Hollywood obsessed with itself? Stop the presses.
That naval-gazing, though, the love for the process of movie-making, has produced some of the most delightful movies ever made: Singin' in the Rain, to name one. Here are three lesser known, all available on DVD, that feature moviemaking in a leading role.
Sullivan's Travels (1941): Directed by the great Preston Sturges, it's the story of a director who wants to make a movie about the poor, but knows nothing about the subject. Solution: road trip in the guise of a hobo (to use a term of the era).
Day for Night (1973): Truffaut's love letter to the movies, with Truffaut playing the director of the film-within-a-film, an enterprise replete with chaos, laughs, tenderness.
Lost in La Mancha (2002): A documentary about Terry Gilliam's attempt to film a movie called The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. It turned out to be an impossible dream -- the film was never finished.
written on Wednesday Aug 8, 2007
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