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Day for Night (1973)

Day for Night
What is a film director? A man who's asked questions about everything. Sometimes he knows the answers.
—Ferrand
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As the Saul Bass-designed Warner Bros. logo fills the screen, the sound of an orchestra tuning up fills the viewer’s ears. The voice of a conductor interrupts and instructs his musicians to begin playing:

“Silence, please, and watch the notes carefully.”

The maestro’s command is also a message from director François Truffaut to the audience about to watch his 1973 filmic farce Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine). The movie is beginning; pay attention. This is a film about filmmaking, a subject that Truffaut matter-of-factly called his “own reason for living.” The movie follows the troubled production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela), a hokey melodrama about a man (Jean-Pierre Aumont) who begins an affair with his son’s fiancée (Jacqueline Bisset). Actors play actors, crew plays crew, and the director plays the director. Although the mockumentary nature of Day for Night is not fully revealed until the end of the first scene – when Truffaut, as Ferrand, yells cut – the opening title sequence pulls back the curtain even earlier.

VIDEO: Title Sequence – Day for Night (1973) End Titles

Day for Night (1973) main-on-end titles, designed by Michel François

IMAGE: 35mm Optical Soundtrack Example

An example of 35mm film with a stereo analog optical soundtrack, which appears just inside the perforations on the left side.

Designed by Michel François, one of France’s most prolific title designers, the Day for Night title sequence features the typeface Folio in a cool blue, listing the cast in alphabetical order – ladies first, of course. As the credits roll, the musical cacophony reveals the unpolished process of the score’s creation. The pulsing waveforms in the left third of the screen – a facsimile of the film’s analog optical soundtrack – peel back another layer, a projection of how the technology of cinema boils down the dialogue and music. Even the film’s title, Day for Night, is a reference to the filmmaking process. As its name suggests, day-for-night shooting is a technique used to simulate nighttime while filming in daylight. “La nuit américaine” is simply the French term for this technique. American director Brian De Palma, an avowed fan of Truffaut, crafted a similar self-referential opening for his 1981 film Blow Out, replacing the orchestra with a beating heart and bloodcurdling screams.

The Day for Night sequence caps off with a still of silent era movie stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish from D.W. Griffith’s 1912 film An Unseen Enemy, and a handwritten dedication from Truffaut to the iconic sisters. From start to finish, the film’s opening is a love letter to the art and artists of cinema.

IMAGE: Gish Dedication Card

Truffaut's dedication to Lillian and Dorothy Gish

  • Credits

Title Design: CTR, Les Films Michel François
Music:
 Georges Delerue

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Title sequence

  • Title Designer

    Michel François
  • Category

    Film
  • Styles

    1970s, experimental, graphic, main title, optical
Day for Night
  • Film Director

    François Truffaut
  • Release Date

    May 24, 1973
  • Aspect Ratio

    1.66:1
  • Studios

    Les Films du Carrosse, PECF, Produzione Intercontinentale Cinematografica, Warner-Columbia Film
  • Country

    France
  • Languages

    French, English
  • Reviews

    Reviews on Letterboxd
  • IMDb has full details

Article

  • Writer

    Will Perkins
  • Published

    December 9, 2015

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