Kent Jones’s documentary 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. What Truffaut finally produced was text: a fascinatingly
illustrated book, like the record of a supremely important cultural-diplomatic mission. 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, Arnaud Desplechin
and Olivier Assayas. 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. This documentary takes us through Hitchcock’s supreme reverence for the purity
of silent cinema and the way his subversion and his hyperrealism and surrealism were smuggled into the
realist tradition of commercial cinema.
Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian
