It’s easy to understand why you’d compare them. Both pictures are about the making of a movie. In each, there’s a beautiful lead actress who gets a lot of attention and is something of an enigma. Actually, that’s where the differences start. In Day for Night, the arrival in Nice of British star Julie (Jacqueline Bissett), to shoot the film-within-a-film Meet Pamela, is a major press event; the flash bulbs start going off, as it were, in a series of white flash-frames, before Julie’s even off the plane. The arrival of Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung, playing herself, at the Paris office of Niama Films, is greeted with confusion and mild annoyance, even, by sundry members of the production crew, who’ve got other things to do. Cheung, as it happens, is the pet obsession of Vep’s film-within-a-film director Rene Vidal (Jean-Pierre Leaud, the Truffaut discovery who portrays an actor in Day). To everyone else, at least for the moment, she’s a bit of novelty.
In Day, Julie soon settles in as an important but not overbearing member of a small and fraught fraternity, as it were, while in Vep Maggie remains at a remove even as she has to respond to the attentions/demands of Vidal (who, contrary to the surmises of several critic, is never actually referred to here as a former “Nouvelle Vague” director) as well as the awkward, passive/aggressive romantic interest of costume designer Zoe (Nathalie Richard).
Leaud in Day for Night
Leaud in Irma Vep
This brings us to the basic thematic difference between Day For Night and Irma Vep—Truffaut’s film is largely about moviemaking as a microcosm for life itself, while Vep is largely about the cinema (and the cinema icon) as a cynosure of desire. “Desire,” Vidal tries to articulate to Maggie, is what’s it’a all about; and near the end of the film, when Vidal’s proposed remake of Les Vampires with Cheung in the legendary role of Irma Vep has all but collapsed, Maggie tells Zoe she “understands” Vidal. The desire that Vep is about also lies outside its diegesis: Assayas married Cheung in 1998. (They divorced in 2001.) In a letter Jean-Luc Godard wrote to Francois Truffaut in 1973—the communication that precipitated the final rupture between the one-time friends—Godard says Day For Night is a lie, and Truffaut is a liar, “because the shot of you and Jacqueline Bissett the other evening at [restaurant] Chez Francis is not in your film, and one can’t help wondering why the director is the only one who doesn’t screw in [Day For Night].” A ridiculous implied accusation, to be sure, but it does say something pertinent about the undercurrents of a film, particularly the undercurrents of a film about filmmaking.
Day For Night’s tone is altogether lighter, friendlier than Vep’s; Assayas’ depiction of the speed and disconnection of the “real” world surrounding the crew of Vep’s film-within-a-film can indeed be frightening, but it’s also sardonic, sometimes despairing, angry. (It’s a tone he’ll distill further for the very potent brew that is demonlover.) Assayas has cited a much darker moviemaking movie than Day For Night as a strong influence on Vep; that is, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s acidly funny 1971 Beware of a Holy Whore. It is perhaps no accident that near the end of the film, Whore’s Lou Castel—himself, like Leaud, an icon of a particular bygone era of cinema—turns up as a director even more seemingly dissolute than Vidal. One who, nonetheless, will be taking over Les Vampires, without Cheung.
Castel in Beware of a Holy Whore
Castel in Irma Vep
The characters played by Leaud and Castel never confront each other; three years prior to Vep, though, the actors played best friends in a film by another Assayas hero: Philippe Garrel’s The Birth of Love, itself a quite remarkable film. Threading through all the divergences and correspondences I’ve cited: fierce intelligence, fierce passion, fierce love/hate of cinema. For all their differences, Day For Night and Irma Vep make an exemplary double bill. Hell, add Whore and Love (if you can find the latter) and you’ve got a great quadruple bill.…
“it does say something pertinent about the undercurrents of a film, particularly the undercurrents of a film about filmmaking.”
And a great deal about Godard, too! Thanks for clearing that up…for some reason I thought the angry letter had come years earlier.
As for Castel, I’ve only seen him in Fists in a Pocket but based on that alone I’d love to see him in something else. Duly noted.
I’m sure she’s very nice, and I’ve liked her materials on art films, but I’ve never agreed with her when it comes to genre films. I still think she owes a collective apology to everyone who bought a ticket to “Return of the King” for that Première Oscar piece. Yeesh, could you GET more condescending?
Glenn, there are a couple of other films that spot the relay between DAY FOR NIGHT and IRMA VEP. In 1985 Garrel made a quite hallucinatory film about filmmaking called SHE SPENT SO MANY HOURS UNDER THE LAMPLIGHTS (it’s on a CAHIERS-released DVD, sans subtitles) – where Castel is one of the leading players. And Godard’s little seen GRANDEUR AND DECADENCE (1986) is also about the ‘behind the scenes’ interactions of a filmmaking company – which, in fact (and I don’t think Brody, or anybody has picked this up), is very precisely the film that Godard outlined to Truffaut in his angry letter of ’73 (called A MOVIE or something like that at the time), and thus the anti-DAY FOR NIGHT par excellence. It’s a rarely seen JLG film (but a fantastic one), shot on video, unavailable on DVD, but it occasionally appears on French TV as part of the series for which it was commissioned, ‘Série noire’. And it stars Léaud! I talk about this whole ‘network’ of films in my audio commentary to Fassbinder’s HOLY WHORE, out soon through the Australian DVD label Madman. Great frame captures from IRMA VEP, by the way!
Disappointed to hear that Truffaut is a hero of Assayas (if that’s what you’re saying), as I always thought IRMA VEP was satirizing big dumb DAY FOR NIGHT. I don’t get the affection for the latter at all, especially from filmmakers (Godard notwithstanding); that the Truffaut character never communicates with his cinematographer apart from their ludicrous final exchange (“Great camerawork!” “Glad you liked it!”) is just another example of its dubiousness. Was it Pauline Kael who asked rhetorically whether anyone would actually want to see “MEET PAMELA”?
@Bill C.: I’m sorry if my language was imprecise. I don’t presume that Truffaut is a hero of Assayas’, merely pointing out that “Day For Night” is a point of reference for “Irma Vep.”
@Adrian Martin: Thanks for the compliments, and for expanding the now-almost-Borgesian web of Garrel/Godard/Truffaut/Fassbinder correspondences. As there’s no Australian Amazon, can you direct us to a reliable online seller of DVDs from the increasingly intriguing Madman label? Thanks!
I might add Tom DiCillo’s LIVING IN OBLIVION to this mix…
Great comparison, Glenn. And not to demean your piece, but Assayas was one lucky bastard for being married to Cheung- even if it was only for 3 years.…
Glenn, you can buy them direct from the Madman site:
madman.com.au
Go into the ‘Directors Suite’ section for all the art-cinema and classic goodies. To give you a sense of the available range, I have done commentaries for GERTRUD, VOYAGE IN ITALY (with more Rossellini’s in ’09), 3 Godards, 2 Fassbinders, Chabrol, the Dardennes, Wenders’ ALICE IN THE CITIES, THE BLUE ANGEL, DR MABUSE THE GAMBLER, and few other things.
As well as all the Fassbinders that Madman are doing with Australian-made audio commentaries, the Sirk releases are also quite special, with a large team of scholars working on them (I did TARNISHED ANGELS and co-did THERE’S ALWAYS TOMORROW with legendary Australian critic John Flaus). There are also valuable written materials supplied, such as Jonathan Rosenbaum’s essays for Dreyer and Fassbinder releases.
Thanks for your interest in this!
I just wanted to say that, having finally caught Some Came Running on TCM, I can now read your blog with a clean conscience.
That is all. Keep up the good work!
Adrian, which Chabrol did you do a commentary on? I don’t believe Madman has released any of his (the only one on R4 atm seems to be Madame Bovary).
Ian, it’s THE COUSINS, one of several Chabrol films that Madman is releasing in coming months.
Sweeeet. Looking forward to it! (your commentaries have been a selling point for me on a lot of Madman releases)