Hitchcock/Truffaut

Kent Jones' Hitchcock/Truffaut, currently playing at Film Forum, is a rare bird, a film based upon an iconic book which memorialized the extensive conversation between two great filmmakers. Truffaut had only made three films when he sought out Hitchcock in l962. Visiting Hitchcock for the young filmmaker championing the Nouvelle Vague and the auteur theory of cinema was like a pilgrim traveling to mecca. As such the film has a degree of separation from the films since it relates to them by way of the written word. Along the way David Fincher, Paul Schrader, Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson make cameo appearances to discuss both book and film. But the real star of the show is Martin Scorsese and the subject that takes up most of the celluloid are arguably Hitchcock’s two greatest masterpieces Psycho (1960) and Vertigo (1958). Scorsese is particularly brilliant describing Psycho and the placement of the steering wheel within the frame of the shot in which Janet Leigh is driving to her doom. Interestingly Truffaut and Hitchcock had one childhood trauma in commo; they were both imprisoned as children by their fathers. In Truffaut’s case the incarceration would become part of the plot of his autobiographical first film, The 400 Blows (1959). But what the two more profoundly shared was a love of cinematic form that was comparable to how the abstract expressionists felt about paint. They were formalists in this sense. Talking about Psycho, Hitchcock says at one point “There wasn’t a message…it was pure film” and he talked proudly about the idea of producing “mass emotion,” through the use of famous techniques like the montage between the shower head. Janet Leigh’s naked body and the bathtub drain in the film’s famous bathroom scene. What is astonishing is that even when you know what happens in both Psycho and Vertigo, the revisiting of the great moments of these two movies still manages to send chills down the spine. The feeling is somewhat similar to the hearing the canons going off in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. They never cease to surprise, regardless of the fact that you know what's coming. Psycho, Vertigo, Spellbound (1945)--don't the titles sound like they could be drawn from the pages of the DSM-5?

Paris Journal VII: Jean Cocteau at the Cinematheque Francaise

Photograph: Hallie Cohen

The Cinematheque Francaise was the brain child of Henri Langlois. Along with Andre Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinema, it became the home for New Wave directors like Truffaut, Rivette, Resnais Godard, and Chabrol.  Now housed in a Frank Gehry designed structure, the Cinematheque has come a long way from its humble beginnings and is now as auspicious a part of the French cultural landscape as say the Louvre, the Grand Palais or the Paris Opera. It’s hard to believe that the Cinematheque and the directors who supported it were once the new boys on the block, many of whose early efforts were a rebellion against the techniques and methods by which many French films had previously been made. One could look at Les Quatre cent coups as both a film about adolescence as well as a metaphor for rocky development of an art form. One thing that can also be said about the Cinematheque is that it’s a hundred and eighty degree turn from the quadriplexes in which films are now shown around the world. Even American art houses like Film Forum serve popcorn, but while you can eat in the Cinematheque’s café, there are no concession stands. The Cinematheque is like the Vatican for film buffs and you don’t eat popcorn when visiting  the Holy See. October ll was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Jean Cocteau the poet, playwright and director and along with an exhibition devoted to his life, the Cinematheque has been showing classics like Le sang d’un poete and La belle et la bete. A newly restored version of the surrealist classic with its statues come to life  recently enchanted a Sunday afternoon audience of children and adults. In the hands of Cocteau the classic fairytale is turned into one of the great essays on sexual initiation and its accompanying landscape of murderous and libidinous wishes. As the current exhibition demonstrates, Cocteau had an enormous impact on both past and present. He and Andre Bazin wrote one of the first books in French on Orson Welles and his poetic vision of cinema was enormously influential on many French directors. Could there have been L’Annee derniere a Marienbad without the surrealist innovations of a film like Beauty and the Beast?