A week of conversation between two filmmakers became the most influential film manual ever published — and it is still the best way into the work of both.
In 1962 François Truffaut — former critic, young star of the Nouvelle Vague — wrote to Alfred Hitchcock proposing a definitive interview. The Englishman, then treated by American critics as a mere entertainer, agreed. It became days of recorded conversation in the studios, film by film, trick by trick.
Published in 1966, the book did something rare: it changed the reputation of a living artist. After it, pretending that Psycho and Vertigo were mere entertainment became impossible. The politique des auteurs had its founding document — dictated by the defendant himself.
Because it is technical without being dry: Hitchcock explains suspense with bar-table examples (the bomb under the table that the audience knows about and the characters do not), and Truffaut asks questions like someone who has already got it wrong trying. It is a double lesson — in making and in watching.
The book has been published in dozens of languages, became a documentary in 2015 and is still quoted in every film school. On a cinephile’s shelf it is less an item than a tool: a bilingual dictionary between the audience and the projection booth.
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