French toast

Following the French takeover this year with seven British Film Academy awards for The Artist, you have to go back more than 20 years to find the last major Gallic assault on the BAFTAs.

That was 1990 when Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Gerard Depardieu as the swashbuckling hero with a big nose, scooped four of the prestigious masks - but none in the most prestigious categories.

For that, you need to scroll back almost 20 years before that, to 1973, when another French movie which took us behind the scenes of cinema itself, had a big night in the West End.

We're talking, of course, Francois Truffaut's glorious La Nuit Americaine (pictured below), much better known as Day for Night, which won three top BAFTAs, including Film, Director and Supporting Actress (Valentina Cortesa).

The film also featured a charming supporting role for an aging matinee idol - shades of Jean Dujardin - played by the late Jean-Pierre Cassel, whose son Vincent can be seen in a new film release, A Dangerous Method.