Day for Night · reception & legacy

How Day for Night has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A hit from the start — it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and BAFTA's Best Film — and it's only grown into the definitive love letter to moviemaking, the film every 'movies about movies' list is measured against.

What's debated

The eternal fight it sparked is Godard's: after seeing it he called Truffaut a liar for romanticising film sets, igniting the letter-war that ended their friendship — so fans still argue whether it's an honest portrait of filmmaking or a beautiful, cosy fantasy of one.

Its footprint

Its title put the film-set trick of shooting 'day for night' into the wider vocabulary, and Truffaut's line that films are 'more harmonious than life' gets quoted anywhere people wax romantic about cinema; the Godard–Truffaut breakup letters it provoked are legendary cinephile lore in their own right.

Where it stands

A permanent canon fixture and cinephile comfort food — the warm-hearted counterweight to 8½ in the movies-about-movies pantheon, and a reliable gateway drug into Truffaut.

Named by the director

Influences François Truffaut has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Citizen Kane (1941) — Truffaut built the recurring dream of a boy stealing Citizen Kane lobby stills from his own childhood, and long named Welles's film as the one that made him want to make movies.
• Lillian and Dorothy Gish — Truffaut opens the film with an on-screen dedication to the Gish sisters, saluting the silent-era acting tradition the film honours.