‘Hitchcock/Truffaut’ shows French auteur interview Master of Suspense

ANALYSIS/OPINION

In one of film history’s most famous interchanges, French New Wave auteur Francois Truffaut, then but 30, sat down for a weeklong series of conversations with Alfred Hitchcock, in which the Master of Suspense expounded freely on his life, his career and cinema theory. The end result was the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” now translated to the screen by documentarian Kent Jones.

While not especially revelatory of either filmmaker — or their interactions — a half-century on, the new film nonetheless does film historians a service by pulling back the curtain on one of the 20th century’s most important meeting of the minds. The eager Truffaut is as much picking Hitch’s brain for ideas for his own works as much as seeking explanations for his past successes, with the translator often struggling to keep up the conversion of Truffaut’s queries for Hitchcock.

The doc also weaves in notable talking heads like Martin Scorsese, Richard Linklater and many others to expound on how the meeting of two titans of 20th century cinema was but one example of how artists can learn from and reinforce one another — particularly where the rather catholic vocabulary of cinema is concerned.

“Hitchcock/Truffaut” opens Friday at the District’s Landmark E Street Cinema.