Day For Night review

“People like you and me are only happy in our work,” says the director of Meet Pamela, the film-within-the-film in François Truffaut’s finest two hours, a meta-movie foregoing Sunset Boulevard’s bile to suggest that its maker was happy in his job.

Made in 1973, Day scopes the foibles of cast, crew and cat on a film set, highlighting fearful line fluffs, dipso divas, petulant leads and moggies that won’t take their milk.

A winningly game ensemble (Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud) splashes satirical relish on the well- observed cringe-com scenarios.

But by casting himself as an indulgent onscreen director, Truffaut makes clear his love for the fleeting passions of film shoots and the fragile alt-families that pass through them.

Cinephiles will lap it up.