Hitchcock/Truffaut B
France USA (80 mi) 2015 d: Kent Jones
France USA (80 mi) 2015 d: Kent Jones
In America, you call
this man “Hitch.” In France, we call him
“Monsieur Hitchcock.” You respect him
because he shoots scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder. We respect him because he shoots scenes of
murder like scenes of love!
— François Truffaut, AFI Salute to Hitchcock, 1979
Certainly one of the more interesting “meetings of the
minds” to come along in the last half century took place in the sterile offices
of the Universal Studios of Hollywood for six days of discussion in August 1962
when 63-year old director Alfred Hitchcock agreed to sit down to an exhaustive
interview and critical analysis of literally every film he ever made with 30-year
old French film director François Truffaut, who had completed three films of
his own by that time, and was otherwise known as a former critic and editor of
the influential Cahiers du Cinéma
magazine. One of the rare books about
film made by film directors themselves, after accumulating 50-hours of tape, the
next four years were spent transcribing and editing the tapes into a book
format, where extra sessions were needed to cover the subsequent films
Hitchcock made, resulting in a book entitled Hitchcock/Truffaut published in France in 1966, released a year
later in an English translation. The
book nearly overnight changed the perception of Hitchcock, a cinematic virtuoso
who made his start during the Silent era before working in Hollywood, whose
films were instantly recognizable, known as the “Master of Suspense,” but
was viewed at the time more as a popular entertainer perhaps best known for his caricatured
round profile and perfectly enunciated “Good Evening” greeting while hosting
his own television show Alfred Hitchcock
Presents from 1955 to 1965, using television as the medium for a series of
blood curdling murder mysteries presented week by week, to not only a
world-class filmmaker, but in the running for the greatest director of all
time. Asked if he wanted to piece
together a documentary movie out of the surviving archival material from that
interview, Film Comment editor, occasional
Cahiers du Cinéma critic, and
programmer of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Kent Jones responded,
“Fuck yeah!” Broadening the idea of a
conversation on film, with directors discussing the works of other film
directors, Jones brought in contemporary filmmakers who have been successful in
their own right to offer their views on Hitchcock, including the exclusively male-centric
comments of American directors Wes Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, David Fincher, James
Gray, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, the ever reliable Martin Scorsese, Japanese
director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and from France, Olivier Assayas and Arnaud
Desplechin. It might have been nice to
hear the views of Jane Campion, for instance, as she is thoroughly rooted in
the psychology of Hitchcock, as evidenced by In the Cut
(2003).
One of the reasons the book is so successful is due to the
incessant hours of meticulous research and careful preparatory work put in by
Truffaut ahead of time, seen as a labor love where he invested as much thought
and effort to these interviews as any film he ever made, perhaps taking even
Hitchcock by surprise, as his knowledge of Hitchcock’s films elevated the
discussion to unforeseen heights, offering a candid view the public had never
seen before, opening a window into the very soul of Hitchcock. The book also differentiates the way artists
are perceived and written about in Europe, with a certain degree of reverence,
and how they are viewed in America, where disdain is commonplace and the
scrutiny more closely resembles “What have you done for me lately?” Truffaut had interviewed Hitchcock earlier
for Cahiers when he was in France
working on TO CATCH A THIEF (1955), but was disappointed in the vague and
rather unremarkable responses he gave when questioned about aspects of the
French “auteur” theory, convincing Truffaut that only a prolonged, more
in-depth interview was required. It all
started with a series of complimentary letters exchanged between the two men
beginning in June of 1962 when Truffaut proposed the idea to Hitchcock: “Since I have become a director myself, my
admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown
stronger and changed in nature. There
are many directors with a love of cinema, but what you possess is a love of
celluloid itself.” Hitchcock responded, “Dear Mister Truffaut, your letter
brought tears to my eyes, and I am very grateful to receive such a tribute from
you.” With American-born Helen Scott,
the daughter of an American journalist stationed in Paris acting as translator,
the two men blazed a trail through the Hitchcock lexicon, picking apart traces
of the Hitchcock film vocabulary that the public has become fascinated by,
discovering the secrets behind famous shots, like a particularly sinister
moment in Suspicion
(1941) when Cary Grant carries a glass of milk that may or may not be poisoned
up a flight of stairs, where Hitchcock had the audacity to place a small
lightbulb in the glass, adding a special glow of distinction, or unraveling
elusive meanings, like the influence of Hitchcock’s own Catholicism on films
like STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) or The
Wrong Man (1956), where Truffaut suggests the framing of the wrongfully
accused Henry Fonda, viewed only in silhouette, bowed silently in prayer in
front of an iconic portrait of Jesus, that dissolves into a facial close-up of
the actual guilty man, could only have been filmed by a Catholic.
To Truffaut’s credit, he did not rely upon production stills
that often never appeared onscreen, but instead borrowed 35mm prints from
studio archives, including stills from British titles not available in France, and
used them to provide shot-by-shot presentations of sequences, a vital strategy
in understanding the near mathematical precision used in Hitchcock’s calculated
editing strategy. The book is chalk full
of these accompanying photographs, along with handwritten notes by Hitchcock or
drawings conceived during the conception of the films, where Truffaut’s
somewhat literary approach brings these films to life with a more intimate
understanding. It also becomes clear
that in France, André Bazin, film theorist and co-founder of Cahiers du Cinéma in 1951, is considered
the father of film criticism, while Jean Renoir represents the epitome of French
filmmaking. But in Hollywood, a world
the Cahiers critics certainly revere,
no one is more admired than Hitchcock. Wes
Anderson describes his copy of the book is so worn out from constant use that
it is only held together by a rubber band, while various directors chime in
discussing their favorite Hitchcock moments, dissecting notable scenes, where
who better than Martin Scorsese could discuss the powerful effect of framing
and editing in the notorious shower scene of Psycho
(1960)? In discussing Vertigo
(1958), specifically the scene when Judy (icy blond Kim Novak) perfectly
resembles Madeline, the beautiful dead woman Scottie (James Stewart) is still
obsessed by, Hitchcock acknowledges “I indulged in a form of necrophilia.” In a particularly graphic moment, just as Scottie
is about to consummate his desires with her, he sends her back into the
bathroom because a single detail is wrong, as she is wearing her hair down
while Madeline wore hers up. “While he
was sitting waiting, he was getting an erection.” At this point Hitchcock politely asks
Truffaut to turn off the tape recorder so he can tell a story not for public
consumption that apparently only Truffaut and interpreter Helen Scott were
privy to hear. As all the principles are
now deceased, we will never know what the story was, but one can only imagine
the dirty little details. It is this
element that fascinates David Fincher, as Hitchcock’s films (like Buñuel’s) are
filled with his own personal fears and fetishes, as well as sexual daydreams,
where he made no attempt to hide his own psychological impulses from the
characters that appear onscreen, which is one of the cherished aspects of a
Hitchcock film.
Somewhat disappointing was discovering the interview was
never filmed, only taped, so there are really no new revelations in the
film. Most of the photographs taken at
the time have already been seen, but certainly one was initially hopeful to see
personality traits developing during the course of the interview, where
Truffaut tends to be eagerly enthusiastic, filled with an abundant supply of
energy, while Hitchcock is the picture of aristocratic taste and refinement,
never moving a muscle unnecessarily, where he is almost always portrayed in an economy of motion. His mordant sense of humor
comes through as he describes various scenes from some of his films, where he
obviously relishes how the audience is impacted from the exact precision utilized
to set up scenes. Scorsese was forever
affected by the aerial shots of Hitchcock, which he equates with the power of
God on high, as if He’s looking down upon us, including a terrifying airborne
shot of the town on fire in The Birds
(1963), where the camera literally descends from the clouds above, as if
casting ultimate judgement over all of us, where one of the most famous is a
spectacular camera shot from NOTORIOUS (1946) that begins with a high overview
of a party, as seen from the top of a banister of winding stairs, following the
sweep of the action with a crane shot descending into the crowded atmosphere on the floor below, where the
camera goes in search of the most important item in the room, where the crux of
the film depends on the discovery of this single detail, zeroing in on a couple
where after a number of shifting focuses we can identify an immaculately
dressed Ingrid Bergman fidgeting nervously, as the camera zooms in on an object
she’s holding in the palm of her hand, which is revealed to be a key in a
stunning, perfectly timed close-up. All
the drama is compacted into the tiniest space imaginable. While the film is heavy on Hitchcock, and
does at least consider the possibility of what might have happened if he had
loosened the authoritative grip over his style, but it has little to say about
Truffaut, failing to explore the director’s profound influence on him, where
it’s impossible to think of THE BRIDE WORE BLACK (1967) without the droll,
gallows humor so representative of a tongue-in-cheek Hitchcock. While it might have been nice to get Hitchcock’s
take on that film, instead he finds it incomprehensible to discover the
unscripted, improvisatory style Truffaut used with his actors in JULES AND JIM
(1962), as that’s simply something he would never allow. Also missing is the considerable influence of
Alma Reville, Hitchcock’s longtime wife who literally had her hand in every
Hitchcock film ever made, was his closest collaborator and most trusted ally,
but is hardly ever mentioned, which in this modern era seems like a criminal oversight. So while the book remains a classic for film
lovers, something that will be revered forever, the same can’t be said for this
film, as the director’s comments aren’t particularly memorable, though as a
trip down memory lane it’s good fun and amusingly interesting, following the
example of Two in the
Wave (2011), but never rises to a level of scholarship or essential
viewing.
