Filmmaking :: essays research papers

The Film about Filmmaking     Truffauts irresistibly charming "film about filmmaking" is an enormously affectionate homage to cinema, as well as a portrayal of the joy and anguish of filmmaking. The framing film Day for Night tells the story of a director Ferrand (Truffaut) and his crew shooting a romantic family melodrama authorise Meet Pamela at the Studio Victorine in Nice. As the shooting proceeds, the personal crises of the crewmembers engulf the professional sphere of their lives, and threaten the smooth progress of the filming single of the leading actresses, Sverine (Valentina Cortese), is anguished by her sons terminal illness and unable to remember her lines because of her alcoholism Stacey (Alexandra Stewart) is three-months pregnant and refuses to shoot a swimming scene in a bathing suit Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Laud) seeks feminine/maternal affection and lingers over the same question "Are women magic?" Ferrand realizes that films are more proportionate than life there are "no profession jams or no dead waits," and people like them are happy only in their exercise of making films. Despite a series of difficulties and the accidental death of Alexandre (played by Jean-Pierre Aumont) in a car crash, the crew manages to complete the filming and then splash to future destinations.From the outset Day for Night is full of Truffauts nostalgia for cinema of the past. A title sequence accompanied by orchestral music gradually turns into a melancholic accordion tune a still of Dorothy and Lillian Gish with subtitle announces that the film is dedicated to these legendary stars of the silent screen. The spectator is then led to a lusty seemingly in Paris, a rather chic landscape dotted with a metro station, a fashionable caf, stoned buildings, the sound of busy traffic and pedestrians. A young man (Jean-Pierre Laud) with a solemn expression on his face appears from the metro station and walks towards an elderly m an. After a speckle the young male slaps the latter on his face. As soon as an immense tension occurs we hear the voice "Cut" and the camera tracks back to give that it was a shooting of a film. The camera pulls back further and we see the film crew, a television presenter and her crew. The television crew interviews the actors and they provide us with a synopsis of the film they are shooting Meet Pamela is the story of a tragic affair of an adulterous couple.