Hitchcock/Truffaut **** (2015, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater) – Movie Review

Alfred Hitchcock: ‘Silent pictures are the pure motion picture form. There’s no need to abandon the technique of the pure motion picture, the way it was abandoned when sound came in.’

In director Kent Jones’s 2015 French-American documentary film Hitchcock/Truffaut, ten well-known film-makers discuss François Truffaut’s 1966 book Le Cinéma Selon Alfred Hitchcock [Cinema According to Alfred Hitchcock] and how it influenced them and their work. Kent Jones’s documentary is film buff bliss, with lots of great clips and footage, and much intelligent revealing chat from the talking heads.

Of the ten, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher and Richard Linklater stand out as the most articulate and interesting. If you’re new or newish to Hitchcock, their comments are essential. Hitchcock buffs might find new insights rare but that’s not to say that this still isn’t a great movie-goers’ experience.

You could complain of the American and male bias of the documentary. The English classics of the Thirties are virtually ignored, with most of the emphasis on Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo, and all the discussing film-maker talking heads are male and mostly American.

On the other hand nobody is going to complain about the meticulousness of the research. Film-maker Kent Jones has had an exhaustive trawl through all the available footage, and presents the best of it in the best possible condition. Don’t those old movies just look great restored like this and on a big screen! Thank you, Mr Jones. Oh, yes, and thank you, Mr Hitchcock.

Kent Jones sifted over the 27 hours of the precious recorded material from the Alfred Hitchcock/François Truffaut interview and the only other niggle is that the documentary is way too short at 79 minutes.

As this documentary amply shows, Hitchcock and his movies just seem to get better and better as time goes by. Hitchcock seems so relevant and modern. He’s the grand-daddy of film thrillers. He dared pursue his own obsessions and fantasies on the big screen in personal cinema that resonated and resonates with the rest of us. He put his daydreams (or nightmares) on film. Sounds so darned easy, doesn’t it? Any way, he was real. A real one-off.

Alas there were no cameras running in the eight days in 1962  in LA when Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock at his offices at Universal Studios, with the help of his (somewhat struggling) trusted interpreter, Helen Scott. Two film directors, and no film! Fortunately, there’s the sound recording, though, and plenty of stills thanks to the presence of a famous photographer of the day. Hitchcock takes changes and poses confidently. For all his celebrity and apparent self-confidence, Truffaut seems strangely nervous and junior with Hitch. It’s quite touching really. He knows he is in the presence of the Master.

Yes, there are no surprises. Really, it’s all in the book, the grand-daddy of film books, a must-read for any film buff. It’s been in print since it first came out – it still is – with a revised version in 1983.

Hitchcock/Truffaut is narrated by Bob Balaban, who co-starred with Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

The documentary features reflections from directors James Gray, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Richard Linklater.

Kathryn Bigelow and Jane Campion were asked to speak but Bigelow said she was ‘too shy’ and Campion said: ‘I have absolutely nothing to say about Alfred Hitchcock.’

There is also an appealing score by Jeremiah Bornfield.

Co-writer/director Kent Jones became the director of programming of the 51st New York Film Festival after Richard Peña stepped down in 2012 but Jones stepped down in 2019 after making his narrative feature debut with Diane (2018).

When it’s out on DVD on 25 April 2016, it will be a must for every collection.

The films of Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock Movie Cameos

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/