Skip to main content

La Nuit Américaine

 Photo: picsicio.us

After studying Les 400 Coups and Jules et Jim, my A-level students are going to watch Truffaut's award-winning movie-within-a-movie movie La Nuit Américaine (1973). In English it's called Day for Night and in case you didn't know "day for night" is a technique used in films whereby you film in daylight, but give the impression the action is at night by the use of camera filters. It's an apt title for this movie, since it suggests that film is a bit like cheating and in this affectionate and warm-hearted film you get to see what film making is all about behind the scenes. It's usually said to be the best film made about film-making and it was rewarded with an Oscar.

Truffaut plays Ferrand, the director of a film called Meet Pamela and the story follows the progress of the shoot. We get to see how Truffaut directs actors, how scenes are put together and, principally, how there is a whole separate drama going on behind the scenes as the actors cope with their off-screen lives.

Truffaut plays with some of his favourite motifs: his early love of cinema as he experiences a recurring dream in black and white of his stealing a poster of Citizen Kane from a cinema, his fascination with women (Est-ce que les femmes sont magiques? says Jean-Pierre Léaud's character) and the frustrations of human relationships. Plus you get to see Truffaut working as Truffaut, which for his fans is an extra treat.

Good lines from Ferrand to Jean-Pierre Léaud:

"Les films sont plus harmonieux que la vie. Il n'y a pas d'embouteillages dans les films, pas de temps mort. Les films avancent comme des trains, tu comprends, comme des trains dans la nuit. Des gens comme toi, comme moi, tu le sais bien, on est fait pour être heureux dans le travail, dans notre travail de cinéma."

In some ways La Nuit Américaine is a light-weight, easy film when compared with his early new wave masterpieces, but fans of cinema rate it as one of his best. You see his long-standing team working together to achieve something despite all the hurdles along the route. You should reach the end with a warm feeling.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070460/usercomments

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zaz - Si jamais j'oublie

My wife and I often listen to Radio Paradise, a listener-supported, ad-free radio station from California. They've been playing this song by Zaz recently. I like it and maybe your students would too. I shouldn't really  reproduce the lyrics here for copyright reasons, but I am going to translate them (with the help of another video). You could copy and paste this translation and set it for classwork (not homework, I suggest, since students could just go and find the lyrics online). The song was released in 2015 and gotr to number 11 in the French charts - only number 11! Here we go: Remind me of the day and the year Remind me of the weather And if I've forgotten, you can shake me And if I want to take myself away Lock me up and throw away the key With pricks of memory Tell me what my name is If I ever forget the nights I spent, the guitars, the cries Remind me who I am, why I am alive If I ever forget, if I ever take to my heels If one day I run away Remind me who I am, wha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Longman's Audio-Visual French

I'm sitting here with my copies of Cours Illustré de Français Book 1 and Longman's Audio-Visual French Stage A1 . I have previously mentioned the former, published in 1966, with its use of pictures to exemplify grammar and vocabulary. In his preface Mark Gilbert says: "The pictures are not... a mere decoration but provide further foundation for the language work at this early stage." He talks of "fluency" and "flexibility": "In oral work it is advisable to persist with the practice of a particular pattern until the pupils can use it fluently and flexibly. Flexibility means, for example, the ability to switch from one person of the verb to another..." Ah! Now, the Longman offering, written by S. Moore and A.L. Antrobus, published in 1973, just seven years later, has a great deal in common with Gilbert's course. We now have three colours (green, black and white) rather than mere black and white. The layout is arguably more attrac...
26 comments
Read more