Recensioni de* critic*

My main criticism is basically one of over familiarity. It seems unnecessary at this point to spend yet another extended amount of time discussing such classics as Vertigo, especially since so many of the interviewees have said similar things elsewhere (Scorsese, Schrader, Bogdanovich)... While the film may no doubt be interesting to Hitchcock neophytes, I was expecting something more substantial and original from a talented critic like Jones than a collage of director talking heads.

Jones's choice of clips is superb, notably giving the silent period its due; often shorn of their narrative context, they amply demonstrate the power of the image to communicate without it. The film itself is brilliantly edited by Rachel Reichman, with an attention t detail that is worthy of its subject, implicitly supporting Jones's thesis.

The editing in this film is quick and playful, shots never lingering too long on any one thing, keeping the subject engaging and accessible to both cinephiles and the casual viewer. HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT is a celebration of the friendship the pair forged back in 1962 and the love of cinema as an art form.

Another movie directed by a friend, the great critic and programmer Kent Jones…and a pleasingly thorough examination of two filmmakers, their sensibilities, and the collaboration that produced one of the great texts on cinema.

The film is more than just a tribute; it's a kind of re-enactment. Using a combination of the original audio files of Truffaut's interviews, along with these directors offering up their own interpretations and analyses of Hitchcock's work, the film, in the limited amount of time it has, replicates the effect of the book. The results are fascinating.

Jones makes an important contribution to the contemporary fan canon. Jones's film is a tribute to a beloved 50-year-old book, yes. But it's also a tribute to all the current directors who speak informedly about the films it commemorated. Viewers might leave the theater buzzing about their sudden wish to watch films by Hitchcock — but they might be equally eager to judge for themselves how those movies might be reflected in the works of David Fincher and his contemporaries.

This documentary will remind you of a lot that you already knew about Hitchcock, but casts different light on much of it, and tells us a lot more besides—I'm amazed we're not all already walking around quoting Hitchcock's observation that "There's no such thing as a face—it's non-existent till the light hits it.

Mostly, the conversations surrounding Hitchcock's films in Hitchcock/Truffaut are little more than serviceable primers to the director's work. That raises the question of who the ideal viewer of this film actually is. A discussion about the theme of the transference of guilt in The Wrong Man, for instance, will only really be revelatory to someone who knows next to nothing about Hitchcock's films. Jones's documentary, then, will appeal more to neophytes than hardcore cinephiles.

Though smarter visually than its TV-ready format would suggest (the camera team includes ace cinematographers Eric Gautier and Mihai Mălaimare Jr.),Hitchcock/Truffaut doesn't offer a whole lot more than the opportunity to watch and hear very smart people talk about something they know very well. However, as its namesake's decades-long legacy has proven, something as simple as that can be a treat.

The man who embraced many of the characteristics that movie snobs love to denigrate — his genre; his prolific output (at the time of the interview, he was just completing his 48th film); the constraints of the studio system — is finally his own best argument for the happy coexistence of art and entertainment.

It is certainly not breaking news that Hitchcock has been massively influential to several generations of auteurs, but the micro-analyses scattered throughout Hitchcock/Truffaut wind up constituting more than mere appreciation. At its best, the documentary offers a marvelously simple model of engaged spectatorship: When you're watching the work of a great filmmaker, you really can't watch closely enough.

At first blush, Jones seems content with a frustratingly conventional assemblage of handsome talking heads, archival footage, and rudimentary photo scans. Quirks in editorial timing and emphasis, however, gradually become evident. Sometimes Jones lets sequences from Hitchcock's films run untouched before introducing accompanying verbiage, an approach that reconnects viewers to the spell of Hitchcock's filmmaking prior to the baggage of interpretation.