Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
The Truffauts on Hitchcock by Doniphan Blair
Alfred Hitchcock being interviewed by François Truffaut for his book, Los Angeles, 1963. photo: courtesy F. Truffaut
Although the French fascination with American film occasionally takes the odd turn—see Jerry Lewis—the well-known film critics turned world-famous film directors, François Truffaut and his taciturn partner, friend and finally rival, Jean-Luc Godard, are to be taken seriously, very seriously. And they both adored Hitchcock. So much so:
"My father was taken aback when he came to America to promote 'Jules and Jim' [his third film, 1962]. Journalists would ask which directors he admired and they were incredulous when he said, 'Hitchcock,'" Laura Truffaut told me, in an almost imperceptible French accent—she's been in the Bay Area since the early 1980s.
Although Truffaut blamed Hitchcock's TV show 'Hitchcock Presents' (1955-62), on which the director did a caricature of himself, as a film critic, he felt there was a gaping hole in American cinema conciousness. Coincidentally, Truffaut also self-caricatured, playing the director in his on-set spoof, "Day for Night" (1973), as well as playing it straight, as the doctor in his "The Wild Child" (1970), where Laura, aged 10, was an extra, or the star in Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977).
After Truffaut finished promoting the well-received "Jules and Jim", he put his career on hold for a year to interview Hitchcock exhaustively—he had already done some interviews for the magazine "Cahiers du Cinema"—and to write the coffee table book "Hitchcock by Truffaut: A Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock", which finally came out in 1967.
One the many Cahiers du Cinema issues featuring Hitchcock, including an interview by Truffaut and the article, 'The Mythological Lexicon of the Work of Hitchcock" by Philippe Demonsablon. photo: courtesy V. Blair collection
"He liked the idea of a director asking questions of another director, colleague to colleague," Laura Truffaut continued. "And clearly Hitchcock responded. My father had interviewed him years earlier, along with [Claude] Chabrol [another critic turned director]. That's when they fell in the ice [and showed up muddy, a famous anecdote], although Hitchcock embellished the story."
"To understand the thinking behind a scene, to think out a shot, Hitchcock was second to none, my father felt," although he also looked to other directors like John Ford, Jean Renoir and Elia Kazan. "Ford and Hitchcock had in common that they both worked in the silent era. They knew how to put a shot together entirely visually, something [Truffaut] called 'The Lost Secret'."
"My father knew Hitchcock dialogue by heart. He would whistle the music from 'Spellbound' [1942] or 'The Lady Vanishes' all the time. He would repeat the dialogue from 'Psycho' [1960] all the time, because my father loved repetition."
"My father was revising the book when he died, he spent a lot of his last summer on it. He added some cursory discussions about 'Topaz' [1969], 'Frenzy' [1972] and 'Family Plot' [1976]. Around that same time, his last outings to the movies was 'The Trouble with Harry' [1955], which was not his favorite [Hitchcock]. The book turned out to be a success—it has never been out of print."
"Helen Scott [the American writer and translator who lived in Paris], was a key collaborator [on the book]. They spent a few weeks in the summer of '63 partly at Universal Studios, partly at a hotel, interviewing him. My father prepped by screening as many Hitchcock prints as possible. He went to different Cinematheques in Paris and in Brussels because he didn't own any prints," Laura told me. Although we were speaking by phone, I did meet Ms. Truffaut once at her home in Berkeley and could easily imagine her chatting from her front room, which was lined floor-to-ten-foot ceilings with books, many on film.
Laura Truffaut at her home in Berkeley sitting in front of a poster of her father.photo: D. Blair
"Hitchcock did show him and Helen 'Marnie' [1964], which was being finished at the time," Laura continued. "Hitchcock gave them very specific instructions: 'At some point, I will leave the room during the screening but don't turn around.' But Helen did, like Orpheus," Laura noted, with a laugh, adding that nothing bad happened to her.
"In 'Marnie', Hitchcock was showing the character of a woman [played by Tippi Hedren] who leads a life more like a man, whereas the Sean Connery character was a little more feminine. There was some kind of reversal. My father felt Connery resisted playing the role. He had a theory about films like 'Marnie'. He called them 'flawed great movies.' My father also used reversed gender roles in 'Mississippi Mermaid'; he had a man who was a romantic and a virgin."
With Hedren playing a thief and Connery one of her victims, but who is attracted to her and blackmails her into marrying him, "Marnie" was one of Hitchcock's most psychological, gender-bending and sexual films, I remarked.
"My father was irritated by that line of thinking about Hitchcock's psychosexual history," Laura said. "He admired Donald Spoto's first book ["The Art of Alfred Hitchcock", 1976] but he was offended by his second ["The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock", 1983]. He was aware of the theories but it was a line of inquiry he just wasn't interested in."
"One thing my father told me, the '60s were the era of James Bond and Hitchcock was feeling a little neglected. He felt he was expected to make James Bond [-like thrillers]." Instead, he took a rather remarkable risk and cast Connery against type in "Marnie".
"When he made 'Torn Curtain' [1966] he replaced the score with another score [firing his long time composer, Bernard Herrmann]. My father thought that the switch to a new score had to do with the success of the film and he was surprised by that."
Although Hitchcock felt ignored by the '60s craze for secret agent films, another genre he invented, his reaction was to cast Connery as slightly feminine. photo: courtesy A. Hitchcock
"We went to see Hitchcock films constantly," Laura said, looking back at her introduction to Hitchcock and warming to a reminiscence about her beloved father, who doted on her and her younger sister Eva. (François Truffaut had a difficult childhood, as revealed in his autobiographical "400 Blows", 1959.)
"There was a small film of my father's, 'Love on the Run' [1979] and there were going to be scenes on a train. He couldn't remember if, in 'The Lady Vanishes' [1938], Hitchcock kept the train sound going the whole time [or faded it after an intro period]. So we went to see it only for this purpose. Within five minutes, I was completely involved in the plot but he paid attention and, yes, it continued. He felt there was something to learn from every Hitchcock film. It went way beyond the technical expertise to controlling how the audience feels about something and making sure they are being carried along."
"He would also refer to [Ernst] Lubitsch [director and producer of Hollywood comedies like 'To Be or Not to Be', 1942], for how to convey information as visually and as economically as possible. A third very active reference was Renoir and his attitude towards characters. He also had a relationship with Renoir as a friend. But he turned to Hitchcock and Lubitsch to help solve the mechanics of a plot, such as if the character has a charming wife, say, but 'How do I make them root for the girlfriend?'"
Conversely: "'The better the villain, the better the movie,' that was one of Hitchcock's quotes and my father really believed in that. His favorite Hitchcock film was 'Notorious' [1946] where Ingrid Bergman is the daughter of a Nazi, and [Cary] Grant plays a dark, cynical CIA man. It was a dark, love story."
"My father wasn't a member of the cult of 'Vertigo' [1958]. It wasn't his favorite Hitchcock. For him, 'Vertigo' was about Hitchcock trying to turn Kim Novak into Grace Kelly, which was personified by Jimmy Stewart transforming Judy into Madeline. When he used to visit me out here, he was not interested in visiting the places where [Hitchcock] made 'Vertigo' in San Francisco. There was a certain type of cinephilia he didn't care about."
The poster for 'Wild Child' which her father directed and starred in, and in which Laura played a friend of the wild child. photo: courtesy F. Truffaut
"At one point, some films weren't being distributed, like 'Rear Window' [1954]—it was held up by the estate of William Irish [pen name for Cornell Woolrich, one of the most filmed noir writers]. We saw it at the [Paris] Cinematheque—I got my father to take me—and it is my favorite. When I saw 'Vertigo' the first time, it was also at the Cinematheque. I remember it was listed as something different," due to the threat of lawsuits. Of course, Cinematheque founder Henry Langlois grappled with the Nazis over forbidden films, hence was not easily intimidated.
"My father's inspiration from Hitchcock was not direct a path. He often took ideas from Hitchcock for movies that were not in the Hitchcock vein. He made a couple of films in the Hitchcock vein but they weren't well received. They were from two stories by William Irish, 'The Bride Wore Black' [1968] and 'Mississippi Mermaid' [1969]."
Unlike Truffaut, "Hitchcock didn't readily acknowledge his influences. I remember when I went to see 'A Touch of Evil' [Wells, 1958] with my dad in San Francisco. We talked about whether the scene with the hotel clerk might have influenced 'Psycho'. Hitchcock sometimes acted as if his movies took place in vacuum."
"It was amazing how much he knew [Hitchcock's films]. My dad always thought he would see something he didn't see before. He loved [John] Ford, for the clarity of story, and he liked Kazan for the actors [performances] but Hitchcock was always on his mind."