La Nuit américaine aka Day for Night (1973)

When visitors from the real world arrive (husbands, lovers, bankers, journalists), they are provided with a director’s chair to sit in, and they watch the action and nod and smile like proud grandparents. They’ll never understand. “I’d drop a guy for a film,” a character says in “Day for Night.” “I’d never drop a film for a guy.”La Nuit américaine chronicles the production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela, also referred to as I want you to meet Pamela), a clichéd melodrama starring aging screen icon, Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), former diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), young heart-throb Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and a British actress, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset) who is recovering from both a nervous breakdown and the controversy leading to her marriage with her much older doctor. In between are several small vignettes chronicling the stories of the crew-members and the director; Ferrand (Truffaut himself) tangles with the practical problems one deals with when making a movie. Behind the camera, the actors and crew go through several romances, affairs, break-ups, and sorrows.

The production is especially shaken up when Alphonse's fiancee leaves him for the film's stuntman, which leads him to a one night stand with Julie, when one of the secondary actresses is revealed to be pregnant, and when Alexandre is killed suddenly in a car crash.Truffaut’s film is like a little anthology of anecdotes from movie sets. We recognize all the familiar types: The callow young love-mad star (Jean-Pierre Leaud); the alcoholic diva past her prime (Valentina Cortese); the sexy romantic lead (Jacqueline Bisset), whose breakdowns are hopefully behind her now that she’s married her doctor; and the aging leading man (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who is finally coming to terms with his homosexuality. There are also the functionaries with supporting roles: The script girl, the stunt man, the producer, the woman who runs the hotel.