Hitchcock \ Truffaut Page #3

that he is very

cognizant of the value

of faces that

people want to see.

And sometimes, the complications

that come with that baggage.

LINKLATER:
Montgomery Clift is

transcendent in I Confess. He's great.

But I don't think

Hitchcock cared

if they had a good time or not

or how they felt about him.

Obviously, that wasn't (LAUGHS)

a huge concern of his.

HITCHCOCK:
Sometimes you need

a look to convey something.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...or to look at

something and react.

I had a conflict with Clift.

I said, "Monty, I want you

to look up at the hotel."

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

Uh, so he said to me, "I don't know

whether I would look up to the hotel."

I said, "Why not?"

He said, "I may be occupied

by the people below."

I said, "I want you to look

up to the hotel windows

"and please do so."

I was telling the audience

across the street is the hotel.

So an actor is gonna try

and interfere with me,

organizing my geography.

That's why all

actors are cattle.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

UNKLATER:
With Hitchcock you get a sense

of a kind of a self-contained psychology

that we were gonna

explore his obsessions

and what he was

interested in.

I think his

collaboration there

didn't go much

farther than that.

FINCHER:
Acting, it's a

great part of movie making

but it's not the only

part of movie making.

And I think Hitchcock was one

of the first people to say

there is a structure

to this language.

He probably did more for the

psychological underpinnings

of characterization

in motion pictures

than anyone.

And on top of it, wouldn't

allow any of his actors

to explore that kind

of behavior on set.

It was the rigor of dramatizing

it in narrative terms,

and then not allowing for it to, like,

spill over the edge of the bucket.

SCORSESE". Coming out

of World War H,

which is the worst

recorded war in history.

Destruction of civilization,

no peace or comfort

from religion.

The paranoia, the anxiety.

Who are we? What are we?

Post-World VVar ll, there

was a rupture, a change.

Um, particularly in the

nature of what a performance

or a persona

onscreen would be.

And that is that the actor

is the main instrument really.

And this is all expressed I think

in Brando, James Dean, and Clift.

Alfred Hitchcock was able to get

the soul of the actors on screen,

whether it's Cary Grant, Eva Marie

Saint, Grace Kelly, Jimmy Stewart.

But it comes of

another tradition.

FINCHER:
(CHUCKLING) I'd love to see

De Niro, Pacino, Dustin Hoffman.

To see that school of actor,

you know, try to flourish

under the iron umbrella of

this is what this next three

and a half seconds is about.

HYYCHCOCK:

I would like to ask you.

Do you feel

it's too much trouble

having to direct actors

in their acting?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

WOMAN:
What I'd like is

an intermediary formula.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

That is to say, to speak with an

actor the evening after dinner,

and then create

the dialogue in the night

with the words which he

himself has been using

from his own vocabulary.

HYYCHCOCK:
Yes. Will that mean

you have to write overnight?

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN:
Alive perhaps, but which are

very dangerous for the curve...

HITCHCOCK:
For the shape,

the shape of the picture.

HITCHCOCK:
I often am troubled

as to whether! cling to the,

what I call the rising

curve-shape of a story

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...and whether I shouldn't

experiment more

with a looser

form of narrative.

Sometimes it's very hard- - -

(VVCDIVIAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

...because if you work

for character direct,

they'll take you along

where they want to go.

And I'm like the old lady

with the boy scouts.

I don't want to

do go that way.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

And this has always

been a conflict with me.

FINCHER:
It seems to me

he finds material

that he can kind of,

you know,

it's an applied science.

He can sort of apply the

Hitchcock thing to this story.

By now I have my series

of linear plot devices

leading to a fall

from a high place.

(SCREAMING)

HYYCHCOCK:

Quite obviously, I'm, uh...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

I suppose like any artist

who paints or writes,

I'm limited to a certain

field, you know.

(ASSAYAS SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:
I went high because I

didn't want to spend a lot of footage

on people getting out hoses...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...and starting

to put out a fire.

If you play it

a long way away,

you aren't committed

to any detail.

ltwasn'tjust, um,

simply to show the whole town

and how the birds

are coming in.

It took on another kind of

apocalyptic, religious feel.

It was omniscient.

It's the cleansing

of the Earth.

Whose point of view is it when

you cut to above everything?

God's point of view? Are we

all being judged from above?

You know, that kind

of suggests that.

(INDISTINCT CHATTERING)

Where are those

papers now, exactly?

SCORSESE:
For me that angle

is always something

that has a kind of

religious element to it.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:

Go off the record.

SCORSESE:
You know, you have Martin

Balsam going up the stairs, right?

And that's so

deliberately slow,

you just know

he's gonna get it,

but you don't expect

that high angle.

There's something omniscient about

it that's kind of frightening.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK:
Yes.

(TRUFFAUT CONTINUES SPEAKING)

WOMAN:
Everyone always has

something to feel guilty about.

SCORSESE:
They're asking,

"Did you ever hear of topaz?"

Colonel Kusenov, does the word

"topaz" mean anything to you?

SCORSESE:

It cuts to the defector

and the camera's sort of

up above him a little bit.

And you see his eye shift.

The eye is not covered. That means

the angle had to just be right.

Now, you know he's lying,

it's that poem.

You may leave the religion, but the

Hound of Heaven is always there.

That infuses everything,

the whole thought process

and the storytelling process.

MAN:
And continually turn

our hearts from wickedness,

and from worldly things

unto thee...

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

Over the years,

I keep revisiting it

by watching it, watching

it over and over again.

This is the average man,

decent man I should say.

Family, kids...

Uh, suddenly picked up.

Your name Chris?

You're calling me?

SCORSESE:
And everything...

Yes, it is.

(CHUCKLES) Everything

points to him doing it.

And you know he didn't.

One, two, three, four...

MAN:
You're sure?

Absolutely.

(SPEAKING FRENCH)

SCORSESE:

Those extraordinary inserts

where Henry Fonda's

just sitting on the bunk,

he looks at the cell

around him.

And it cuts to different

sections of the cell.

What makes you

feel oppressed?

The lock on the door,

but from what angle?

Is it really

his point of view?

All these things are

remarkable, I think.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HITCHCOCK:
Yes, that's right.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING)

(DESPLECHIN SPEAKING FRENCH)

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