Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Movie about a movie who's director is the director of the movie's movie. Nice to have a look behind the scenes of film making, although much of it looks rather staged, including bad acting and over-acting. Which makes the fictional movie about people making a movie really looks like people making a fictional movie. In a movie that you don't really like, sometimes there's one scene that almost makes up for the rest of the movie. A scene that you will probably never forget. Like the Japanese guy doing a karaoke act of the Sex Pistols in Lost In Translation, here the WOW scene is the short cat intermezzo. Silence... tension...touched... A moment of true movie magic.

Director Ferrand (François Truffaut) struggles with many challenges to finish shooting his film "Je vous presente Pamela". Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset) is a British actress struggling with personal issues. This film follows the many people associated with the production.This is a classic film from iconic French director François Truffaut. He's playing with many modern meta filmmaking ideas. It is a film within a film. It has quasi-documentary techniques. The characters are a little hard to keep track. Other than Bisset and Truffaut, I'm not familiar with any of the other actors. It makes it harder to follow. The most memorable are little filmmaking triumphs like the candle and the cat. This is a movie at the foremost front.

A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.I find it interesting that in French the term "American night" means the same as our term "day for night", wherein scenes filmed during the day appear to be shot at night (although discerning eyes can still tell the difference). Why "American night"? Interesting.One of the film's themes is whether or not films are more important than life for those who make them, its many allusions both to film-making and to movies themselves (perhaps unsurprising given that Truffaut began his career as a film critic who championed cinema as an art form). The film opens with a picture of Lillian and Dorothy Gish, to whom it is dedicated. In one scene, Ferrand opens a package of books he had ordered: they are books on directors he admires such as Luis Buñuel, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, Ernst Lubitsch, Roberto Rossellini and Robert Bresson.

This is my favorite film directed by François Truffaut, even though most of his works stands as absolutely classics, as "The 400 Blows" and "Jules et Jim". The reason why I love "Le Nuit Americaine" is the way Truffaut engenders a world of dreams that movies are, combining with a funny and sometimes dramatic reality of the people involved in making a film."Le Nuit Americaine" (The American Night or "Day For Night") is the title of a process where a day scene is filmed at night, and here we are invited to watch the complex and wild process of shooting a movie, with countless problems, temperamental actors and their love affairs, or actors who have problems to memorize their lines, schedule, budget; all of that in the hands of the director Ferrand (Truffaut playing himself, basically) who wants to make a great film named "Meet Pamela" (the story of it is the same of a film that would be released in 1992 by Louis Malle called "Damage", the main situation is equal). We're able to see how this masters of illusion can make things happen, how a scene is created or modified during the production course, stunt doubles risking their lives in dangerous scenes, and how many takes is needed to make one good scene that last seconds on the screen.This film is much precious as "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" but it doesn't reveals what audiences likes to see, it shows how it is made and how difficult it is to make it good, to guarantee some money return and good critics. It is a magical and beautiful world but it has the same problems that we have in life because art reflects life and vice versa. "Le Nuit Americaine" makes you have a profound respect for all the people involved in making movies, directors, producers, writers, actors, editors, cinematographers, art directors, stand-in's, stunt doubles and all of them because their work is amazing, and when you have the chance to see something so brilliant as this film it makes worth a while and you should applaud them for that.My favorite moment is the film is a dream sequence where the director Ferrand/Truffaut is remembering a moment from his childhood when he stole pictures of "Citizen Kane", in those famous cards posted in cinemas. It's a very nostalgic and real moment of Truffaut's life who is a admirer of Welles film that has a huge importance in my life, and I really wish to do what he made by stealing those pictures (nowadays cinemas don't have these photos anymore, when I was kid I was fascinated by them). It is a moment that every film buff will love, this obsession for films and dreaming of being part of it someday, it says a lot and it is a very beautiful scene.The fantastic ensemble casting is composed by Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jean-Pierre Léaud (in a character opposed as his famous Antoine Doinel), Nathalie Baye, Alexandra Powers, Dani and many others, all great. It's a delightful homage to films and the individuals behind the camera who makes our lives more entertaining, happier and lighter. Bravo Monsieur Truffaut! 10/10