Jacqueline Bisset

Valentina Cortese

Dani

Alexandra Stewart

Jean-Pierre Aumont

Jean Champion

Jean-Pierre Léaud

François Truffaut

Niké Arrighi

Nathalie Baye

Maurice Seveno

David Markham

Bernard Ménez

Gaston Joly

Zénaïde Rossi

Xavier Saint-Macary

Marc Boyle

Walter Bal

Jean-François Stévenin

Pierre Zucca

Martine Barraqué

Marcel Berbert

Yann Dedet

Georges Delerue

Graham Greene

Ernest Menzer

Claude Miller

Jean Panisse

Marie Poitevin

Christophe Vesque

Pierre-William Glenn

Suzanne Schiffman

Jean-Louis Richard

Damien Lanfranchi

Monique Dury

Fernande Hugi

Malou Rossignol

Thi-Loan Nguyen

Antoine Bonfanti

René Levert

Harrik Maury

Rémy Julienne

Dominique Chapuis

Jean-Francis Gondre

Eva Sereny

Christine Pellé

Christian Lentretien

Alex Maineri

Roland Thénot

Comedy

Drama

La Nuit américaine

Les Films du Carrosse

Productions et Éditions Cinématographiques Françaises

Produzione Intercontinentale Cinematografica (PIC)

France

Italy

CinemaSerf

It's quite hard to succinctly review this Truffaut comedy - there is just so much going on. Essentially, Jacqueline Bisset ("Julie") is brought to Nice to star in a movie about a British woman who is married to a Frenchman. She comes to meet his family and promptly falls in love with her husband's father and so leaves him to shack up with his dad. It turns out, as the production progresses that the producer "Bertrand" (Jean Champion) and the director "Ferrand" (Truffaut himself) have to deal with an whole gamut of issues as the cast - all assembled in a small hotel - come with more baggage than the Queen Mary. "Julie" is recovering from a failed marriage and a nervous breakdown; "Séverine" (Valentina Cortese) is having an affair - but with a bottle, and Jean-Pierre Léaud steals the film as the petulant and high-maintenance "Alphonse". It reminded me a little of Fellini's "8½" from ten years earlier, another behind the scenes as a movie is made story - but it could hardly be more different. Here, the cast and the crew could not have been more dysfunctional - a trait of the creative, I believe - but in the end somehow or other there is a chance the film might actually get made! It is good fun, and the odd contribution from Jean-Pierre Aumont help keep this 2 hour extravaganza moving along entertainingly. Georges Delerue's jaunty score compliments the lovely open-ness of this production, and I really enjoyed this film.