One of the propelling impulses still is the need to make ordered and comprehensible a world that is disordered and incomprehensible. It's not the only impulse but it is an important one, and it has always seemed to me that one of the most moving aspects of the work of any artist is this ability to continue to function when, deep down, he must suspect an ultimate futility.

This suspicion is apparent throughout the best work of François Truffaut…. It's not the final disposition of things that is important, Truffaut's films keep saying, but the adventures and the risks en route, the mad and often doomed challenges that are accepted in living….

[Day for Night] is Truffaut's love letter to people who, for one reason or another, choose to live their lives halfway between reality and illusion. It's the highly comic and affecting chronicle of the members...