Retrospective Screening of this groundbreaking film followed by a Conversation with Jacqueline Bisset and Leonard Maltin About the film: Day for Night chronicles the production of Je Vous Présente Paméla (Meet Pamela, or literally I introduce you to Pamela), a clichéd melodrama starring aging screen icon Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Aumont), former diva Séverine (Valentina Cortese), young heartthrob Alphonse (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and a British actress, Julie Baker (Jacqueline Bisset), who is recovering from both a nervous breakdown and the controversy over her marriage to her much older doctor. The original French title is La Nuit américaine (”American Night”), the French name for the filmmaking process whereby sequences filmed outdoors in daylight are shot with a filter over the camera lens or also using film stock balanced for tungsten (indoor) light and underexposed (or adjusted during post-production) to appear as if they are taking place at night. In English, the technique is called day for night.
It premiered out of competition at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film the following year.
