Directed by François Truffaut
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard & Suzanne Schiffman
1973 | 116 minutes | French, English
Criterion Blu-Ray
Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean Champion, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut, Nike Arrighi, Nathalie Baye, David Markham, Graham Greene
What it’s about: This movie follows the making of a fictional drama film, “Meet Pamela,” under production in Nice. Among the stars of the film are Julie Baker (Bisset), an English actress who recently experienced a breakdown, Séverine (Cortese), an Italian diva, her old flame, the aging lothario Alexandré (Aumont), and Alphonse (Léaud), a childish and enthusiastic young actor whose less-interested girlfriend Liliane (Dani) he’s had hired as a script girl. The director, Ferrand (Truffaut), along with his shrewd AD Joëlle (Baye), are forced to marshal the circus of cast and crew, including all the interpersonal drama, various production setbacks, and a constantly evolving script that incorporates elements of true life into the melodramatic story of a woman who runs off with her new father-in-law.
Reflections: Making a movie is an odd undertaking–a large group of disparate personalities thrown together in intense collaboration, with actors exposing vulnerability pretending to be other people and crew being forced to perform and build all kinds of absurd things, a constant environment of hurry-up-and-wait, endless repetition and fragmentation, and the intense bonds that last for a shooting schedule before dissipating again to the wind. This, Truffaut’s 13th film, is a love-letter to that process and to the kind madness and belief that goes into that craft. The result is an energetic, warm-hearted, kaleidoscopic ensemble piece that sprawls out and constantly feels like it could go of the rails but, through some kind of alchemy, never does.
Truffaut performs a clever trick of seeming to pull back the curtain on the artifice of filmmaking–the movie begins within a shot of the fictional film before pulling out to the crew around it, has characters pull off wigs, or moves the camera to the exposed back of setting pieces–while keeping the larger film feeling naturalistic and grounded. His mis-en-scene is rich with color and ’70s style, and Georges Delerue’s score is sentimental but never sappy. The cast are all doing fine work–long-time collaborator Léaud captures an adolescent petulance that isn’t over the top, Baye is luminous and no-nonsense, and Bisset has a hard-earned determination to keep herself and the project together. And Graham Greene (the English author, not the Canadian actor) makes a surprise cameo as an insurance agent.
The main draw of this film though, which is hard to describe, is the way in which it captures a sense of the creative spirit–watching it makes one want to make things. It’s kind of loose, plot-wise, and no part of it particularly stands out in terms of craft, but it somehow comes together in a cohesive whole despite itself. And it’s a pretty clever thing, to be able to show the secrets of a magic trick and still leave the audience even more enchanted with the magic–no wonder this is often considered one of the director and legendary cinephile’s best films.