By Gregory Crofton
Directed by Kent Jones, an archivist and sometime documentary filmmaking partner of famed director Martin Scorsese, HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT is not something you need to race out to the arthouse theatre to see.
It’s also not about Truffaut really at all. It’s about the French director’s fanatical love of Alfred Hitchcock, and how he, who was at one time a film journalist, convinced Hitchcock to sit down and be interviewed for eight days in 1962. His mission was to go beneath his popularity — Hitchcock made hit after hit film — and bestow him credit for being a master filmmaker.
Truffaut’s interview was published as a book in 1966, “Cinema by Hitchcock.” It ended up influencing many of today’s most successful filmmakers, some of whom appear in the documentary: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Wes Anderson and Paul Schrader, to name a few. Making a movie about a book based on a still-photographed interview is a massive challenge. It did end up clunky, but all the clips from Hitchcock’s films — especially PYSCHO and VERTIGO — keep it entertaining and informative enough to watch.