Day For Night

In Jules and Jim (Truffaut, 1962), Truffaut shows us the tragic results of a shared relationship with a woman (Catherine) intent of self-immolation. In that film, there is a scene that sums up the sense of how the two men, Jules and Jim, viewed Catherine. That scene was the one shot day-for-night. Using this technique (shooting in the day using a special filter to have it seem as if the scene was shot at night), Truffaut demonstrates two manipulations by way of the "special" filter. The first is that Jim and Catherine assign their own point of view, as seen through their individually flawed "filters" to events involving themselves and Jules. This filtered assignation of meaning leads to conclusions that blinds Jim to Catherine's availability as something other than an ideal, and, on Catherine's part, rationalizes her own emotional instability. The second manipulation demonstrated by Truffaut involves the audience. The effects of day-for-night shooting signals to the audience the falsity by which the characters are manipulating their own interpretations. The degree that we apply that sense of falsity to the scene depends not only on the existence of the filter Truffaut places in front of us, but also on our own filters, the ones we use to judge our own actions and the actions of others.

It is this second manipulation (that of and by the audience) that is the lesson of Day For Night (Truffaut, 1973). The upshot of the film is that day-for-night manipulation (a measure of phoniness) is revealed to surround us in everyday life; and that it is film that works hard to minimize the differences between what we see on the screen and what happens in real life. In a sense, we go to the movies not to escape reality, but, in part, to escape the day-for-night in our own lives.

The use of the filtering technique for the movie's title allows the audience the freedom to not have to judge the making of a film, but to reserve their judgment for the characters making the film. The title makes transparent both that the objective of film is to "fool" audiences into thinking that what they see on the screen is real, and that, in this film, the audience is privy to how this is accomplished. The surprise that is exposed in the process is that every action taken by the production crew to produce something false (including building a two-story scaffold on top of which lies a single wall of a supposed bedroom) is taken to enhance the reality of what will later be presented on screen as the film, Meet Pamela.

Meet Pamela is the main character in Day For Night. It is a film Truffaut's cast and crew are in the process of creating. Day For Night opens with Meet Pamela's orchestra warming up off camera. As the credits role, sound waves, in synch with the orchestra's playing, modulate on screen. These waves, framed longitudinally against the left side of the frame, resemble film scrolling down the screen. Since the orchestra is only, so to speak, coming to life, so is the film the crew is shooting. The cast's (most of) and crew's extraordinary devotion to seeing the film come to life is the second surprise the film reveals.

The piece of advice Truffaut suggests we keep in mind as we witness the making of Meet Pamela is: "No sentimentality; just play the notes." By stating this, Truffaut allows the audience a standard by which to judge those actions taken to ensure completion of the film.

An example of a scene where the audience is asked to judge is the one where Julie (Jacqueline Bisset) goes to Alphonse's (Jean-Pierre Leaud) room to try to talk Alphonse out of quitting Meet Pamela. The script girl (Alphonse's girlfriend) has left with a stuntman and Alphonse is packing his suitcase preparing to leave. Julie ends up staying the night with Alphonse, perhaps to (continentally) right a wrong (the script girl has run off with a Brit, Julie's a Brit); but more to the point, to save the film by convincing Alphonse he should meet his committments.

Up to this point, Truffaut has made the script girl a selfish character, interested only in her own gratification. She's an evil person, but not ostentatiously phony. For example we don't see her encourage Alphonse's love. And she offers a frank assessment of Alphonse's emotional flaws when she earlier states to Julie that what Alphonse needs is mother, sister, friend, etc. (Truffaut later offers a similar assessment by refering to Alphonse as a child.) Also, when asked, the script girl answers Truffaut's inquiry about the job truthfully. Because she is not ostentatiously phony, the script girl does not possess a great deal of day-for-night, and therefore we soften our dislike for her.

Alphonse, on the other hand, is a phony that hurts. And his actions (revealing Julie's indiscretion to her husband, hiding at a go-cart track (driving himself around in circles going nowhere fast)) make us sick. He snaps his fingers when he wants people to do his bidding, and brushes them off just as easily. Even worse, Alphonse deludes himself into thinking that he has a right to force himself on everyone else. When he complains to Julie that the "script girl's love for him was all phony, which made it sickening" we are reminded how shallow his world is. (The same words unfortunately forshadow Julie's actions.) It is easier to dislike Alphonse to the core.

At least until Julie and Truffaut discus the consequences of Alphonse's actions and reveal to us that they view him as nothing more than a non-understanding "child." This interpretation allows us to judge Alphonse with a different filter. We still see him as a phony (possessing an extremely high day-for-night ability to delude himself), but can now acknowledge, in a way, that he is innocent by way of his ignorance. Perhaps, even that someday he will grow up and shed some of his phoniness, increasing his existence in the world of reality. How we ultimately judge Alphonse is determined by the extent we assign immorality (an assignation affected by our own day-for-night filter) to his behavior (recreating the postion the audience finds itself in in the night-for-day scene in Jules and Jim.)

Which brings us to Julie. Truffaut paints Julie as a sensitive, caring person recently recovered from a recent breakdown with the help of her loyal and devoted husband. Seemingly, Julie has a very low degree of phoniness in her life. The reasons she ends up in Alphonse's room are all upstanding: concerns for his emotional pain, concerns for his career if he walks out, concerns for all the work that has already gone into Meet Pamela. How is it then, that Julie ends up spending the night with Alphonse?

When Julie tells later tells Truffaut that Alphonse didn't understand at all, Truffaut would have us believe that Julie traded her company for some sort of assurance that Alphonse would stay with the project. That Julie meant to keep this from her husband is confirmed by her reaction to her husband finding out. Using our previous measures, we would have to assign Julie the person with the highest degree of phoniness. Her intent was to filter out what she had done, and go on with her life. The degree of betrayal to her husband (someone who had done a "serious" thing by giving up a wife and children for her) and herself (something she is always going to know she did) earns her a huge amount of scorn from us. Her life, at least for as long as she did not reveal her indiscretion to her husband, would have been a lie, a phony existence, the ultimate day-for-night.

But how exactly do we judge Julie. For all her otherwise wholesome qualities, does her exposure as phony to the core make her evil? The answer to that depends on our own filters. For some of us, Julie's actions were inexcusible. To others, her actions were in keeping with her devotion to the film. In this interpretation, there was no "sentimentality" towards Alphonse; she was just "playing the notes." In many ways this approach is similar to how we lead our own lives. We act according to our own filters (based on our own day-for-night quotients), as others judge our actions based on their own filters. Julie was caught in the uncomfortable position of possible losing her "baby" (Meet Pamela). Wouldn't some of us react as Julie had?

This is the question Truffaut wants us to ask. [A subtitle for Meet Pamela could have been Meet Ourselves]. For Julie, her husband forgives her, and we see her forgive Alphonse when she kisses him on the cheeks as she prepares to leave, an act that shouts Julie is still a rightous person and there is still hope for the little weasel.

Before starting a film, Truffaut tells us he "hopes to make a fine movie, and when the problems begin he aims lower." Truffaut, with grace and efficiency leaves out all sentimentality and just plays the notes. Thus, when Alexandre dies in a car crash (a play on Truffaut's apologizing to Alexandre earlier for having him die in the film), we see Truffaut immediately move to solve the problems his absence in the film causes (an additional day-for-night moment: summer snow) without him seeming crass. Truffaut's seemingly unsentimental treatment of every cast member belies the sentimental treatment of all, even Alphonse (an everyone is magic moment), goes to the heart of everyday life. We all have decisions to make. We make them to the best of our abilities, and then move on. It's ironic tht a movie about the making of a film is what allows us to see this so clearly.