Before there was the internet or home video, film books played an important role in a movie fan’s life. You couldn’t just watch any movie any time you wanted, or search online for information about actors and directors.
I was an adolescent movie enthusiast when I got a copy of “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” probably as a birthday present from my parents. The book’s structure was as simple as its title: One long conversation between the great Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock and his devoted fan, the great French director Francois Truffaut.
For people who get addicted to film, Hitchcock is the gateway drug. In his movies, you can see that someone actually put the thing together. Someone placed the camera in interesting angles, created an unusual soundtrack, carried a sardonic attitude about the plotlines.
And now here was a book in which Hitchcock talked about how he did all that — with copious pictures to illustrate, too. I pored over it, looking for the tricks of the trade and the stories behind the stories.
Lots of people pored over the book, as we learn in the documentary “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” directed by film critic Kent Jones. Yes, this is a film devoted to a book about films — although there’s more to it than that.
Using the audiotapes from Truffaut’s 1962 interview sessions with Hitchcock (the book was published in 1966), plus some classic photographs taken from those interviews, Jones is able to make the meeting come to life.
Truffaut had been a film critic before making films himself, and he championed the idea that Hitchcock and other Hollywood filmmakers were more interesting artists than they’d been given credit for. The Hitchcock book would confirm this idea.
There are new interviews with a passel of directors, all of whom were smitten with the book. Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, and Martin Scorsese are among the society of filmmakers who cherished their copies.
This is a terrific idea for a documentary, although I’m admittedly the target audience. Curiously, the film wanders away from the Truffaut book in favor of extended appreciations of Hitchcock’s artistry, with specific focus on “Vertigo,” “Psycho” and “The Birds.”
Some of these appreciations are quite smart, and clips help define what Hitchcock was doing. But they tend to lead us away from the book.
Maybe there simply wasn’t enough about the book to make an 80-minute documentary. Still, some great stuff here for devotees — and even if the film loses its focus, it will make a terrific introduction to Hitchcock’s work for newcomers.
“Hitchcock/Truffaut” (3 stars)
A documentary look at the creation of a landmark 1966 film book consisting of a conversation between directors Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut. Using the original audiotapes (and new interviews with directors such as David Fincher and Wes Anderson), filmmaker Kent Jones captures the spirit of the book, even if the documentary strays into generalized observations about Hitchcock’s art.
Rating: PG-13, for violence
Showing: Grand Illusion theater
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