'Hitchcock Truffaut': Review

Dir. Kent Jones. US, 2015, 79 mins.

A little slice of film buff-heaven, Hitchcock Truffautlooks at the influential eight-day meeting which took place in Universal Studios, Hollywood, in 1962 between the two giants of cinema, the resulting book (Cinema According to Hitchcock), and the influence it has had on a generation of film-makers, from Martin Scorsese to Arnaud Desplechin, Wes Anderson, and David Fincher, all interviewed here.

Truffaut venerated Hitch, telling him “you are one of the world’s greatest directors”.

Directed by Kent Jones  (Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows and A Letter to Elia), Hitchcock Truffautis of undeniable appeal to those with even a passing interest in the history of cinema. There’s nothing rarified about the air the project breathes, either – this features passionate people who have made their own iconic cinema talking about two giants of our film age with an enthusiasm which is infectious.  The Truffaut, and particularly Hitchcock, ‘brand names’ may attract an audience beyond the film-spotting crowd, and festivals and TV exposure seems assured. There’s much more insight to take away fromHitchcock Truffaut than the two Hitchcock dramas of 2013, Hitchcock and The Girl, combined.

Jones argues that the interviews between Truffaut, 30 at the time and with The 400 Blows and Jules Et Jim already under his belt, and 63-year-old Hitchcock were influential in establishing the credentials of the British-born director as an auteur and moving him away from the shockmeister-shelf. In 1962, Hitchcock was a one-man franchise (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, etc), but Truffaut venerated Hitch, telling him “you are one of the world’s greatest directors”.

Jones mixes interview footage with present day giants of cinema – Olivier Assayas, James Gray, Paul Schrader and Peter Bogdanovich also feature – with pristine clips from films ranging from The 400 Blows to I Confess, Vertigo, Psycho and beyond to show the parallels between the two men (as well as the significant differences). The actual interview between the two giants of cinema was never filmed, just taped – over 27 hours - and we hear them speak again alongside black-and-white photographs of their sessions (which crucially include the interpreter Helen Scott, as Truffaut did not speak English).

Interestingly, Jones looks at Truffaut and his search for a father figure, contrasting it with Hitchcock’s standing in the US at that time and the perception of him as being very commercial; both men needed each other, he says.Vertigo and Psycho get a deeper examination here, films which are known by all ages; the men, touchingly, stayed friends for the rest of their lives. Hitchcock’s amusing attitudes towards actors also get an airing. It’s this kind of detail and human touch which makes this small, lovely project, which premiered at Cannes classics, into a film with a wider appeal and not just an academic examination which preaches to the converted.

Production companies:  Artline Films, Cohen Media Group

International sales:  Cohen Media Group,  

Producer: Olivier Mille, Charles S. Cohen

Screenplay: Kent Jones, Serge Toubiana

Cinematography: Nick Bentgen, Daniel Cowan, Eric Gautier, Mihai Malaimare Jr, Lisa Rinzler, Genta Tamaki

Editor:  Rachel Reichman

Featuring: Wes Anderson, Paul Schrader, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Kyoshi Kurasawa, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Arnaud Desplechin

Hitchcock/Truffaut review

Kent Jones’s enjoyable documentary – presented in the festival’s Cannes Classics section – is a tribute to a pioneering act of cinephilia, cinema criticism and living ancestor worship. François Truffaut’s remarkable interview series with Alfred Hitchcock, conducted over a week at his offices at Universal Studios in 1962, was a journalistic enterprise which changed the way cinema was thought of as an art form. Nowadays, a young film-maker might envisage a similar exercise in terms of a film or cable TV series – but what Truffaut finally produced was text: a fascinatingly illustrated book, like the record of a supremely important cultural-diplomatic mission. Hitchcock was already famous as a director in a way that few directors were (partly as a result of his TV celebrity), but Truffaut insisted on his importance as an artist and, by this token, on the auteurist importance of directors generally.

Later, Peter Bogdanovich (interviewed here) would do the same with Orson Welles, but perhaps without quite achieving the compression and intensity of this primal encounter. Kent Jones’s film about this event elicits brilliant contributions from modern directors, reflecting on this interview. It includes James Gray, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, David Fincher – and from France (perhaps representing the “Truffaut” team) there is Arnaud Desplechin and also Olivier Assayas – in whose fluency and eloquence, incidentally, there is something of the ingenuous and idealistic spirit of Truffaut himself.

Rather in the spirit of the original interview, the emphasis is on Hitchcock’s work, rather than Truffaut’s, but the master’s work is seen through the lens of Truffaut, whose brilliance as a critic shines through. Jones’s film takes us through what their childhoods had in common: a terrifying experience in prison. Truffaut was looking for a father figure – he found one in the great André Bazin of Cahiers du Cinéma (perhaps Hitchcock was closer to being an inspirational teacher than a father) – but it was Hitchcock who freed Truffaut and whom Truffaut, in turn, wanted to free from his reputation as a mere showman.