La Nuit américaine (1973) - film review

A film company is shooting the film Je vous présente Pamela in the south of France.  The tensions and problems that arise during the filming greatly surpass the drama of the film being made.  The leading lady, Julie, a Hollywood sensation, is recovering from a nervous breakdown, whilst her co-partner, Alphonse, is a temperamental young romantic suffering from violent mood swings.  Alexandre, a former matinee idol and apparently the most reliable actor, flits back and forth between the set and the airport hoping to meet up with his secret male lover, whilst his co-star, Séverine, a former lover of Alexandre, has difficulty remembering her lines and hits the bottle between emotional outbursts.  Ferrand, the director, is caught in this crossfire of tantrum and petty crises, struggling to keep things on course.  But things only seem to go from bad to worse...

Probably the most entertaining film ever made about film making, La nuit amércaine was a triumph for film director François Truffaut.  Not only is this a great film, but it was immediately recognised as such when it was released in 1973.  The film was  especially popular in the United States, and it won Truffaut an Oscar for the best foreign film category in that year.

Truffaut places both professional actors and his usual film crew, as well as himself, in front of the camera, in this accurate and amusing depiction of the frenetic process of making a film.  The film’s main strength is the superlative depth of characterisation, with even comparatively minor characters such as the stressed out props man Bertrand and the over-protective wife Madame Lajoie, leaving their mark on the film.

However, it is the film’s central characters that give the film its focus and energy.  Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud are constantly delightful, witb Bisset struggling to keep up with her French whilst Léaud lurches from one childish whim to another – aspects of real-life which Truffaut craftily capitalises on in this film to give it verisimilitude.

Although he plays a major character in the film, Truffaut is strangely absent from the proceedings.  We capture a glimpse of his childhood when he used to secretly steal film photographs from cinemas in the middle of the night.  Apart from that, Truffaut’s performance is strangely subdued.  If this were a film recounting the making of one of his films, he would most probably be seen as the central character caught up in a maelstrom of emotional craving for his leading actress (a fate which befell Jeanne Moreau, Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani, and many others).  That would have been a much more interesting and engaging film, and probably one that fits better Truffaut’s style of film.  However, that would probably have detracted from the process of film making, which was almost certainly Truffaut’s motivation for making La nuit américaine.

Although not as personal and as emotionally charged as some of Truffaut’s other films, this is nonetheless a fine piece of cinema which is worthy of the great film director.

© James Travers 2000

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