Search Results for: hitchcock truffaut

Last Friday attended a Musso & Frank luncheon for Kent Jones‘ Hitchcock/Truffaut (Cohen Media, 12.2), which is vying, naturally, for a Best Feature Documentary nomination. Which it fully deserves. Just as I fully deserve to eat free food occasionally. (Actually that analogy doesn’t work — scratch that.) Jones’ doc is as good and scholarly and … Read more

Yesterday morning in Paris I attended a screening of Kent Jones‘ edifying Hitchcock/Truffaut, which Jones directed and co-wrote with Cinematheque Francaise director Serge Toubiana. Slated to show on 5.19 at the Cannes Film Festivals, the 80-something-minute doc is a sublime turn-on — a deft educational primer about the work and life of Alfred Hitchcock and, … Read more

In a recent “Awards Chatter” podcast with The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Dakota Johnson (The Lost Daughter) mentioned a well-known complaint about legendary director Alfred Hitchcock. Johnson stated that her grandmother, Tippi Hedren, now 91, was hit on by Hitchcock during the making of The Birds (’63) and especially Marnie (’64), and paid a price … Read more

I wouldn’t ask the following because it would constitute too much of an insult, but I would’ve loved to have discussed this with Francois Truffaut: “Due respect, Mr. Hitchcock, but you must have known or at least suspected all along that your direction of children in your films was — no offense — ghastly. Those … Read more

I’ve never known my film critic pals to be anything but sharp, knowledgeable, inquisitive, highly charged. But Francois Truffaut was on to something when he suggested during one of the “Hitchcock-Truffaut” discussions that imagination might not be among their strong suits. Paradoxically or not so paradoxically, my imagination got in my way when I was … Read more

This morning I wrote Film Society of Lincoln Center programming director Kent Jones about his new feature-length documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut, which will screen during the forthcoming 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Jones directed and co-wrote with Cinemathèque Française director Serge Toubiana. I’m a huge fan of A Letter to Elia, a 2010 doc that Jones co-directed with … Read more

During press interviews for Jules et Jim, which opened in the U.S. in May 1962, director Francois Truffaut realized after discussing Alfred Hitchcock with the top U.S. critics that he was not taken seriously. Truffaut wrote Hitchcock to propose a series of in-depth interviews that would cover Hitchcock’s entire career, film by film. The transcripts … Read more

Here‘s a tape of Alfred Hitchcock speaking to Francois Truffaut in the mid ’60s for the book that eventually became “Hitchcock/Truffaut.” The subject, as Hitchcock described, was “a little matter of the physical aspect of the kissing scene in Notorious. The actors, of course, hated doing it. They felt dreadfully uncomfortable in the manner of … Read more

Post-SAG Nomination Depression, the 32 Finest Films of 2015: 2015 Features: 1. Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight, 2. Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s The Revenant; 3. George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road; 4. Cary Fukunaga‘s Beasts of No Nation; 4. Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, 5. Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul; 6. John Crowley‘s Brooklyn; 7. Todd Haynes‘ Carol, … Read more

Congrats to the makers of the 15 documentaries that have made the Academy’s shortlist — Amy, Best of Enemies, Cartel Land, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, He Named Me Malala, Heart of a Dog, The Hunting Ground, Listen to Me Marlon, The Look of Silence, Meru, 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, We … Read more

Last Friday 124 feature-length documentaries were submitted for Oscar consideration. A short list of 15 will be revealed in early December (less than five weeks hence), and the final quintet will be announced when all the Oscar nominees are announced in mid January. And of course I’ve been slacking on this front so here’s a … Read more