Hitchcock/Truffaut

Doc about the famous week-long sit-down between François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock, with some contemporary auteurs explaining the interview and subsequent book's importance

Film Review by Ben Nicholson | 17 Feb 2016
Film title: Hitchcock/Truffaut
Director: Kent Jones
Starring: Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader
Release date: 4 Mar

Half a century ago, Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut sat down together for a week to discuss the former’s career in its entirety. The result formed the basis of Truffaut’s monograph, which was intended to convince the reading public that The Master of Suspense was not just an entertainer, but an artist. Truffaut accomplished his mission and the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut is Kent Jones' cinematic echo of the book, reigniting that original discourse from years in the future.

"The function of pure cinema, as we well know, is the placing of a few pieces of film together to create a single idea,” says Hitch in just one snippet of vast archival material. It’s interspersed with talking head interviews with filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson (ironically) explaining Hitchcock’s brilliant preference to visuals over dialogue with evident enthusiasm and affection. The ‘placing of film’ is covered terrifically, but the ideas remain regrettably out of focus. However, it doesn’t hamstring what is still a fascinating subject matter and an interesting companion to the original work.


Hitchcock/Truffaut screens at Glasgow Film Festival: 25 Feb, GFT, 3.45pm

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