Providence is a film which is self-conscious about cinema as medium; for William F. Van Wert, it is 'a meta-film, a film about the making of films, a work of art about the fabricating of art works'. Providence was Alain Resnais's first English-language film. Providence is in two parts: one longer, initial night section and one shorter day part. In an interview about Providence, Resnais specifies that he sees his films as 'un réceptacle de l'imaginaire ou de l'inconscient du spectateur'. In interview, David Mercer suggests that in the first section of Providence there are three levels of reality: that of nightmare, that of literary creation and the imagination, and that of the material reality of the elderly writer. Marsha Kinder, comparing Providence to Robert Altman's Three Women, sees Resnais's film 'dissolving the boundaries between fantasy and ordinary reality'.