Filmmaking :: essays research papers

The Film about Filmmaking     Truffauts everyplacepoweringly 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 cluster shooting a romantic family melodrama entitled escort Pamela at the studio Victorine in Nice. As the shooting proceeds, the personal crises of the crewmembers engulf the professional orbit of their lives, and threaten the smooth progress of the filming one of the leading actresses, Sverine (Valentina Cortese), is anguished by her sons terminal illness and unable to remember her lines because of her inebriation Stacey (Alexandra Stewart) is three-months pregnant and refuses to shoot a swimming scene in a bathing suit Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Laud) earnks feminine/maternal affection and lingers over the same question "Are women magic?" Ferrand realiz es that films are more consonant than life there are "no traffic jams or no dead waits," and people like them are happy only in their work of making films. Despite a series of difficulties and the accidental demise of Alexandre (played by Jean-Pierre Aumont) in a car crash, the crew manages to complete the filming and then disperse to future destinations.From the outset Day for Night is wide-cut 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 mantrap is then led to a square 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 puppyish man (Jean-Pierre Laud) with a solemn expression on his incline appears from the metro station and walks towards an elderly man. After a while the childlike male slaps the latter on his face. As soon as an coarse tension occurs we hear the voice "Cut" and the camera tracks back to bust 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 rear us with a synopsis of the film they are shooting Meet Pamela is the story of a tragic affair of an adulterous couple.