Hitchcock/Truffaut

I have long considered Alfred Hitchcock to be one of my very favorite directors.  I watched many of his movies at a young age late at night on public television.  I had a small black and white TV in my room and, when I couldn't sleep at 2:00 in the morning, my only option was public television (this was back in the day when there were very few channels and many of them signed off at midnight!).  I was introduced to a lot of wonderful old movies in this manner but Hitchcock's made a lasting impression, particularly Notorious, Spellbound, Rebecca, and North By Northwest.  My first exposure to Francois Truffaut was, ironically, as an actor in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is a favorite!  I was very taken with his performance as a scientist investigating extraterrestrials and it was my Dad who told me that he was a famous director.  Of course, I have since become a fan of his movies, especially Day for Night.  What happens when one of the founders of the French New Wave meets with the Master of Suspense for one week to talk about the latter's entire body of work?  You get a groundbreaking book, published in 1966, considered by many filmmakers to be, not only a masterpiece, but a blueprint for the craft.  You also get a fascinating documentary by Kent Jones, which I had the chance to see last night, wherein he uses the films of both Hitchcock and Truffaut to illustrate the points mentioned in their epic conversations, which were recorded, with particular emphasis on Vertigo and Psycho.  Jones also interviews many of my favorite contemporary directors, such as Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Richard Linklatter, Olivier Assayas, Peter Bogdanovich, and Martin Scorsese, who talk about the effect the book, and Hitchcock's movies, had on them as filmmakers.  That they are effusive in their praise, which is interesting but gets to be a bit much, is to be expected;  however, it is incredibly compelling when they analyze specific scenes, especially when Fincher talks about Vertigo ("It's so perverted.") and Scorsese talks about Psycho.  I enjoyed this documentary immensely because it reminded me of why I love Hitchcock's movies and I think it is a must-see for any film lover.