Shooting Day for Night

Day for Night, in common movie parlance, is the process of shooting film during daylight hours but using filters to convince the audience that the scene takes place after nightfall.  Day for Night is also the English-language title of a 1973 film that was a labor of love for French cinéaste François Truffaut, who directed, co-wrote, and played a central role as, bien sûr!, a director. (The film’s original title is the term that is the French equivalent of “day for night”:  La Nuit américaine. How apt that this wholly artificial but often cost-effective process is linked to American savvy.)  

 In this film about the making of a romantic melodrama called Je vous présente Paméla (or Meet Pamela), Truffaut takes a loving look at the very essence of cinema. Films may seem to reflect life as it is lived, but in fact they are wholly dependent upon artifice. So it follows that those who make movies accept—and thrive on—unreality.  Like the fact that the pretty girl in the speeding car is—temporarily—a stuntman wearing a dress and a wig.  That’s why movie sets are (believe me, I know!) little worlds unto themselves, with emotions running wild. Offscreen romantic partnerships can change from day to day, and few in the cast and crew are on their best behavior.

 Day for Night begins with what seems like an everyday street scene somewhere in the south of France. Passersby stroll along a leafy avenue, a deliveryman makes his rounds, a woman walks her dog.  Then, cut! It all has to be done again . . .  and again. As the director and his loyal assistant try to keep things under control, the film’s stars are creating their own brand of havoc. Jean-Pierre Aumont, as the veteran actor Alexandre, keeps making mysterious trips to the local airport, little knowing that one of these jaunts will have disastrous consequences.  Fellini veteran Valentina Cortese plays Séverine, an ageing actress so worried about her fading looks and diminishing skills that she imbibes heavily, leading to an hilarious scene in which she can’t quite manage to say her lines and open the proper door. (She was ultimately Oscar-nominated for this role, and singled out by winner Ingrid Bergman as the more deserving nominee.)  

 While cast and crew await the arrival from America of leading lady Julie (Jacqueline Bisset), her film spouse Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is struggling with an on-again off-again romance with the novice script girl. (Léaud’s presence will spark a frisson of recognition from film buffs who well remember him as the fourteen-year-old Antoine Doinel at the center of Truffaut’s cinematic breakthrough, 1959’s The Four Hundred Blows.) When the oh-so-passionate Alphonse discovers his inamorata has decamped with the hunky stuntman, his agony knows no bounds. He’s determined to quit the production on the spot; in placating him, Julie inevitably puts her own new marriage at risk.

 My favorite among the minor characters may be Joëlle, the assistant director. She’s always at the director’s right hand, making smart suggestions when asked, generally taking care of business.  This doesn’t stop her, though, when out in the countryside cleaning up someone else’s mess, from stripping off her clothes and announcing to a surprised crew member that she’d enjoy a quickie.  Later, after the script girl’s sudden departure, Joëlle makes her own feelings clear. She can’t imagine leaving a production to pursue a romance. But would she quit a romance for the sake of a production? Bien sûr!  As Irving Berlin once put it, “There’s no people like show people . . . .”

Helen Scott: Chère Amie de Truffaut

Though my kinfolk are good people, one and all, I can’t think of any who changed the course of history or contributed to any major artistic achievement. But my journalist-colleague Lisa Reswick has legitimate bragging rights about an aunt who helped nurture the French film industry of the Sixties. And it’s partly thanks to that aunt, Helen Scott, that the great Bonnie and Clyde got made.

Let’s start at the beginning. Helen Scott, though New York-born in 1915, was raised in Paris, where her father served as a correspondent for the Associated Press. To the end of her days, it was her flawless knowledge of the French language, along with her feisty personality, that made all the difference. Her 1987 obit in the New York Times fills in details of her early professional life as a political journalist: “During World War II, Mrs. Scott broadcast for the Free French from Brazzaville, the Congo. After the war, she served as press attaché for Chief Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials of German war criminals. Later, she became a senior editor at the United Nations.” Throughout these experiences she displayed the deep sympathy for the underdog that had once led her (back in the economically dismal 1930s) to work as a Communist organizer.

In the McCarthy era, her past political leanings threatened her livelihood. But a New York-based job at the French Film Office  proved her salvation. Through her position she became involved with many of the leading lights of the French New Wave. In 1959 she came to know young French filmmaker François Truffaut, who was visiting the U.S. in conjunction with the release of his first directorial feature, The 400 Blows. The two became close friends and colleagues, exchanging heartfelt letters for many years. When in 1966 he shot an English-language film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, she served as an uncredited assistant. She was also the interpreter during the 1962 interviews between Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock that were later turned into a classic film book.  

The relationship between Truffaut and the much older Scott was explored by Lisa Reswick’s daughter, Lillie Fleshler, who used their correspondence as a springboard for her senior thesis in Cinema Production at Ithaca College. Her short film (which was screened as part of a Truffaut retrospective at the  Cinémathèque Française in 2014) spotlights the letters, while also incorporating footage of an interview with Truffaut’s former wife, Madeleine Morgenstern. Morgenstern speaks with great affection of Helen and also of the man whom they both—in their way—deeply loved. The two women agreed that Truffaut was something of a brat, who “didn’t know what he wanted, wanted what he couldn’t have.” They both realized that he “needed love and acceptance from everybody, and especially women.” He was not, in other words, the ideal husband, and Helen felt the sadness of this realization, on Madeleine’s behalf.

Her own closeness to Truffaut led to an unexpected cinematic coup. Would-be screenwriter Robert Benton and his writing partner David Newman idolized Truffaut, and hoped to interest him in their original script, Bonnie and Clyde. It was Helen who helped them connect with Truffaut, who admired their work but had no time to pursue the project. Through Truffaut the screenplay made its way to Jean-Luc Godard, who was equally enthusiastic—and considered himself available. So Bonnie and Clyde could have been a French production.  Of course, it ultimately wasn’t, but Helen Scott remains part of the history behind the Arthur Penn masterwork that turned Benton and Newman from screenwriting newbies into Hollywood insiders..