Cinematic Overtures

by Annette Insdorf

  In the opening sequence, as the provisional partners begin to dance in couples, many seem mismatched. Tensions emerge via gesture; for example, when an aggressive woman is tired of waiting for the bespectacled man hovering beside her to make his move, she stands up and lifts her arms in dance pose so that he approaches. It is appropriate that one of the songs is “Et maintenant?” (known as “What Now, My Love?” in English), as most of the characters hesitate to make a move. A burst of white steam from the bar’s espresso machine leads us to 1936, where the same music continues with different orchestration (primarily accordion). The bartender is now young, serving red wine rather than cocktails. The sepia-toned evocation of the Popular Front makes the characters more attractive because they are stylized, distanced by aesthetic convention in a more harmonious world. This sequence even includes a Jean Gabin look-alike, a tough guy who attracts the ladies. When all the characters dance in a circle, they embody solidarity. Even the tall awkward man who could not get a dance partner in the first sequence obtains a kiss in the middle of the circle. The scene brings to mind a remark by Whit Stillman (the director of ensemble pieces like Metropolitan and Barcelona), “When we’re nostalgic about the past, it’s for when life was in groups, before the split into isolated life.”3 Toward the end, when a man in a Fascist uniform enters atop the steps of the hall and orders the band to stop playing, dance represents defiance: with a glare, one woman begins stomping, followed by the loud steps of the others resounding on the dance floor. Their rhythmic resistance evokes a Spanish expression, “Que me quiten lo bailado” (Let them try to take away what I’ve danced!).

  A freeze-frame becomes a still photo hanging on the wall. The film’s third section is set in 1940, when the dance hall provides shelter during a wartime air raid. Instead of music there are sirens and bombs; unable to dance, people clutch one another in fear. After the all-clear signal, the bartender takes pity on a female violinist: as a record plays a popular Italian song (Vittorio De Sica’s “Parlami d’amore Mariù”), he cooks her spaghetti, which she devours. The following segment continues with the German occupation of Paris. In 1944 two women dance to the radio’s rendition of “J’attendrai” as well as “We’re Going to Hang Out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” When a shady collaborator brings a Gestapo officer to the hall, the music changes to “Lili Marleen.” Each woman refuses to dance with the German, leaving the collaborator to hold out his arms to the “guest.” Ironically enough, the two men dance a tango perfectly in step, the French Fascist following every move of the Nazi. As distant church bells suggest the end of the occupation, women revolve around the male couple; joined by others, they become a large circle—not simply of entrapment, but wholeness and unity. Similarly, in the next sequence—set during the liberation—dance expresses both celebration and political retribution: after the collaborator sneaks into their circle, they refuse to let him out. A paso doble is then interrupted by the return of a one-legged soldier: helped by his female partner, even he dances again. And when two men ask the same woman onto the floor, in a moment of touching inclusiveness she accepts both and all three dance together.

  Another freeze-frame that leads to a hanging photo above the bar takes us into the sixth sequence—a postwar era where foreign influences occupy an increasing role. The actor playing outsiders to the dance hall establishes continuity: once a Fascist collaborator who brought in a Nazi during the war, he is now a black marketer escorting American soldiers in 1945. (Moreover, the Gestapo officer was played by the awkward beanstalk who could not get a dance partner in the opening sequence: it makes sense that this unwanted man would require a uniform to stand up straight and give orders.) The bartender is suddenly supplied with Coca-Cola (which Ettore Scola pungently referred to as “gastronomic colonialism” when I interviewed him in 1984).4 The couples trying to dance the jitterbug flail about, exhibiting none of their prewar grace. By 1956, labeled in the end credits as “From the Algerian War to rock and roll,” a carioca provides the backdrop for racism as well as the invasion of leather-jacketed hoodlums. A thug in dark glasses assaults a sympathetic, dark-skinned man while the band cheerfully plays a Latin-inspired song (ironically the kind of music that might have been appropriated by white Americans from black and Latino artists).

  The penultimate segment, in May 1968, begins with the sound of sirens from the street as wounded protesters break into the abandoned hall. As we hear snippets on the radio of rallies from around the world, the space again becomes a shelter. This is the only time a handheld camera is used, corresponding to Scola’s perception, “A short eruption of hope, as ’68 was.” The Beatles’ song “Michelle” is the bridge from 1968 to the film’s present: rather than a cut, the fluid movement of our older couple brings the film back to the opening sequence. Back in 1983, one woman removes her wig and dances more comfortably, as if suddenly liberated. Even if the characters don’t have names, their faces are more recognizable and seem to have a richer history than in the film’s introduction. This is especially true of the couple that is no longer young (played by the same actors who were youthfully in love in 1936): they have difficulty parting, and before the man leaves, his wedding ring is noticeable.

  A solo trumpet playing the yearning melody of composer Vladimir Cosma’s “Le Bal” theme suggests the return of isolation as the characters file out of the hall. Except for a man giving a woman his card, there is little sense of future contact. The last action belongs to the sight-impaired wallflower who always sat in the corner seeming to read movie magazines: she jumps up at the touch of a man—assuming an invitation to dance—only to find the aged bartender indicating that it is time to close up.

  Scola presents a vision that embraces history: the hall’s past proves more vibrant than its present, in which couples disintegrate and men dance alone narcissistically. While the director insisted that he did not miss “the good old days,” he praised past manifestations “of the collective spirit that must be maintained.” The film seems to be asking whether partners are even necessary in this new world. And is community possible? (If the 1970s were a period of increasing depersonalization, egotism, and loneliness, today the dance hall’s patrons might be listening to their own iPhones in even greater isolation.) On the one hand, the reflecting balls of the opening and closing sequences crystallize gaudy repetition rather than forward movement or change. On the other hand—and even if the film’s action ends on a note of disappointment—the closing credits imply a more upbeat vision: suddenly, all the characters are dancing again, as if they have returned to the hall. Has the film depicted a present tense of one singular evening, or does the closing coda indicate the iterative mode? Do the characters return weekly to such a dance hall in the early 1980s? Rather than being strangers to each other, are they participants in an ongoing spectacle? If the characters do share a past, perhaps their weekly pleasure is comforting rather than depressing. Scola told me, “I’m sure they’ll return the following Saturday to the same place. The end is not only a curtain call, but a reminder that they will come back next week, next year, next century, keeping their right to hope.”5

  Day for Night shares with Le Bal unity of place (in this case, a movie set), nostalgia, and a concern with creating a community that has a shared goal. François Truffaut’s now classic 1973 film celebrates the process of filmmaking as well as the myriad individuals engaged in such a collective enterprise. From the opening credit sequence, it is unabashedly enamored of what transpires behind the camera. The title (in French, La Nuit américaine) refers to the filter by which night scenes can be filmed during the day—an artifice that provides an illusion of reality—and throughout Day for Night we see the fluid relationship between art and experience, or their interdependence.6 It presents the making of the film “Meet Pamela,” a rather trite melodrama starring Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) as the son of Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and Severine (Valentina Cortese). When Alphonse brings home his new bride, Pamela—played by Julie (Jacqueline Bisset)—his f
ather falls in love with her and they run off together. Day for Night uses “Meet Pamela” as an excuse to explore the shoot, during which Alphonse worries about the fidelity of his girlfriend, Liliane; Julie is recovering from a nervous breakdown; Alexandre goes daily to the airport in anticipation of a lover’s arrival; and loyal assistant Joelle (Nathalie Baye) keeps things smoothly on course. Adding to the film’s self-reflexivity, Truffaut plays the director, Ferrand.

  The opening credit sequence foregrounds Georges Delerue’s score, as we hear the orchestra tuning up and the composer instructing, “Let’s all be quiet and play well.” On the left side of the dark screen, two optical sound waves modulate, providing a graphic representation of the soundtrack. “No sentimentality,” Delerue adds in conducting the score, anticipating the same directions Ferrand will give his actors throughout the film. A second outer frame is the photo of silent movie stars Dorothy and Lillian Gish, on which Truffaut wrote a personal handwritten dedication of this film.

  The story begins with a sunny exterior shot in the south of France (see clip). The camera tracks left along a busy Nice street, passing Alphonse emerging from the metro. It keeps moving left to find Alexandre leaving a restaurant. When the two men face each other, Alphonse raises his arm and slaps Alexandre; at that moment, Ferrand calls out, “Cut,” in an abrupt close-up that almost feels like a visual slap. “It was better last time,” announces the voice of the assistant director through a megaphone. If we thought we were watching the story, we quickly realize Truffaut’s interest lies elsewhere: to begin with a take from the filming of the interior movie, “Meet Pamela,” introduces his delight in process.7 When they shoot the same scene again, this time we hear the loud instructions directed at actors and extras, which invites us into complicity with the challenges of a film shoot. By the third take we share the desired outcome of a successfully choreographed crowd around the lead main actors: from a high angle that encompasses a red crane holding the camera above the set, this take embodies the director’s call for “another angle,” while Delerue’s Vivaldi-inflected score ennobles the effort. This opening is playful as well as misleading, setting the stage for concerns Truffaut will develop later. After they learn that the lab ruined this footage, the director, cast, and crew must reshoot it. But by this point, toward the end of Day for Night, Alexandre has died in a car accident, and they have to use a double. To avoid showing the latter’s face, Ferrand has Alphonse shoot him in the back. After they add fake snow to the decor, and the scene is shot for the fourth time, we are more aware of how everything is staged—with compromise and with love.

  Truffaut continues by showing a scene filmed multiple times with Severine: this ebullient Italian actress is accustomed to working with Italian directors like Fellini, whose postsyncing of dialogue didn’t require her to memorize lines. A bit tipsy from the champagne bottle within arm’s reach, Severine keeps flubbing her lines and opening the wrong door. Firm but sympathetic, Ferrand shoots successive takes of her “Scene 36” with Alexandre: each time, we get to see another dimension of the shoot. The first is a long take, concentrating on the two actors. The second is crosscut, including the camera following Severine’s movements; by the third, we see the other actors holding their breath empathetically and the crew ready to quickly set up another take. Similarly, the filming of a costume ball scene for “Meet Pamela” depends on a light bulb inside a candle created by prop man Bernard: Julie must hold it a certain way to illuminate her face in a dark space. Repetition of a take is once again an excuse for revelation of the crew’s complicity: the second take of her whispered exchange with Alphonse shows their colleagues’ concern for the actors as well as the successful completion of the shoot.

  FIGURE 6.4  François Truffaut playing the director in Day for Night

  The opening sequence of Day for Night introduces the camera as a mobile narrator and participant. Since the first few minutes of the film establish a perspective from beyond the camera shooting “Meet Pamela,” the act of recording is doubled. A key shot begins with a close-up of the secretary, Stacey (Alexandra Stewart), in a swimming pool. The camera pulls back as she comes out, and rises to reveal the camera of the “Meet Pamela” crew filming the scene before descending to a close-up of Ferrand in the outer “reality” of Day for Night. (Of course there is another layer beyond what we see, of Truffaut watching the take of the take of the take.) This provisional frame reflects the fluid nature of relationships, whether between men and women or art and life. And when Ferrand gives Julie new lines for “Meet Pamela”—almost verbatim her words to him about life—cinema clearly feeds on (and perhaps perfects) experience. Truffaut plays with and ultimately breaks down the thin borders between art and life, performing and being, filmmaking and lovemaking. Day for Night includes not only a street sign of the rue Jean Vigo (named for the French director of L’Atalante and Zero for Conduct) but also the actors and crew driving past signs for “Meet Pamela”: with markers in the external world, the film creates its own reality.

  Truffaut makes little distinction between movie star, prop master, producer, stills photographer, stunt person, production manager, and screenwriter. This could be called a democratic vision, as all the performers are given equal prominence. Whether male or female, young or mature, each is fallible—capable of behaving childishly as well as generously. Truffaut’s tone is one of gentle tolerance rather than judgment.

  A Separation is another exquisite example of an ensemble piece that balances the viewer’s attention and sympathy among a number of characters. Asghar Farhadi’s 2011 Oscar-winning drama about two families in contemporary Tehran interweaves secular as well as devout individuals, male and female, wealthy and poor. The title refers not only to a divorce proceeding but also to formal distancing devices and to a fine line between fact and fabrication. As A. O. Scott wrote about the Iranian filmmaker’s fifth feature, “It is a rigorously honest movie about the difficulties of being honest, a film that tries to be truthful about the slipperiness of truth. It also sketches a portrait—perhaps an unnervingly familiar picture for American audiences—of a society divided by sex, generation, religion and class.”8

  Simin (Leila Hatami)—who wears blue jeans as well as a loose scarf over her red hair—asks the court for a divorce. She wants to leave Iran to ensure a better education for her daughter and has the necessary papers, but her husband, Nader (Peyman Moaadi), refuses to abandon his own Alzheimer’s-afflicted father. The couple’s daughter, Termeh (played by the director’s daughter Sarina Farhadi), cannot leave without her father’s permission and chooses to stay with him when Simin moves back to her parents’ home. Eventually, Nader hires devout Razieh (Sareh Bayat)—who is always accompanied by her little daughter, Somayeh—to care for his father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi); however, when he becomes incontinent, Razieh fears that cleaning or touching him is a sin. Razieh arranges for her unemployed husband, Hojjat (Shahab Hosseini), to take this job, but because his temper keeps getting him into jail or trouble, she returns to a situation that spirals out of control. A Separation opens on a dark screen that is difficult to decipher: as light moves repeatedly to the right, documents are being photocopied. The perspective is from inside a xerox machine, as we hear a mechanical sound accompanying each swipe of illumination (see clip). If these passports represent one’s official identity being reproduced, the rest of A Separation will explore how identity shifts under duress. For example, after the peaceful Nader is accused of murder, he charges Razieh with criminal neglect of his father. Farhadi introduces a self-conscious mise-en-scène, as the photocopier mimics how the camera frames, records, and creates reflections that will become the official signs of one’s identity.9

  The second scene is from the point of view of an unseen judge. A long take keeps Simin on the left and Nader on the right in sustained tension, each making a case for leaving or remaining in Iran. When Simin says she prefers that her daughter not be raised “in these circumstances,” the judge questions her phrase. Rather than elaborat
ing, she—and the film—wisely veer from political terms toward an implicit, indirect critique of the system. (In the New Yorker Anthony Lane succinctly called it “a democratic portrait of a theocratic world.”)10 This introduction prepares for—and rhymes with—the film’s last scene, which also takes place in the judge’s quarters. In a long take from the perspective of the magistrate, Termeh replies that she has chosen which parent to live with but tearfully hesitates to name the person. The camera and the viewer are placed in the position of evaluating the evidence to make a decision. After Simin and Nader leave the room, the end credits unfold on them waiting for their daughter’s choice. Termeh’s answer is never revealed. We therefore try to interpret the lengthy, unbroken shot of Nader on the right side of the hallway and Simin on the left, with people moving back and forth between them. Because a glass door and a vertical bar separate her from the camera, Simin recedes into the background. Nader’s physical proximity to Termeh (and to the viewer) invites the possibility that she chose to stay with her father. The film ends with the frustration of anticipation.