Hitchcock/Truffaut is a documentary about an special interview that took place about 50 years ago. In the 1960s, Francois Truffaut had been a movie critic for the French magazine Cahiers du cinéma, which was known for its harsh criticism of the movies of the day. He’d become a director, himself, with the movie 400 Blows. He approached Alfred Hitchcock, and scheduled an in-depth interview that lasted for days. Truffaut arranged for the event to be recorded and photographed. In 1967, Truffaut published his summary of the interview in book form, titled “Hitchcock/Truffaut”. The book has become one of the must-reads for anyone wanting to be serious about making movies. Even now, it has a high price on Amazon.com

Here is a link to the documentary trailer.

This documentary contains excerpts of the interview, in more or less chronological order. You get to understand Hitchcock and his thought processes, but not all of them. Truffaut walked Hitchcock through his film history, and discussed each in detail, most of which is in the book. However, this film is only partially about that. It also has interviews with numerous other directors, each of whom have had a personal connection to the book. These include Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Peter Bodgonovitch, and many others. What we get from them is their reaction to reading the book, and how it affected their own films, and lives, for that matter.

What it doesn’t cover, and I suspect it wasn’t even part of the interview, was Hitchcock’s well-known horrible treatment of his leading ladies. Several films were made around that very subject. Given that the interview took place when it did, one could begin to see why it wasn’t discussed – it wasn’t well known back then. I would have loved to have had some insight what he was thinking at the time, but we’ll never know.

This is a very fascinating film, especially for anyone who loves movies and moviemaking. Recommended.