Hitchcock: The lost secret of cinema
A new documentary reveals how the British auteur developed his technique and influenced today’s film-makers. Tom Brook reports.
French New Wave director Francois Truffaut interviewed the film-maker Alfred Hitchcock over eight days in 1962. A new documentary brings to life their exchange – which survives as an audio recording.
“They’re not just pedantically reciting the dos and don’ts of film-making. It’s a ionate engagement with cinema as an art form,” the director of Hitchcock/Truffaut, Kent Jones, tells Tom Brook.
Hitchcock had been seen as a populist entertainer – but after the interview was published in a 1966 book, he came to be perceived as a cinematic visionary. “The notion of Hitchcock as an artist as opposed to an entertainer started to solidify,” says Jones.
One insight that comes across is how much Hitchcock’s training in silent film shaped his vision. “There is a moment in the interview when Truffaut says the lost secret of cinema is known only to directors who began during the silent era. Hitchcock is thinking completely in visual ,” says Jones. “You could turn the sound off on most Hitchcock films and still get exactly what’s going on.”