HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (Kent Jones). 80 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (December 4). See listings. Rating: NNNN
In 1962, director and former film critic François Truffaut went to Hollywood for a week of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, a director he worshipped. The result was a wonderful book, Hitchcock/Truffaut, which became a touchstone for young filmmakers.
Half a century later, critic and programmer Kent Jones revisits the interviews and examines the book’s impact in a tight, vivid documentary of the same name, intercutting audio recordings of the conversations with testimonials from contemporary filmmakers and the occasional film clip.
The result is a crackling examination of the creative process, and not just Hitchcock’s and/or Truffaut’s. What cineaste wouldn’t want to hear Martin Scorsese dissect camera placement or listen to David Fincher and James Gray bliss out on lighting strategies and aspect ratios?
One minor point: I couldn’t help but notice that the roster of interviewees seems a little narrow, with Jones talking only to male directors. Nothing against the likes of Arnaud Desplechin, Wes Anderson, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Olivier Assayas, but surely Kathryn Bigelow, for instance, could have been included in a project like this. Perhaps it was a scheduling thing.
