The above quote, from Gastby but appropriate for our discussion of Day for Night, is pretty perfect for Truffaut’s thesis. The dream scenes really stuck out to me… I loved the fact that we journey inside the director’s head for three vignettes and discover his inner psychological desires. For Truffaut, a cinematic masterpiece is his green light. And when we finally discover that the child is walking towards Citizen Kane posters (and struggles to reach for the posters of the masterpiece), we see that Truffaut desperately wants to make a piece of art that will allow us to see the world through his lens. I think it’s interesting to compare a man like Gatsby (a man made entirely from his own imagination) and Truffaut who is creating an entire world from his own imagination.

So to jump to a new topic regarding idealogical cinema apparatus – perhaps Baudry is completely right. All film is idealogical. There is no way for a film to be real. Truffaut confirms this with his behind the scenes look at the filmmaking process. But can’t life be purely idealogical? Can’t film not offer a better glimpse at reality than some people who choose to be alternative versions of themselves? Or is the alternative versions of ourselves merely alternate realities we create and thus all of reality is true verisimilitude, but art can never accomplish this due to the means of artistic communication may it be a brush, a guitar, or a camera. I’ve often found film to be far more educational regarding human interactions and communication styles than real life. Film paints life in an understandable way. I love that film is idealogical. It is a fantasy a collaborative group of artists create to help explain reality (when the film is trying to recreate life through a story).

I think all of us, may it be Gatsby, Truffaut, or anyone in the class, is in some way an idealogical version of themselves. That is how we see the world. It is natural. What Baudry argues is that film takes our idealogical lens and turns it into reality… Perhaps that’s the greatest mystery of them all. We all want to attain what is out of reach. We all want to secure our idealogical vision for our future. Sometimes it is so close we can hardly fail to grasp it. Film is our way of dissecting that inner quest – a quest that through cinema can bring us all together over a common ground, whether we read the film in similar ways or not.