By Mary Shaffer
and Jerry Bunin
The Tribune

With "The Player" (1992), Robert Altman joins a long list of filmmakers who've turned their cameras on themselves and their industry, producing some of the best films ever and some of our personal favorites.

In fact, if we can convince you to see any movie you've never heard of, it should be "And Now My Love" (1975) by Claude LeLouche, more widely known for "A Man and A Woman" (1966).

Like "Cinema Paradiso" (1989) and "The Player," "And Now My Love" belongs in a special subgroup: movies whose storyline ends leaving us convinced the main character will soon make the film we just watched.

"And Now My Love" transforms a simple romance into a story about the history of filmmaking and the 20th Century by tracing two families who produce children destined to meet and fall passionately and permanently in love.

The story begins as a silent black-and-white film at the turn-of-the-century, adding sound and color as it passes through both world wars, pornography and television commercials.

Both times we saw this film, the audience cheered. We can't understand why it is so hard to find. Fortunately, other films about the movies are more readily available on video.

Most are like "The Player," sardonic comedies about the war between creativity and commercial success and the prices people pay for finding and losing fame.

The memory of past stardom illuminates the wonderfully twisted tale told in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), Billy Wilder's classic melodrama narrated by a dead man.

Real silent film star Gloria Swanson plays faded silent screen legend Norma Desmond, "still waving proudly to a parade that had long since passed her by."

For 20 years, she has withdrawn into the protection of her "grim Sunset (Boulevard) castle," surrounded by photographs of herself as a star and clinging to her illusion that the public and industry want her back.

Disillusioned, jobless, young screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) enters her driveway by chance and is enticed to edit the overblown script she wrote for her great "return" to the screen.

Gillis initially seizes the opportunity to avoid creditors. But after moving into her decrepit mansion, he is reduced to being a gigolo and imprisoned by Desmond's fantasy and his own inability to admit failure.

When he finally decides to leave, he pays the ultimate price and Desmond gets a final moment before the newsreel camera's lights to woo "those wonderful people out there in the dark."

For the darkness of your home, we also recommend Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night" (1973) and Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man" (1980), two films about the art of moviemaking and directors who love what they do and will do anything to do it right.

In "Day for Night," director Truffaut plays a director making a movie about a woman falling in love with her husband's father.

But the real love affair is between the imaginary crew making the film and their craft, and the real story is how the actors' lives influence the characters they play.

Truffaut shows how the chaos of daily life blends into the chaos of movie making.

The director he plays is constantly moving between crises: writing last minute dialogue, watching new film clips, editing yesterday's clips, directing close-ups and crowd scenes and approving everything from special effects and props to make-up and costumes.

"Making a film is like a stagecoach journey," Truffaut's character says. "At the start you hope for a beautiful trip and shortly you wonder if you'll make it to your destination at all."

The film's title refers to a camera filter that makes scenes shot in daylight look like nighttime, but the movie's main trick is showing how the director motivates his actors, drawing on their personal problems to bring their characters to life.

"There's more harmony in films than in life," Truffaut tells an actor. "People like us are only happy when we're working."

Like "Day For Night," "The Stunt Man" often leaves us wondering if the scene we are watching is the one the characters are living or part of the movie they are making.

Steve Railsback plays a Vietnam veteran who runs from the law to become a stunt man on a movie set run by Peter O'Toole, an omnipotent director manipulating his actors, their characters and the audience.

A typical sequence begins with Railsback dancing on the wing of a World War I bi-plane high above the ground. Suddenly, the plane dives and Railsback clings to the wing in close-up; but when the camera pulls back, we see the plane suspended a few feet from the ground and Railsback blown backwards by a giant wind machine.

"If God could do the tricks that we can do," O'Toole says, "he'd be a happy man."

These films show how the tricks are done without destroying the illusion and that's the real magic of the movies.

Mary Shaffer works at Cal Poly. Jerry Bunin is a Telegram-Tribune reporter. They saw "Day for Night" on their first date.

• 1925 "Sherlock, Jr."
• 1928 "The Last Command"
• 1932 "The Lost Squadron"
• 1932 "What Price Hollywood?"
• 1937/54 "A Star is Born"
• 1941 "Sullivan's Travels"
• 1950 "Sunset Boulevard"
• 1952 "The Star"
• 1952 "The Bad and the Beautiful"
• 1952 "Singin' in the Rain"
• 1954 "The Barefoot Contessa"
• 1955 "The Big Knife"
• 1958 "The Goddess"
• 1963 "8-1/2"
• 1965 "Inside Daisy Clover"
• 1970 "Alex in Wonderland"
• 1973 "Day for Night"
• 1975 "And Now My Love"
• 1975 "The Day of the Locust"
• 1976 "The Last Tycoon"
• 1980 "The Stunt Man"
• 1980 "Stardust Memories"
• 1981 "S.O.B."
• 1985 "The Purple Rose of Cairo"
• 1987 "Hollywood Shuffle"
• 1987 "Good Morning, Babylon"
• 1989 "Cinema Paradiso"
• 1989 "The Big Picture"
• 1991 "Barton Fink"
• 1991 "Guilty by Suspicion"
• 1992 "The Player"