Hitchcock by François Truffaut: Book Review

François Truffaut was a renowned French filmmaker, film critic and admirer of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies. In 1962, he interviewed Hitchcock with the help of his friend Helen Scott, an American raised in France. The recorded interview was first published as a book in 1967.

This book is very interesting and full of information about Hitchcock’s movies. Both Hitchcock’s fans and filmmakers would like this book. In the beginning of the book, Truffaut described why Hitchcock’s movies are great and why he was a most complete filmmaker. Main thing I liked in this book is Truffaut’s questions which made Hitchcock to give more information about his movies.

In the chapter 1, Hitchcock was explaining about his childhood, how he entered film industry and his adventurous experience of directing The Pleasure Garden. From this chapter, they were started to talk about every movie directed by Hitchcock. At the time of the interview (1962) Hitchcock was editing The Birds. An additional chapter was added later for movies Topaz, Frenzy and Family Plot. Truffaut was in contact with Hitchcock in later part of his life. So, he could able to get information about Hitchcock’s last movies.

Hitchcock was explaining how he started every film, from where he got the story for the movies, how studios helped or interfered in selecting actors and about shooting locations. He also talked about the actors and filming techniques.

What make this book great is Hitchcock criticizing his own movies.  Most of his critical comments were including why some of his movies did poor in box office, what went wrong with the casting that affect the quality of a movie and what could have he done better. These are the amazing information for his fans and lessons or tips for filmmakers.

Another most interesting thing in this book is Hitchcock explaining techniques he used in his movies. For instance, they were talking about the glass floor used in The Lodger, the luminous glass of milk in Suspicion, dream sequence in Spellbound which was illustrated by Salvador Dali and more. Hitchcock also excitingly described how they recorded sound when the sound recording was introduced.

If you have seen most of the famous Hitchcock movies, you will easily understand what they were talking about. Moreover, story of the movies discussed in this book was given at the end of each chapter.

At the end of the book, Truffaut gave thoughtful opinion about why last movies of Hitchcock were not so great when compared to his previous movies. I highly recommend this book for Hitchcock’s fans.

Director Kent Jones has made a documentary film (2015) about this book. Directors James Gray, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin and Olivier Assayas are featured in this documentary. Watch the trailer for the documentary below;