Hitchcock / Truffaut (2015)

Being literal-minded, I halfway expected this documentary to be reenactments of passages from the book first published in 1966, which was composed of a memorable and influential series of interviews conducted by Francois Truffaut in 1962 of Alfred Hitchcock. Well, this movie is about the book, but mostly only as an excuse for director, cowriter, and film maven Kent Jones to work up wonderful appreciations of their work as filmmakers (mostly Hitchcock). My favorite parts were the long sections on Vertigo and Psycho, carried by an army of usual-suspects talking heads: Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, David Fincher, Paul Schrader, etc., etc. I loved it, especially on Vertigo, where it affirms for me again how strange and powerful that particular movie is—how hard it is even to describe what it is. A woman's picture? This documentary sets up a wonderful clip of the Vertigo reveal shot, glowing in the green of the hotel's neon sign, and it's fun to feel like you're seeing it in the company of people at least as gobsmacked. There are clips from all eras of Hitchcock pictures, from the silent and early talkies into his late failures. It's essay filmmaking in my favorite form—about filmmaking. The clips are great, nicely picked and used. The interview subjects are great too, sympathetic and knowledgeable. The Truffaut book and connection is interesting as well. There are some nice clips from The 400 Blows and other Truffaut pictures. There's also audio from the week-long interview sessions, which were conducted via a translator. All-day sessions must mean there are hours of audio. What we hear is often through the muddled filter of both subtitles and the translator. Reviewing it all must have been a herculean task, though it's exciting to hear both of their recognizable voices. The audio clips tend to be overly set up with heartwarming tales of the connection and lasting bond between the two (which at least have the advantage of being apparently true). Sometimes it starts to feel like a celebration at one remove—a celebration of Truffaut's celebration of Hitchcock—and sometimes it tramples Truffaut a little getting to Hitchcock. That's probably the way it should be, and a straightforward appreciation of Hitchcock might not have had as much of a pitch intrigue for producers as something to do with the book: the friendship that came of the interview, the sad proximity of their deaths, only four years apart, though Truffaut was a much younger man, their shared preoccupations with movies and moviemaking. Well, why not? I'll take those good sections any way I can get them because they're just about perfect. It also does a nice job on some of the Hitchcock titles from the '30s, such as the original Man Who Knew Too Much, which this picture calls the first true Hitchcock movie. There's also a nice discussion of The Wrong Man, another strong outing from the '50s. This is a great show.

Day for Night (1973)

#11: Day for Night (Francois Truffaut, 1973)

OK, another little story: In 1989, fully under the sway of Errol Morris and Gates of Heaven and a bare-bones aesthetic that relies chiefly on talking heads, I decided to make a documentary. The premise was simple, not to say narrow: I pointed the camera at fans of the Grateful Dead and at fans of the Velvet Underground, who told their stories of how those bands had changed their lives.

I had, of course, scarce resources and thus zero budget and went in well aware of other constraints as well, such as that my interview subjects had to live in and around where I was living at the time, Seattle (when I should have been in San Francisco and New York). But I did what I could, hoping that serendipity would connect the dots: wrote to publishing companies to get the rights to music (received a very nice letter from Sylvia Reed), advertised in local alternative publications for interview subjects, and worked the word of mouth the best I could. I signed on with a public-access cable-TV channel, which provided equipment and even technicians and medium-grade video stock. It was free, but added more layers of complexity in terms of accommodating and coordinating schedules—not just mine and those of the people I wanted to interview, but now the crew and even access itself to the equipment had to be scheduled weeks out.

Jules and Jim (1962)

Jules et Jim, France, 105 minutes
Director: Francois Truffaut
Writers: Henri-Pierre Roche, Francois Truffaut, Jean Gruault
Photography: Raoul Coutard
Music: Georges Delerue
Editor: Claudine Bouche
Cast: Oskar Werner, Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre, Vanna Urbino, Boris Bassiak, Anny Nelsen

I had some plans here to complain some about Jules and Jim. I have been overexposed to it over the years, plain and simple—it seemed to be always a picture someone or other wanted to force on me, or that was around when I was with people in the mood for an art film. It has always been there. Its dour subject matter and grim resolution would appear to fly in the face of most of the conventions of French New Wave, which it bears in abundance, indeed in many ways stands in for as symbol. As with, say, Wild Strawberries—which I liked a good deal more at one point—it has suffered some from its position as Important Landmark of Film.

But a funny thing happened. One more viewing unexpectedly mellowed me some. Generally speaking, the problem I tend to have with Truffaut is inherent in what I also tend to like best about him and consider his strong suit—his humanity and his light-hearted and almost mischievous playfulness. But the playfulness can also veer toward the precious and at those times he is like the angel cherub currying favor with teacher, wrinkling his nose and dimpling his chin in order to acquire another tablespoon of kindergarten paste, which as likely as not he has been eating.

The 400 Blows (1959)

Les quatre cents coups, France, 99 minutes
Director: Francois Truffaut
Writers: Francois Truffaut, Marcel Moussy
Photography: Henri Decae
Music: Jean Constantin
Editor: Marie-Josephe Yoyotte
Cast: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy, Guy Decomble, Georges Flament, Patrick Auffay, Daniel Couturier

Back when there was such a thing as Tower Records, I was wont to use Christmas week as a time to go gather up my disappointing purchases of the previous year and haul them into outlets of the record store chain to exchange as unwanted gifts, in which case, because of the holiday spirit upon the air, I could take away products of equal value. A pretty good deal all round for all of us, I thought. One year the booty included a VHS copy of The 400 Blows, which I had acquired via some movie club deal conducted through the mails—the retail value scanned in at $80! I was so excited. I roamed the aisles wantonly gobbling up titles in a kind of drunken daze from my windfall.

I must have got four or five replacement movies out of that single copy of The 400 Blows, but you know what I'm going to say next. In the fullness of time I have come to realize that the lot of them together couldn't possibly be worth this sturdy, brief, delicate landmark of French New Wave cinema. When it came to Francois Truffaut for me it always seemed to be Jules and Jim, over and over, until I hate to think how many times I've seen it, but not The 400 Blows. And the truth is that The 400 Blows was a bit lost on me the first time—it seemed almost simplistic, quite evidently low-budget, stripped to bare bones and stark tones, lyrical yet disconcertingly homely too, with an odd, sudden ending. It didn't seem to amount to much. But if that is your first experience too I urge you to look again. Give The 400 Blows one more chance.