“Hitchcock/Truffaut”: the interview that was in the history of film – the Observer

There is only one time frustrating in the documentary "Hitchcock/Truffaut", american critic Kent Jones. the Is when Truffaut asks Alfred Hitchcock if he considers himself a filmmaker, a catholic and the director of "Rear Window," asks you to turn off the recorder, to be able to respond to "off". The film revives the long and the nitty gritty interview (500 questions in total) made by the former critic of "Cahiers du Cinéma" and young, but already brilliant French director to your elderly and devoted british colleague, during one week in the summer of 1962, in his office of Universal studios, and that resulted in the book "Hitchcock/Truffaut" (also known as "Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock ", or "Hitchbook"), published in 1966, and it is a delight film buff about a pioneering conference. It mixes the great journalism film, cinephilia strict but always enthusiastic, and the tribute of homage to the artistic in life, an admiration without servility.

[See the "trailer" "Hitchcock/Truffaut]

The book, one of the most important ever published about film, was decisive for, in the cinema, the critical and passionate about cinema, the perception that we then had of Alfred Hitchcock, at the time already famous and synonymous with a certain type of movies, it was changed. And it was to be a lord fat and something patusco that cultivated the "suspense" like no other and transformed the fear into a great show, for a great "author" whose films were more complex and full of implications and meanings (cultural, moral, psychological, sexual) that were, technically elaboradíssimos and stylistically unparalleled, and unique in the way that would take all of this in a wrapping formal commercial cinema and the masses. These masses of viewers that Hitchcock had said she wanted to "play" as a huge and unique musical instrument, whether it was in a cinema in the US, Japan or India.

[See director Kent Jones talk about the documentary]

One of the key aspects that François Truffaut detects and highlights in the films of Hitchcock, and that this recognises and comments in the interview, is the large load that they bring the silent film (the time in which the director of "Psycho" has begun the work), how they are designed and guided by an idea essentially visual, camera, where everything else is born. Hitchcock comes to the lament that the sound has replaced completely silent, this time of "pure cinema", and is one of many contemporary directors that Kent Jones was listening to, says that the films of Hitchcock, viewed without sound, can see almost as perfectly as if it was turned on. (Among those who contribute here with opinions complimentary and relevant analyses about the book and Hitchcock, include Martin Scorsese, Olivier Assayas, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Paul Schrader, or Kiyoshi Kurosawa).

[See Martin Scorsese in the excerpt of the documentary]

Although the intention was to put Hitchcock talking about his films, it was inevitable that the conversation, being led by two directors of different nationalities, generations and different backgrounds, played also in the films of Truffaut. And it’s fun to hear the master british opine that I would have taken the dialogue to a sequence of "The 400 Blows" that you describes, and that Kent Jones includes in the documentary in order to understand better the two points of view. the (it Was in this interview that Hitchcock said that actors "should be treated like cattle", to emphasise that he was the only lord on board of your shoot). The movie benefits greatly from the use of the sound of the original recordings (for this, Helen Scott, a friend of Truffaut, who translated the conversation, also is the main character), and of the photos taken by Philippe Halsman.

of Course, clouds of jargon and theoretical filmológico and neat, "Hitchcock/Truffaut" is part of the immense, diverse, and rich canon hitchcockiano, and to be a partner for the film of the book that resulted from the trip made by François Truffaut to Hollywood for 54 years, to go listen to Alfred Hitchcock "as Oedipus went to the Oracle".