Hitchcock/ Truffaut (12A.)
Directed by Kent Jones
Featuring Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Arnaud Desplechin, David Fincher, James Gray, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese. Narration by Bob Balaban. 80 mins. Out on DVD from Dogwoof.
No matter how well things are going, how impregnable a situation seems, often it only takes one small thing to derail it. In 1962 Hitchcock was at the height of his powers, probably operating at a level of artistic achievement and commercial success no one film maker has attained other than Spielberg in the late 70s/ early 80s – his last three films had been Vertigo, North By Northwest and Psycho. It was the pinnacle of his career: and then he spoke to one Frenchman.
He had just finished making The Birds when a young European film maker got in touch about maybe interviewing him for a book he wanted to write. The film maker was Francois Truffaut and the resulting book, entitled Hitchcock, documented a week of interviews between the two men and their translator Helen G. Scott at Universal studios that year. The book had a splendid, noble and worthy aim – to show that a film maker who was generally dismissed as a mere entertainer by contemporary reviewers was one of the great artists of cinema. The meeting was the beginning of a life long friendship between the two men; and the start of a dramatic slide in the quality of Hitchcock's films.
(By a perverse irony you could also argue that something similar happened to Truffaut. He had only made three films at that time, but those three 400 Blows, Shoot The Pianist, Jules et Jim, represent the bulk of his reputation.)
So is this coincidence or did the Frenchmen carefully nobble Hollywood's leading craftsman’s filling his head with ideas of artistry that caused him to question the flawless instincts he had previously followed? Friend, or True Foe? The case was made by William Goldman in his book Adventures In The Screen Trade, though the fact that he had already made The Birds perhaps suggests that his powers were already fading. (The Birds, tricky one isn't it? It's sort of great, sort of stupid.) If it was a hit, it was a very subtle one, a ruse of almost Hitchcockian deviousness. The book, as described in this film and as lauded by numerous directors who were influenced by it, was primarily a book about the craft of film making, Hitchcock outlining the techniques he used to manipulate an audience, rather than the windy aesthetic navel gazing indulging in by the Sight And Sound Asleep crowd, though Truffaut does arrow in on the idea of him as a Catholic film maker.
All the French filmmakers that made up the Nouvelle Vague of the 60s went on about how they admire the craftsmen of Hollywood genre film making, Le Jean Ford, Le Owerd Orks, etc. But although they assiduously homage their favourites in their own movies, they mostly can't bring themselves to do the one thing that made all these auteurs really special – entertain an audience that is primarily concerned with being entertained rather than the art of cinema. True Foe spent a week getting Hitchcock to outline the method behind his mastery and sat admiringly taking in his greatness. But he also talked about his own film making style, which was much freer and looser, of his openness to improvisation, of re-writing a scene when he could see something in a performance. And Hitchcock thinks, Maybe, Maybe, I should've opened myself up a little more experimentation, tried something a little bit outside of my comfort zone. Did that have any effect on what followed?
Back in Blighty comedian Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock was going through such a crisis of confidence, was breaking up with his screenwriters Galton and Simpson and splitting with side kick Sid James in the name of creativity, and it didn't do him any good. Hitchcock's next film Marnie, a psychological melodrama about a frigid kleptomaniac, was definitely a step out of the comfort zone, and after that he was never able to find his way back to greatness. A couple of years later he allowed the studio bosses to push him to fire composer Bernard Herrmann (shamefully unmentioned in this film) and he floundered his way through his remaining career, apart from his London set Frenzy.
If the purpose of the book was to elevate Hitch's critical reputation what is the purpose of this movie? Probably for a number of distinguished filmmakers to go on about how great he was and how influential seeing his films and reading this book were to their own films. Around that you get to hear recordings of the pair's original conversation and lots of clips from the master's films to illustrate just how mighty he was, and how he constructed some of his best scenes. Among the topics discussed are his attitude to believable stories, actors and shooting scene's from above. Vertigo and Psycho are examined in some detail.
It is always both eye opening and disconcerting to hear director's describe film making. The obsessive details they pick up on can seem bizarre. In the section on Psycho, Scorsese raves on about the driving sequence “and the framing of Janet Leigh in the centre of the frame with the top of the steering wheel in the bottom of the frame, because you can make a choice, you can go above the steering wheel or go further back but then maybe you won't see her eyes so well, so it's like the perfect size.”
It seems to me that film directors tend to learn the wrong lessons from Hitchcock. His line “actors are cattle” is sound advice, not just directors but for all humanity. The film is illuminating on his problems with Montgomery Clift in I, Confess. What directors wrongly obsess on is the McGuffin and his use of improbable or implausible plots. Most seem to take this to mean that plot holes aren't important; Brian De Palma, inexplicably missing from this film, seems to have based his whole career on deliberately implausible ridiculous plots. The lesson of Hitchcock though is that if you're very, very good you can get away with these things, and then only occasionally. Vertigo may be The Greatest Film Ever Made, but it falls apart in the last 40 seconds, when we see that none of it actually makes any sense.
The thing about Hitchcock, and the thing about this film, is that for all the critical reevaluating and reappraisals, the people who found/ got/ read him first, and the people who understood and critiqued him best, were audiences.
Hitchcock/ Truffaut (12A.)
Directed by Kent Jones
Featuring Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, Arnaud Desplechin, David Fincher, James Gray, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese. Narration by Bob Balaban. 80 mins. Out on DVD from Dogwoof.
No matter how well things are going, how impregnable a situation seems, often it only takes one small thing to derail it. In 1962 Hitchcock was at the height of his powers, probably operating at a level of artistic achievement and commercial success no one film maker has attained other than Spielberg in the late 70s/ early 80s – his last three films had been Vertigo, North By Northwest and Psycho. It was the pinnacle of his career: and then he spoke to one Frenchman.
He had just finished making The Birds when a young European film maker got in touch about maybe interviewing him for a book he wanted to write. The film maker was Francois Truffaut and the resulting book, entitled Hitchcock, documented a week of interviews between the two men and their translator Helen G. Scott at Universal studios that year. The book had a splendid, noble and worthy aim – to show that a film maker who was generally dismissed as a mere entertainer by contemporary reviewers was one of the great artists of cinema. The meeting was the beginning of a life long friendship between the two men; and the start of a dramatic slide in the quality of Hitchcock's films.
(By a perverse irony you could also argue that something similar happened to Truffaut. He had only made three films at that time, but those three 400 Blows, Shoot The Pianist, Jules et Jim, represent the bulk of his reputation.)
So is this coincidence or did the Frenchmen carefully nobble Hollywood's leading craftsman’s filling his head with ideas of artistry that caused him to question the flawless instincts he had previously followed? Friend, or True Foe? The case was made by William Goldman in his book Adventures In The Screen Trade, though the fact that he had already made The Birds perhaps suggests that his powers were already fading. (The Birds, tricky one isn't it? It's sort of great, sort of stupid.) If it was a hit, it was a very subtle one, a ruse of almost Hitchcockian deviousness. The book, as described in this film and as lauded by numerous directors who were influenced by it, was primarily a book about the craft of film making, Hitchcock outlining the techniques he used to manipulate an audience, rather than the windy aesthetic navel gazing indulging in by the Sight And Sound Asleep crowd, though Truffaut does arrow in on the idea of him as a Catholic film maker.
All the French filmmakers that made up the Nouvelle Vague of the 60s went on about how they admire the craftsmen of Hollywood genre film making, Le Jean Ford, Le Owerd Orks, etc. But although they assiduously homage their favourites in their own movies, they mostly can't bring themselves to do the one thing that made all these auteurs really special – entertain an audience that is primarily concerned with being entertained rather than the art of cinema. True Foe spent a week getting Hitchcock to outline the method behind his mastery and sat admiringly taking in his greatness. But he also talked about his own film making style, which was much freer and looser, of his openness to improvisation, of re-writing a scene when he could see something in a performance. And Hitchcock thinks, Maybe, Maybe, I should've opened myself up a little more experimentation, tried something a little bit outside of my comfort zone. Did that have any effect on what followed?
Back in Blighty comedian Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock was going through such a crisis of confidence, was breaking up with his screenwriters Galton and Simpson and splitting with side kick Sid James in the name of creativity, and it didn't do him any good. Hitchcock's next film Marnie, a psychological melodrama about a frigid kleptomaniac, was definitely a step out of the comfort zone, and after that he was never able to find his way back to greatness. A couple of years later he allowed the studio bosses to push him to fire composer Bernard Herrmann (shamefully unmentioned in this film) and he floundered his way through his remaining career, apart from his London set Frenzy.
If the purpose of the book was to elevate Hitch's critical reputation what is the purpose of this movie? Probably for a number of distinguished filmmakers to go on about how great he was and how influential seeing his films and reading this book were to their own films. Around that you get to hear recordings of the pair's original conversation and lots of clips from the master's films to illustrate just how mighty he was, and how he constructed some of his best scenes. Among the topics discussed are his attitude to believable stories, actors and shooting scene's from above. Vertigo and Psycho are examined in some detail.
It is always both eye opening and disconcerting to hear director's describe film making. The obsessive details they pick up on can seem bizarre. In the section on Psycho, Scorsese raves on about the driving sequence “and the framing of Janet Leigh in the centre of the frame with the top of the steering wheel in the bottom of the frame, because you can make a choice, you can go above the steering wheel or go further back but then maybe you won't see her eyes so well, so it's like the perfect size.”
It seems to me that film directors tend to learn the wrong lessons from Hitchcock. His line “actors are cattle” is sound advice, not just directors but for all humanity. The film is illuminating on his problems with Montgomery Clift in I, Confess. What directors wrongly obsess on is the McGuffin and his use of improbable or implausible plots. Most seem to take this to mean that plot holes aren't important; Brian De Palma, inexplicably missing from this film, seems to have based his whole career on deliberately implausible ridiculous plots. The lesson of Hitchcock though is that if you're very, very good you can get away with these things, and then only occasionally. Vertigo may be The Greatest Film Ever Made, but it falls apart in the last 40 seconds, when we see that none of it actually makes any sense.
The thing about Hitchcock, and the thing about this film, is that for all the critical reevaluating and reappraisals, the people who found/ got/ read him first, and the people who understood and critiqued him best, were audiences.
