Hitchcock / Truffaut (2015)

[bunniefuu]

HITCHCOCK: Why do these

Hitchcock films stand up well?

They don't look

old fashioned.

Well, I don't know

the answer.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: That's true, yes.

FINCHER: My dad

was a big movie buff,

and it was one of the books

that was in his library.

From the time I was

about seven years old,

he knew I wanted

to make movies,

so he recommended it to me.

And I remember

picking over it,

and I must've read it...

Sections of it.

Like, there's the Oskar h*m*

sequence from Sabotage.

Where it sort of lays out

all of the cutting pattern.

It's not even a book anymore,

it's like a stack of papers

because it was a...

You know, I had a paperback

and it's just...

You know, it's got

a rubber band around it.

NARRATOR:

In 1966, Frangois Truffaut

published one of the few

indispensable books on movies.

A series of conversations with

Alfred Hitchcock about his career,

title by title.

It was a window into the world of

cinema that I hadn't had before,

because it was a director simultaneously

talking about his own work,

but doing so in a way that

was utterly unpretentious

and had no pomposity.

PAUL SCHRADER:

There was starting to be

these kind of erudite

conversations about the art form.

But Truffaut was the first

one where you really

felt that, you know, they're

talking about the craft of it.

That was incredibly

fascinating to me

that these two people

from very different worlds

who were both

doing the same job,

how they would

talk about things.

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

I think it

conclusively changed

people's opinions

about Hitchcock

and so Hitchcock began to be

taken much more seriously.

SCORSESE: At that time,

the general consensus

and climate was

a bullying, as usual,

by the establishment as

to what serious cinema is.

So it was

really revolutionary.

Based on what the

Truffaut-Hitchcock book was,

we became radicalized

as moviemakers.

It was almost as if

somebody had taken

a weight off our

shoulders and said,

"Yes, we can embrace

this, we could go."

NARRATOR: In 1962,

Hitchcock was 63 years old,

(ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS

THEME PLAYING)

a household name in television, and

a virtual franchise unto himself.

He had already been known for many

years as the "master of suspense,"

and he had scared the wits out of

audiences all over the world with Psycho,

and in the process, upended

our idea of what a movie was.

And in this house, the most dire,

horrible event took place.

Let's go inside.

NARRATOR: He had just completed

his 40th feature, The Birds.

(INAUDIBLE)

Truffaut, half Hitchcock's age,

had made only three features,

but he was already an internationally

renowned and acclaimed filmmaker.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

Truffaut wrote

Hitchcock a letter.

He proposed a series of

in-depth discussions

of Hitchcock's entire body

of work in movies.

For Truffaut,

the book on Hitchcock

was every bit as important

as one of his own films,

and it required just as much

time and preparation.

(m FRENCH)

The meeting was documented by the

great photographer Philippe Halsman.

Hitchcock and Truffaut.

They were from different generations

and different cultures,

and they had different approaches

to their work.

But both men lived for,

and through, the cinema.

HITCHCOCK: My mind

is strictly visual.

Hitchcock was born

with the movies.

HITCHCOCK: There's no such

thing as a face,

it's nonexistent until

the light hits it.

There was no such

thing as a line,

it's just light and shade.

The function of pure cinema,

as we well know,

is the placing of two or three

pieces of film together

to create a single idea.

(WOMAN TRANSLATING

INTO FRENCH)

NARRATOR: Hitchcock

was trained as an engineer,

then moved into advertising.

HITCHCOCK: Through that,

I went into the designing

of what were,

in those days of silent

films, the art title.

And then art direction, script

writing, and production duties.

HITCHCOCK: They said, "How would

you like to direct a picture?"

And I said, "I've never

thought about it."

I was 23.

My wife was

to be my assistant.

We're not married yet,

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

but we're not

living in sin either.

(BOTH LAUGH)

NARRATOR: Hitchcock

had many close collaborators,

but none of them

was closer than Alma Reville.

She was credited on some films,

uncredited on many others,

but Hitchcock consulted his wife

on every movie he ever made.

HITCHCOCK: The Lodger was the first

time I'd exercised any style.

FINCHER: He is making

floors out of glass

so that he can show people walking

in circles in the apartment above.

He's playing with

all those things

that make cinema fun

and magic, the tricks of it.

He was also conceptual

with the way he approached

many of these films.

This movie, I have an idea for a

way that I've never worked before.

This is somebody whose mind

is racing, filled with ideas

and that's why, you know,

we refer to him all the time.

Do you realize the squad van

will be here any moment?

No, really! Oh, my God,

I'm terribly frightened.

Why? Have you been

a bad woman or something?

Well, not just bad, but...

But you've slept with men?

Oh, no!

WOMAN; Kn*fe.

He directed

the first British talkie.

And if you use a penknife!

Or a pocketknife!

MAN: Alice, cut us a bit

of bread, will you?

WOMAN: I mean, in Chelsea

you mustn't use a Kn*fe!

And then, in 1934,

he made the first

100% Hitchcock picture.

HITCHCOCK: St. Moritz

was the beginning

of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

It was the place

of our honeymoon.

NARRATOR: And of course,

Hollywood beckoned.

HITCHCOCK: I wasn't attracted

to Hollywood as a place.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK:

That had no interest,

what had interest for me was

getting inside that studio.

(SPEAKING JAPAN ESE)

Hitchcock did some of his

best work in the '40s.

But in the '50s, he soared.

I have a m*rder on my conscience,

but it's not my m*rder.

NARRATOR: And curiosity

of James Stewart,

in this story of a romance shadowed

by the terror of a horrifying secret.

Look, John, hold them.

Diamonds.

SCORSESE: There was a spell

that was cast with those films

in the '50s and the '60s.

And it's a special

blessed time for me

because I saw them

as they came out.

NARRATOR: Truffaut began

as a critic in the early '50s.

(INAUDIBLE)

He started at the great French

film magazine, Gamers du Unma.

For the writers at Cahiers, soon to become

the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague,

Hitchcock's greatness

as an artist was self-evident.

(JEAN-LUC GODARD

SPEAKING FRENCH)

Before they made

their own movies,

the Cahiers critics erected

a new pantheon of cinema-

The directors who were

the true artists,

the authors who wrote with

the camera, the auteurs.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SPEAKS FRENCH)

Being an individual artist

meant self-exposure,

pouring all of yourself into your movie,

all of your fears

and obsessions and fetishes,

just like Hitchcock did.

(MAN WHISTLING)

MAN: All together! Pull!

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

Hitchcock often told the story of being

sent to the police station as a boy,

where he was locked up for a few

minutes as a symbolic punishment.

He said that it led to a

lifelong fear of the police.

But Truffaut

really was locked up.

He was delivered to the police

by his own father,

(SPEAKING ANGRILY IN FRENCH)

and then sent to

a juvenile detention center,

an episode he put into his

autobiographical first feature.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

Truffaut had a fierce

attachment to freedom.

It's there

in all of his films.

And it sent him in search of another

father, a father who would liberate him.

(INAUDIBLE)

He found the great

film critic Andre' Bazin,

who virtually adopted Truffaut and

brought him to Gamers du Unma.

He found Jean Renoir,

and Roberto Rossellini.

And he found Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock had freed Truffaut as an artist,

and Truffaut wanted to reciprocate

by freeing Hitchcock

from his reputation as a light entertainer.

And that's the basis on which

they started their conversation.

(CASSETTE RECORDING)

HITCHCOCK: Well, let me check with

him and see if he's running yet.

(CLEARS T HRO AT)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: You started?

You're up?

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: All right, you're

running now, huh? Okay, fine.

We are now on the air.

(LAUGHS)

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

WOMAN". Your type of picture?

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN: People get enjoyment

but pretend not to be fooled.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

WOMAN: They sulk,

they begrudge...

They give their

pleasure grudgingly.

HYYCHCOCK'. Yes. Well...

WOMAN: When I say pleasure, I don't

mean amusement. I mean their enjoyment.

HYYCHCOCK:

They are obviously...

They're going to sit there

and say, "Show me!"

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: They expect to anticipate-

"I know what's coming next- "

I have to say, "Do you?"

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Yes,

but you see, to me,

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

plausibility for

the sake of plausibility

does not help, you know.

(HORN HONKING)

(TIRES SCREECHING)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(BIRDS SCREECHING)

(GIRL SHRIEKING)

HYYCHCOCK: I have a favorite little

saying to myself, "Logic is dull."

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN: Is it possible now

for us to define suspense?

That is to say, are there

many forms of suspense?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

WOMAN: People believe,

uh, somewhat naively...

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

...that suspense is when one is afraid.

Which is wrong.

HITCHCOCK: No, no.

In the film Easy Virtue...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: ...a young man

was proposing to this woman.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

She wouldn't give an answer,

she said, "I'll call you up

when I get back around 12:00."

And all I showed was the operator

on this telephone switchboard.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

That girl is in suspense!

And she was

relieved at the end,

so that the suspense

was over.

The woman said, "Yes."

The suspense doesn't

always have fear in it.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

FINCHER:

He talks about things,

contextualizing what the

work of a director truly is

at its most fundamental

and most simple.

HYYCHCOCK: Emotionally,

the size of the image...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

is very important.

You're dealing with space.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

You may need space

and use it dramatically.

(WHIRRING)

When the girl shrank

back on the sofa,

I kept the camera back

and used the space

to indicate the nothingness

from which she was shrinking.

FINCHER: If you have

some kind of understanding

of color and design

and light...

Directing is

really three things.

You're editing behavior

over time,

and then controlling moments

that should be really fast

and making them slow,

and moments that should be really

slow and making them fast.

NARRATOR: It is indeed

a solemn occasion.

I switch you over

to our microphone...

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Yes.

That's what film is for.

To either contract time...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...or extend it.

Whatever you wish.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

UNKLATER: Hitchcock, in

a way, was the master,

let's say sculptor

of moments in time

to take you through

a sequence

or to direct your

perception in a way

where he could elongate

time or telescope it.

HYYCHCOCK: Well, there are moments

when you have to stop time.

(BOYS CONVERSING IN FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Describe to me

in detail what the action was.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK: Cutting to the

mother before the boy saw her?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

WOMAN: She was not

looking at the child yet.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

WOMAN: And then you show the

mother who saw them walking away.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: I'm asking from a story

point of view, what was the intention?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

(BOTH SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK: I would have hoped

that there was nothing spoken.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

(ASSAYAS CONTINUES SPEAKING)

ANDERSON: The thing I think about

the most with Hitchcock is

the visuals are so

graphic and precise.

There is a lot

to learn from that.

BOGDANOVKZH: He said, "When I'm

on the set, I'm not on the set.

"I'm watching it

on the screen."

That's the key to

Hitchcock, in a way.

I mean, he sees the

picture in his head.

I imagine he just sat alone

and these images came to him

and hejust

never questioned it.

You don't feel like he's ever

not confident in every sh*t.

That's one guy you

don't really question.

It always works within his

world, kind of perfectly.

(KU ROSAWA SPEAKING JAPAN ESE)

(KUROSAWA CONTINUES SPEAKING)

lthoughtyou

didn't like to cook.

No, I don't like to cook.

(KUROSAWA CONTINUES SPEAKING)

I'd be delighted.

ANDERSON: Even if they go

all the way across the room,

he is going to move

with them in the kiss

and the actors

are going to say,

"This is the most

bizarre thing,

"we are walking

while we are kissing."

But he knows how it

fits in the frame

and he knows that the

tension won't be broken

and, um, the spell

won't be broken.

This is a very strange love affair.

(DIALING PHONE)

Why?

Maybe the fact that

you don't love me.

Hello?

HYYCHCOCK: I was giving the

public the great privilege

of embracing Cary Grant

and Ingrid Bergman together.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: It was a kind of

temporary mnage trois.

And the actors

hated doing it.

They felt dreadfully uncomfortable-

- - (VVCDIVIAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

...in the manner in which they

had to cling to each other.

And I said, "Well,

I don't care how you feel,

"I only know what it's gonna

look like on the screen."

He obviously had contentious

relationships, in some cases, with actors.

You know, he definitely

solicited movie stars.

You know, there is no doubt

in reading the book

that he is very

cognizant of the value

of faces that

people want to see.

And sometimes, the complications

that come with that baggage.

LINKLATER: Montgomery Clift is

transcendent in I Confess. He's great.

But I don't think

Hitchcock cared

if they had a good time or not

or how they felt about him.

Obviously, that wasn't (LAUGHS)

a huge concern of his.

HITCHCOCK: Sometimes you need

a look to convey something.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...or to look at

something and react.

I had a conflict with Clift.

I said, "Monty, I want you

to look up at the hotel."

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

Uh, so he said to me, "I don't know

whether I would look up to the hotel."

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "I may be occupied

by the people below."

I said, "I want you to look

up to the hotel windows

"and please do so."

I was telling the audience

across the street is the hotel.

So an actor is gonna try

and interfere with me,

organizing my geography.

That's why all

actors are cattle.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

UNKLATER: With Hitchcock you get a sense

of a kind of a self-contained psychology

that we were gonna

explore his obsessions

and what he was

interested in.

I think his

collaboration there

didn't go much

farther than that.

FINCHER: Acting, it's a

great part of movie making

but it's not the only

part of movie making.

And I think Hitchcock was one

of the first people to say

there is a structure

to this language.

He probably did more for the

psychological underpinnings

of characterization

in motion pictures

than anyone.

And on top of it, wouldn't

allow any of his actors

to explore that kind

of behavior on set.

It was the rigor of dramatizing

it in narrative terms,

and then not allowing for it to, like,

spill over the edge of the bucket.

SCORSESE". Coming out

of World w*r H,

which is the worst

recorded w*r in history.

Destruction of civilization,

no peace or comfort

from religion.

The paranoia, the anxiety.

Who are we? What are we?

Post-World VVar ll, there

was a rupture, a change.

Um, particularly in the

nature of what a performance

or a persona

onscreen would be.

And that is that the actor

is the main instrument really.

And this is all expressed I think

in Brando, James Dean, and Clift.

Alfred Hitchcock was able to get

the soul of the actors on screen,

whether it's Cary Grant, Eva Marie

Saint, Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart.

But it comes of

another tradition.

FINCHER: (CHUCKLING) I'd love to see

De Niro, Pacino, Dustin Hoffman.

To see that school of actor,

you know, try to flourish

under the iron umbrella of

this is what this next three

and a half seconds is about.

HYYCHCOCK:

I would like to ask you.

Do you feel

it's too much trouble

having to direct actors

in their acting?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

WOMAN: What I'd like is

an intermediary formula.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

That is to say, to speak with an

actor the evening after dinner,

and then create

the dialogue in the night

with the words which he

himself has been using

from his own vocabulary.

HYYCHCOCK: Yes. Will that mean

you have to write overnight?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN: Alive perhaps, but which are

very dangerous for the curve...

HITCHCOCK: For the shape,

the shape of the picture.

HITCHCOCK: I often am troubled

as to whether! cling to the,

what I call the rising

curve-shape of a story

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...and whether I shouldn't

experiment more

with a looser

form of narrative.

Sometimes it's very hard- - -

(VVCDIVIAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

...because if you work

for character direct,

they'll take you along

where they want to go.

And I'm like the old lady

with the boy scouts.

I don't want to

do go that way.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

And this has always

been a conflict with me.

FINCHER: It seems to me

he finds material

that he can kind of,

you know,

it's an applied science.

He can sort of apply the

Hitchcock thing to this story.

By now I have my series

of linear plot devices

leading to a fall

from a high place.

(SCREAMING)

HYYCHCOCK:

Quite obviously, I'm, uh...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

I suppose like any artist

who paints or writes,

I'm limited to a certain

field, you know.

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: I went high because I

didn't want to spend a lot of footage

on people getting out hoses...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...and starting

to put out a fire.

If you play it

a long way away,

you aren't committed

to any detail.

ltwasn'tjust, um,

simply to show the whole town

and how the birds

are coming in.

It took on another kind of

apocalyptic, religious feel.

It was omniscient.

It's the cleansing

of the Earth.

Whose point of view is it when

you cut to above everything?

God's point of view? Are we

all being judged from above?

You know, that kind

of suggests that.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

Where are those

papers now, exactly?

SCORSESE: For me that angle

is always something

that has a kind of

religious element to it.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:

Go off the record.

SCORSESE: You know, you have Martin

Balsam going up the stairs, right?

And that's so

deliberately slow,

you just know

he's gonna get it,

but you don't expect

that high angle.

There's something omniscient about

it that's kind of frightening.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: Yes.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN: Everyone always has

something to feel guilty about.

SCORSESE: They're asking,

"Did you ever hear of topaz?"

Colonel Kusenov, does the word

"topaz" mean anything to you?

SCORSESE:

It cuts to the defector

and the camera's sort of

up above him a little bit.

And you see his eye shift.

The eye is not covered. That means

the angle had to just be right.

Now, you know he's lying,

it's that poem.

You may leave the religion, but the

Hound of Heaven is always there.

That infuses everything,

the whole thought process

and the storytelling process.

MAN: And continually turn

our hearts from wickedness,

and from worldly things

unto thee...

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

Over the years,

I keep revisiting it

by watching it, watching

it over and over again.

This is the average man,

decent man I should say.

Family, kids...

Uh, suddenly picked up.

Your name Chris?

You're calling me?

SCORSESE: And everything...

Yes, it is.

(CHUCKLES) Everything

points to him doing it.

And you know he didn't.

One, two, three, four...

MAN: You're sure?

Absolutely.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

SCORSESE:

Those extraordinary inserts

where Henry Fonda's

just sitting on the bunk,

he looks at the cell

around him.

And it cuts to different

sections of the cell.

What makes you

feel oppressed?

The lock on the door,

but from what angle?

Is it really

his point of view?

All these things are

remarkable, I think.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: Yes, that's right.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: Not a lot, no.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

WOMAN: One senses in your work

the importance of dreams.

HYYCHCOCK:

Daydreams, probably.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK: Well, that's

probably me within myself.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

Look.

HYYCHCOCK:

I think it occurs

because I am never satisfied

with the ordinary.

I can't do well

with the ordinary.

SCHRADER: Hitchcock keeps referring

to these, sort of, fetish objects.

Keys and handcuffs

and ropes and stuff,

which are kind of

dream objects

which have a kind of

Freudian weight to them.

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: Silent pictures are

the pure motion picture form.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

There was no need to

abandon the technique

of the pure motion picture

the way it was abandoned

when the sound came in.

The craft was of course developed

in silent cinema first.

So the whole idea was,

"How do I tell the story

without any dialogue?"

This is a brilliant way to train

someone to think visually,

and part of the reason

the films have

that incredible

dream-like feeling.

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

UNKLATER". So many Hitchcock

films would work silently.

You could watch a Hitchcock film

without any dialogue or music

and I think you'd still get a

really high percentage of it.

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

SCORSESE: They're meant

to achieve a realism,

but it's more of a...

How should I put this?

Spirit of realism. (CHUCKLING)

It isn't objective.

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Yes, but you are

dealing with the point of view

of an emotional man.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK: I was intrigued with

the effort to create a woman...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...after another in

the image of a dead woman.

FINCHER: If you think that you can

hide what your interests are,

what your prurient

interests are,

what your noble

interests are,

what your

fascinations are...

If you think you can

hide that in your work

as a film director,

you're nuts, you know.

And I think that he was one

of the first guys who said,

"I'm gonna go with it."

(CHUCKLES) "I'm just going to...

"I'm gonna be...

I gotta be me."

And in the case

of his best work,

there is a more direct

umbilicus to his subconscious.

Certainly I think

that is true of Vertigo.

HYYCHCOCK: The sex

psychological side is that...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...you have a man

creating a sex image,

but he can't

go to bed with her

until he's got her back to the

thing he wants to go to bed with.

It should be back from your

face and pinned at the neck.

I told her that.

I told you that.

We tried it.

HYYCHCOCK:

Or metaphorically indulged

in a form of necrophilia.

That's what it really was.

Please, Judy.

HYYCHCOCK: The thing you see

that I liked and felt most

when she came back from

having her hair made blond

and it wasn't up.

This means she has stripped, but

won't take her knickers off.

(TRUFFAUT CHUCKLES)

You see.

She says all right, and she goes

into the bath and he is waiting.

He's waiting for the

woman to undress,

and come out nude, ready for him-

(VVCDIVIAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

(DOOR OPENS)

HYYCHCOCK: And while he was looking at

that door, he was getting an erection.

We will now tell a story.

Shut the machine off.

What I love about Vertigo

is just, it's so perverted.

It's just so perverted.

Here, Judy, drink this straight down.

Just like medicine.

Why are you doing this?

What good will it do?

I've always felt that the most

interesting view of Vertigo

would be her story.

The color of your hair.

Judy, please,

it can't matter to you!

FINCHER: And it's almost more honest

than the guy's point of view.

If...

If I let you change me,

will that do it?

FINCHER: I guess taking

Scottie's point of view was...

Will you love me?

FINCHER: ...Hitchcock's

point of view.

Yes.

Fine.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Yes,

I enjoyed it, yes.

You know, I had Vera Miles

tested and costumed.

We were ready to go with her.

She went pregnant,

and that was

going to be the part

that I was going

to bring her out.

She was under contract to me.

But I lost interest.

I couldn't get the rhythm going

again with her. Silly girl.

SCHRADER: I don't think

he would have been able

to take Vera Miles

into that Judy place.

Into that real,

kind of, a slutty place.

And so I think that he surmounted

his restriction in that way.

I saw the film

fairly early in my life

as a film person and I

saw it through Marty.

SCORSESE: It became

a lost film, so to speak.

I can tell you that all the

filmmakers in the '70s

were trying to find

copies of it.

Some people had 16s.

So it became a picture

we were looking for.

SCHRADER: It was a kind of

forbidden document,

a kind of sacred document that only

certain insiders had privilege to.

Which is kind of

hard to imagine

in today's world of indiscriminate

access to virtually everything.

So, the number of people who had

seen Vertigo weren't that many.

Hitchcock wasn't

talking about it that much

because it wasn't

very successful.

(HEAVY BREATHING)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:

The hole in the story.

The husband who pushed

his wife off the tower.

How did he know that Stewart wasn't

going to run up those stairs?

GRAY: In the case of Vertigo,

the machinations

of the plot...

Well, they do work,

they function,

and they function

rather brilliantly,

but the subtext

seems to be bubbling up

almost to the point

where it's text.

SCORSESE: I can't really say

that I believe the plot.

And I don't take any

of the story seriously.

I mean, as a

"realistic story."

So the plot is just a line

that you could hang things on.

And the things that

he hangs on there

are all aspects of,

you know, cinema poetry.

And that's a film

that I can't really tell

where things start and end.

I don't care.

And when he's following her

in the streets in the car,

what is he looking for?

What is he looking for?

GRAY: The frustration

is on his face.

And you're like, "Where is

this going?" And you realize,

"No, that's totally connected

to who he is in the film."

SCORSESE: The city itself

is a character...

The architecture itself.

The mystery of

old San Francisco.

That painting...

We cannot see Kim Novak's face

looking at that painting.

How important

her gaze must be.

But no, it's not,

because it's all a ruse.

The connection that Kim Novak

has with that painting

is bullshit. Right?

The only gaze that matters

is Jimmy Stewart's

gaze watching

the curl in the hair and how it's

similar to the painting on the wall.

I'm sure he didn't sh**t

coverage from the front.

Someone like me, I would do that.

We're not that good.

We don't understand the power of

the image, the way that he did.

I don't want anything.

I wanna get out of here.

Judy, do this for me!

SCORSESE: This whole business of

remaking her. Yes, we get it.

Everyone's talking

about the fetishism of it.

I don't like it.

Yeah, we'll take it.

Fine, it's good.

But it's this extraordinary

sense of loss

that he's trying

to fill that void.

Um, maybe it reaches out to

everyone, because of that.

You know.

We could bring our own

sense of melancholy

or loss to it.

Judy.Judy,

I'll tell you this.

These past few days have been the first

happy days I've known in a year.

I know.

It's about desire,

but we all understand that.

We all understand

the idea of desire.

That's part of

what makes us us.

GRAY: I think Kim Novak

coming out of the bathroom

is the single greatest moment

in the history of movies.

At that moment, everything

that Hitchcock was about,

everything that

cinema is about,

comes together in the most

beautiful way, which is...

Yes, it's a fantasy, but the

fantasy is real to him.

That kiss is

so extraordinary.

That's the one moment where he

gets some kind of fulfillment.

And then after that,

it's time to go.

There was where you

made your mistake, Judy.

You shouldn't keep

souvenirs of a k*lling.

You shouldn't have been...

You shouldn't have

been that sentimental.

SCORSESE: It's a world that

he creates that reflects,

I think, what

it is to be alive.

And what it is

to live in fear.

A good fear.

A natural fear.

But fear just the same.

Of just the human condition

of who we are.

It's more than a story.

It's more than a story.

It really is like living

a lifetime with him.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:

It was a break-even.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK:

I suppose so, yes.

It's tricky. You know,

people will learn

the wrong lessons

from failures

just as they sometimes learn the

wrong lessons from success.

And the thing that I find so

depressing about Hollywood is

how often people really feel

the first three months of

anyone's response

to your film... That's it.

Carve that into marble.

That was the response.

It's not true.

It wasn't true for Vertigo.

HYYCHCOCK: There is sometimes

a tendency among filmmakers...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...to forget the audience.

I, personally, am

interested in the audience.

I mean that one's film should

be designed for 2,000 seats,

and not one seat.

This, to me, is the

power of the cinema.

It is the greatest known mass

medium there is in the world.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

(ASSAYAS CONTINUES SPEAKING)

(SHRIEKS)

(MUMBUNG)

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

NARRATOR: Directors

of Hitchcock's generation,

the ones who came up

under the studio system,

were all mindful

of their audience.

But in Hitchcock's case,

it ran deeper than that.

His films are made in a dialogue

with the public that's close, almost intimate.

HITCHCOCK: It doesn't matter

where the film goes.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

If you've designed

it correctly,

the Japanese

audience should scream

at the same time

as the Indian audience.

SCORSESE: Could you still

play an audience

the way Hitchcock can?

They do.

But it's a different audience,

and it's different playing.

See, the audience has been raised

on films which are very loud,

uh, which have a climax

every two seconds.

Now, we are so

pummeled by stories

and visual hyperbole

that it's a very different

world in trying to

move the needle in terms of

getting humans to

accept your theses.

Hitchcock's coming

out of a world

where everything

was a proscenium,

and everything

was structured,

and he was able to take

that structure and bend it

and twist it

and exaggerate it

to a greater

or lesser effect.

By the time

you get to Psycho,

people are

watching television.

And Ed Gein is informing what's

happening in the movies.

We're starting to borrow

from the real world.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: I believe so,

yes, in Wisconsin somewhere.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: Psycho, in order

to get the audience effects...

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

...on the audience,

I would say that

this is pretty well

as cinematic as

a lot of pictures.

(TRUFFAUT MUMBLES

IN AGREEMENT)

HITCHCOCK: It was a very

interesting construction.

I tried for a long time

to play the audience.

Let's say we were

playing them like an organ.

Why don't you call

your boss and tell him

you're taking the rest

of the afternoon off?

SCORSESE: The scene with

John Gavin and Janet Leigh

in the beginning...

The element there is the bra.

Okay-

But it's sh*t very simply,

but ominously.

There's something

ominous about it.

The scenes in the office are

kind of all right, you know.

With that Texan...

I'm buying this house for

my baby's wedding present.

$40,000 cash.

SCORSESE: For his style,

the blandness of the scenes

and the blandness

of the framing,

um,

is just really

a kind of a bridge

to get you to the

next major moment.

I think his instinct is right

in telling stories like that.

I never carry more than

I can afford to lose.

How benign can we make these

images that just connect the dots?

I don't even want it in the

office over the weekend.

Put it in the safe deposit

box in the bank and...

HYYCHCOCK: It cost

only $800,000 dollars...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...and I used a complete

television unit to do it.

He was flirting with you.

I guess he must have

noticed my wedding ring.

HITCHCOCK: It was necessary

to make the robbery,

and what happened to the girl,

purposely on the long side,

to get an audience

absorbed with her plight.

MAN: Come in.

HYYCHCOCK:

Where I slowed up

was when I came to the scenes

that indicated time and trouble.

Hitchcock really does

love to surprise people

and to take you in

unusual directions.

He sort of thrived on that

and he was very proud of that.

That's what his cinema

is kind of based on.

The beginning of Psycho... It's

one of the great misdirections.

FINCHER: He is playing

with your expectations of

where you're supposed

to be in a movie,

where you're supposed to

be in a Hitchcock movie,

where you're supposed to

be in a Universal movie.

You can argue the value

of Janet Leigh's performance.

You can say, "Well,

that's a little flat,

"it's a little this,

that's a little Kabuki."

Maybe all of those things

are leading you to believe

as an audience member

there's a bigger

cumulative effect.

She's servicing

an expectation.

SCORSESE: The best scenes for me are

the ones he must have spent time on,

the driving sh*ts.

You had to have

spent time on those,

particularly the points

of view somehow.

And the framing of Janet Leigh

in the center of the frame

with the top of the steering wheel

in the bottom of the frame.

'Cause you can make a choice, you

can go above the steering wheel.

You know, or you

can go further out.

But then maybe you won't

see her eyes as well.

So that's like

the perfect size.

In quite a hurry?

Yes, I didn't intend

to sleep so long.

I almost had an

accident last night.

SCORSESE: The scene

with the policeman.

Of course, the framing of

him staring into the car...

Yes, we know with

the glasses, he's scary.

But there's something about the

restraint of those frames.

See? And the more

you restrain,

the better it is when

the expl*si*n happens.

And on the way

to the expl*si*n,

there are these meditative states.

Driving...

MAN: Caroline,

get Mr. Cassidy for me.

After all, Cassidy,

I told you, all that cash...

And there's a sense of movement

ahead, movement ahead...

She steals money.

Then she decides

to drive away.

Then she becomes

guilty about it.

Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't

hear you in all this rain.

Then she meets

this guy in a motel,

and he's telling her

all his problems.

A few years ago,

Mother met this man.

And he talked her into

building this motel.

SCORSESE: You're watching,

you wanna know what happens.

Is she gonna bring

that money back?

Now what is Anthony Perkins

really gonna do?

You know, he has

his mother there.

Maybe there's gonna

be this whole thing

going on with the mother

and him and her.

When he d*ed too, it was just

too great a shock for her.

SCORSESE: I mean, you're really...

You're taken down a path,

but what's great

about it is that

all your expectations are

taken and turned upside down.

FINCHER: You know,

there are certain rules,

and he pulled the pin

and rolled a grenade

into the middle of

that conference room

and destroyed

all those rules.

GRAY: The camera is very

much with Marion, right?

Even to the point

where you have that

very famous sh*t

of the showerhead.

All of a sudden,

you go from Marion,

and the camera is then

in this very strange place

where you see

both her showering,

and the shadowy figure behind

that kind of Visqueen curtain.

He did it with an eye

towards having to shift

point of view

35 minutes into the film.

BOGDANOVRH: The very first

screening of that film,

none of us had a clue

what was gonna happen.

And when that m*rder,

that shower scene came,

I've never seen an

audience react like that.

You could hear a sustained shriek

from the audience downstairs.

It wasn't like... Ahh! Ahh!

Ahh! It was like... Ahh!

Like they wanted

to close it out.

(SCREAMING)

But they couldn't

stop watching it.

You wanted to close your

eyes, but you couldn't.

Hitch was right, you didn't

have to build suspense anymore,

they were...

They were blithering idiots.

The audience was like,

"What happened?"

They couldn't believe

what happened.

They kept thinking,

"It couldn't have happened.

"She's gonna be alive."

It was... Every impulse that

you have going to the movies,

it was the first time that going

to the movies was dangerous.

HITCHCOCK:

Seven days, 70 setups.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

I used a nude girl a lot,

and I sh*t some of it

in slow motion.

Because of

covering the breasts,

you couldn't do it quick...

You couldn't

measure it correctly.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

That's when you feel like this guy

really has his finger on the pulse of,

not only just audience response,

but the world in general,

that the world was ready

for a film like that.

It didn't know it was,

but it was.

This was a small story.

But it represented probably something

much larger on the horizon.

SCORSESE: At that time as it is

now, we expect certain things.

And it took storytelling

at that time and says,

"No, I'm not gonna

give you that.

"I'm gonna give you

something else."

Because you think

everything is so cool.

You're at the end of the '50s, the

'60s are gonna look glorious to us.

I think it was really important

for who we were then.

You have Vietnam,

you have world revolution,

you have everything

that happened in the '60s,

and the society has

never been the same.

That picture really touched

upon that, I think, Psycho.

Of course, you want everything

so neat and wrapped up.

Well, life isn't like that.

Even the stories I'm gonna tell

you are not like that now.

HITCHCOCK:

My main satisfaction is...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...the film did something

to an audience.

I really mean that.

And in many ways, I feel my

satisfaction with our...

Our art achieves something

of a mass emotion.

It wasn't a message,

it wasn't some

great performance,

it wasn't a highly appreciated

novel that stirred an audience.

It was pure film.

People will say, "What a

terrible thing to make."

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

The subject was horrible,

the people were small,

there were

no characters in it.

I know all this.

But I know one thing,

the use of film in

constructing this story

caused audiences

all over the world

to react and

become emotional.

My only pride in the picture

is that the picture

belongs to filmmakers.

It belongs to us, you and I.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK: Yes, how do

you want to handle this?

HALSMAN: I am the cameraman,

you are the director.

And you are directing

a double portrait

of a Mr. Hitchcock

and of a Mr. Truffaut.

Whatever you want,

any idea that comes into...

HYYCHCOCK: Really, it's my directing Mr.

Truffaut, isn't it?

HALSMAN: Yes, but you

direct also yourself.

HYYCHCOCK: Ah, I got

what you want. Okay.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT LAUGHS) WOMAN: You

look less worried than he is.

HITCHCOCK: Now, here we are.

Look, here's the angle.

Now, I'm gonna be

like this, you see.

Now, Mr. Truffaut should half

turn around and look back to me.

(HITCHCOCK SPEAKS FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT CHUCKLES)

HYYCHCOCK: Like this.

You see, then?

(ALL LAUGHING)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK: We better not

have cigars, you are right.

Otherwise, it might make us

look like movie directors.

And God forbid

we ever look like that.

NARRATOR: The conversation that began

in 1962 extended far beyond the book,

and bloomed into a real friendship.

Hitchcock and Truffaut spoke and

wrote to each other constantly.

They read

each other's scripts,

made story and casting suggestions,

and screened each other's films.

After the first edition of the

book was published in 1966,

Truffaut made a movie a year,

sometimes two.

Hitchcock made

only three more films.

Right to the end, he was haunted by the

question he had raised with Truffaut.

"Should I have experimented more

with character and narrative?

"Did I become a prisoner

of my own form?"

The same old questions

still swirled around him.

Was he an artist

or an entertainer?

Could anyone really

claim to be an artist,

working within the factory

conditions of Hollywood?

(AUDIENCE CLAPPING)

In America, you call

this man "Hitch."

In France, we call him

"Monsieur Hitchcock."

(AUDIENCE CONTINUES CLAPPING)

"Two weeks after the American Film

Institute tribute," wrote Truffaut,

"resigned to the fact that he

would never sh**t another film,

"Hitchcock closed his office,

dismissed his staff, and went home."

Frangois Truffaut's energy and his

love of cinema seemed inexhaustible.

The idea that he would

be dead at the age of 52,

only four years after

Hitchcock, was unthinkable.

It still is.

The last completed

project of Truffaut's life,

published a few months before he d*ed,

was an updated edition of his book,

in which he gave us

Alfred Hitchcock.

not the television star,

not the Master of Suspense,

but Alfred Hitchcock the artist,

who wrote with the camera.

HITCHCOCK: Isuppose...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...the films

with atmosphere,

suspense and incident

are really my creations

as a writer.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK: Sure, yeah.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK:

Sure, that's right.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)