By Robert Goldrich

In 1962, Francois Truffaut, then age 30, wrote to Alfred Hitchcock, requesting that the British director sit down with him for a series of interviews over the course of a week. At the time critic cum filmmaker Truffaut had directed just three features but they included the iconic 400 Blows and Jules and Jim. Hitchcock was more than twice his age and in 1962 was putting the final editing touches on The Birds, his 48th theatrical motion picture.

From these interviews, which were audio recorded, sprung not only a friendship between the two filmmakers but also a Truffaut-authored book about auteur Hitchcock. Titled “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” it came to be regarded as one of the most important cinema books ever, shedding light on Hitchcock’s work and helping to firmly establish his standing as a true original artist. Cinephiles, aspiring filmmakers and accomplished directors have used the book as a reference over the years and still do.

While a critic at Cahiers du cinema, Truffaut first met Hitchcock in 1954. But it was their conversations over that fateful week in 1962 that proved historic in terms of changing the perception of cinema. Many cite the book as being pivotal in getting a filmmaker to be seen as the true creator of his or her film through mastery of the mise en scène. Hitchcock/Truffaut went on to have a profound influence on the next generation of filmmakers and beyond.

Among those who loved and admired the book was Kent Jones who directed and wrote (with Serge Toubiana) the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut which debuted earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival where it was nominated for the Golden Eye Award. The documentary was screened this past weekend (Saturday, November 7) at the AFI Fest in Hollywood, Calif., and will be released theatrically through Cohen Media Group on December 4.

With narration by Bob Balaban, the documentary tells the story of the relationship between Hitchcock and Truffaut, contains audiotape excerpts, photographs taken during the week’s interviews in 1962, and taps into contemporary filmmakers–including Martin Scorsese, James Gray, David Fincher, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Kyoshi Kurosawa, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader–who express their love for Hitchcock’s work and reflect on the book’s value.

Jones is an internationally recognized writer and filmmaker. He is the author of several books of criticism, has been a regular contributor to Film Comment magazine for many years, and was selected as a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.

He has worked with Scorsese throughout the years on numerous documentaries. Jones was the co-writer of Scorsese’s survey of Italian cinema, My Voyage to Italy, the writer and director of the 2007 film Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows which Scorsese produced and narrated, and the co-writer and director with Scorsese of the Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning 2010 film, A Letter to Elia. Scorsese and Jones are currently at work on a follow-up to My Voyage to Italy.

Jones also co-wrote Desplechin’s Jimmy P.,starring Benicio del Toro and Mathieu Amalric, which screened in competition at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival.

SHOOT caught up with Jones in Hollywood during the AFI Fest.

SHOOT: How did you become involved in this documentary?

Jones: There was an attempt to do a film based on the audiotapes. It was going to be made by another filmmaker. But that gentleman passed away and the idea was proposed to me. I immediately said, “Yes.” I went back to the book, got the tapes and jumped into the project. I wanted to have contemporary filmmakers in this film [Fincher, Scorsese, et al] because we were dealing with a conversation about filmmaking between two great filmmakers. It just made sense for me to extend the conversation to other filmmakers and they were all amenable to that. Truffaut’s book and Hitchcock’s work had an incredible influence on them.

SHOOT: Truffaut and Hitchcock became friends. What was it about Truffaut that Hitchcock connected with, that made their series of interviews so special.

Jones: An emotional trust formed between them. It was a younger director saying to an older director, “Hey, you matter to me–and you matter to a lot of people.”

And the older director wondered if he was an artist. The younger director said, “Yes, you are”–and these interviews and the book bear that out. It’s an exchange that Hitchcock couldn’t have had with a critic. But it’s a question he could ask of another filmmaker like Truffaut.

But Hitchcock didn’t totally open up to Truffaut. There were some things he kept close to the vest. He did that “all actors are cattle” thing, which is a kind of smokescreen. But they still connected and there was an honest exchange based on mutual trust. I think Hitchcock was impressed by an internationally renowned filmmaker like Truffaut taking that much time on this project–the research, the preparation, the interviews, authoring a book. Truffaut put so much energy into this project–the energy that he would have put into two feature films. And that energy paid off. The book had the desired effect and became an influential work in the world of cinema.

SHOOT: What was the biggest creative challenge that this documentary posed to you as a filmmaker?

Jones: Obviously making a documentary based on audiotapes is tricky. There was a lot of thought about what should we do besides clips from different Hitchcock movies. You can only do so much of that. Somebody brought up the possibility of animation. I thought about that but it’s just not my thing. I’m also not into recreations in the style of the time period. You see a lot of that now.

What I wanted to do was create an energy which binds the images, that carries things along instead of just doing visual filler. The [contemporary] director interviews provided some great engaging input. I told my editor Rachel Reichman early on that I wanted something that feels as tight and compressed as that scene at the beginning of The Social Network where all these different things are going on at the same time–putting the website together, the party. There’s an energy that brings everything together.

SHOOT: A good portion of the conversations with contemporary directors seemed to be about Vertigo. Was that actually the case and if so, why?

Jones: Well, there was a lot of discussion about other films such as The Wrong Man, Rope, Notorious. Some of that made it into the documentary. Vertigo was such an unusual movie, though, in which Hitchcock reveals a lot. He goes into territory in that movie which most directors don’t touch in a lifetime. Then there’s the disappointment of Vera Miles being cast but then [due to her pregnancy] having to be replaced by Kim Novak.

And there was the additional dimension of the movie being a commercial failure which for Hitchcock was a huge thing because he is a filmmaker who thought a lot about the audience.

The directors also referred to Vertigo being a film that wasn’t available for many years. There was no easy access to view the film. The whole movie took on a sense of mystery.

Psycho was also discussed a lot. It’s the movie that followed Vertigo. Psycho was an enormous success yet just as troubling as Vertigo but in a different way. The directors had a lot to say about these two particular films.

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