given the movie’s most memorable serio-comic scene as she tries to remember which door on the set to open. Jean-Pierre Léaud, who will always be remembered as Truffaut’s young hero in the series of Antoine Doniel movies, plays a temperamental young actor who almost jeopardizes the success of the production with his selfish whims. And there’s Truffaut, dynamic in his understated, understanding way, playing (what else?) a movie director. What a task this must have been: to direct himself as a man directing others how to act!

The characters are so finely drawn that every eccentric one of them seems real and lovable, and since Truffaut correctly guessed we’d be sorry to see them go when the film ends, they are encored as names are placed beside their images in the final credit roll.

The movie is about actors, directors, and their love of movies, but it is also about the craft of movie making, and it reveals many film secrets. The film’s title, for instance, refers to making a daytime shot pass for night by using special filters. We learn other secrets, but I will not divulge them here to spoil your pleasure, in case you have not seen this must-see movie.

The other film in Warner’s petite French film festival is A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme, ***), the first movie to bring notice (in 1966) to young director Claude Lelouch. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film that year, as well as the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prize. It’s a haunting and life-affirming love story as two people, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée, meet and fall in love by having something initially in common: children attending the same school. Propelled by gracious performances and the zippy, unforgettable music of Francis Lai, this movie is longer on style than substance, but oh, what style! Using hand-held cameras and a lot of imagination, Lelouch created many haunting images that stick with one long after the movie is over.

Both movies received excellent transfers to DVD. Day for Night has vibrant colors, perfect focus, and marvelous texture. It looks brand new. A Man and a Woman is clean and clear, but the film shows damage at several points -- not enough to make for a bad viewing experience, but enough to keep it out of the same league as the Truffaut. Both movies are presented in anamorphic video, and the sound for each is very appealing mono. The dialogue is clear and the music sounds good. Each film, by the way, is in French, with easy-to-read subtitles.

The Truffaut has a boatload of extras. There are contemporary 2002 interviews on making the movie, as well as 1973 interviews with the director. All the featurettes work to give one a much greater appreciation of the film. There are only two extras for A Man and a Woman. One is an enjoyable if spare interview with Lelouch, but the other is a rare treasure: a black-and-white home-movie chronicle of the original filming. When you see how some of the shots were achieved, you will be amazed at how modest means can create exquisite ends.

Both of these movies have proven real treats for true movie lovers over the years. Now, in these splendid new DVD transfers, they can kindle fond memories while enchanting new generations.

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