Anyone who has ever worked on a film (underground, independent or otherwise) will appreciate La Nuit américaine (1973) all the more. Working on a film is living in an insular community where everyone is bound by a singular obsession with the cinema. It’s often tumultuous, infuriating, and sometimes beautiful to live this way. One must be wholly dedicated to the work to sacrifice so much for the cinema.
François Truffaut understands all of this very well. Wisely, he plays his reflexive games with comedy, not melodrama in mind. His film within a film is a dour juxtaposition to the madcap goings on behind the scenes. From kitten wrangling to dangerous stunt work, La Nuit américaine plays it all for bittersweet laughs. Cinema may be king, but it’s also entirely absurd and only begins to make real sense in post-production.
La Nuit américaine is a film that shatters illusions. Snow, car crashes, balcony scenes, and candle light romances lose all of their magic as Truffaut takes the viewer behind the scenes. But even as Truffaut unravels the mysteries of the cinematographic image he celebrates its great illusionists. The film incorporates the names Jean Vigo, Jean Cocteau, Jean-Luc Godard and many others in the film’s mise en scène. In a dream sequence a child even steals promotional stills of Citizen Kane (1941) from a theatre lobby; suggesting an intertextual web between all movies.
All of this is to suggest that the “cinema is king” because it rules our collective fantasies while also offering a way of life. La Nuit américaine celebrates the cinema. It isn’t a film of critiques so much as a film of playful observations that is content to flirt with darker themes without ever sacrificing its whimsical tone. La Nuit américaine is that rare film that is equally for filmmakers as it is for filmgoers.
