When these two cinematic giants met in 1962, no one recognized them yet as such. François Truffaut was an exciting new talent in the vanguard of the French New Wave, and Alfred Hitchcock was a household name as the Master of Suspense, pigeonholed as the architect of neat little thrillers. But after their conversation and the subsequent book it yielded, nobody looked at movies the same way again. As this incisive and entertaining documentary chronicles, it took the fresh eyes of a cinema enthusiast like Truffaut to reveal to American viewers what his fellow critics-turned-artists already knew
—that Hitchcock films had poetry, psychological complexity, and operatic emotion buried underneath the genre trappings. Using audio excerpts from those talks; a host of interviews, led by Martin Scorsese; and close readings of Hitchcock's films, director Kent Jones deftly examines the seminal importance of these friendly, revolutionary chats and their wide-reaching legacy.
Sponsored by:
Co-Presented by San Francisco Silent Film Festival