Day for Night / La Nuit Américaine (1973 François Truffaut)

A very clever film which as you're watching it starts making you think about how it's filmed... Watching Truffaut the director playing Truffaut the director directing actor Léaud playing Léaud the actor makes your head spin...

Last seen on 4 December 2010 'a well-overdue treat'.

Jacqueline Bisset (the one that got away), Valentina Cortese (the drunken Italian actress), Dani (new script girl), Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont (actor who keeps making mysterious trips to the airport), Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut. Won the '74 foreign film Oscar then weirdly, Truffaut (as director), script and Cortese were nominated the next year also. All three won BAFTAs. Script is by Truffaut, our Suzanne Schiffman and Jean-Louis Richard, music by Georges Delerue

Constant smiling, seeing Léaud makes me happy (his face when watching his own rushes is priceless). Zippy editing (Yann Dedet). Tricks (cat; fake balcony / bedroom). Seems to accurately depict the process and kept making me think of State and Main.

Great photo from http://www.filmstarts.de

Truffaut also  name checks his favourite directors in the books he's ordered: Dreyer, Bresson, Godard (just before they fell out), Buñuel, Rossellini, Lubitsch, Hawks and of course Hitchcock.

Very pleased to realise it's set in Powell's training ground, Victorine Studios Nice. Still there. following chequered history, but now called "Studio Riviera".