Hitchcock \ Truffaut Page #6

SCORSESE:
The scene

with the policeman.

Of course, the framing of

him staring into the car...

Yes, we know with

the glasses, he's scary.

But there's something about the

restraint of those frames.

See? And the more

you restrain,

the better it is when

the explosion happens.

And on the way

to the explosion,

there are these meditative states.

Driving...

MAN:
Caroline,

get Mr. Cassidy for me.

After all, Cassidy,

I told you, all that cash...

And there's a sense of movement

ahead, movement ahead...

She steals money.

Then she decides

to drive away.

Then she becomes

guilty about it.

Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't

hear you in all this rain.

Then she meets

this guy in a motel,

and he's telling her

all his problems.

A few years ago,

Mother met this man.

And he talked her into

building this motel.

SCORSESE:
You're watching,

you wanna know what happens.

Is she gonna bring

that money back?

Now what is Anthony Perkins

really gonna do?

You know, he has

his mother there.

Maybe there's gonna

be this whole thing

going on with the mother

and him and her.

When he died too, it was just

too great a shock for her.

SCORSESE:
I mean, you're really...

You're taken down a path,

but what's great

about it is that

all your expectations are

taken and turned upside down.

FINCHER:
You know,

there are certain rules,

and he pulled the pin

and rolled a grenade

into the middle of

that conference room

and destroyed

all those rules.

GRAY:
The camera is very

much with Marion, right?

Even to the point

where you have that

very famous shot

of the showerhead.

All of a sudden,

you go from Marion,

and the camera is then

in this very strange place

where you see

both her showering,

and the shadowy figure behind

that kind of Visqueen curtain.

He did it with an eye

towards having to shift

point of view

35 minutes into the film.

BOGDANOVRH:
The very first

screening of that film,

none of us had a clue

what was gonna happen.

And when that murder,

that shower scene came,

I've never seen an

audience react like that.

You could hear a sustained shriek

from the audience downstairs.

It wasn't like... Ahh! Ahh!

Ahh! It was like... Ahh!

Like they wanted

to close it out.

(SCREAMING)

But they couldn't

stop watching it.

You wanted to close your

eyes, but you couldn't.

Hitch was right, you didn't

have to build suspense anymore,

they were...

They were blithering idiots.

The audience was like,

"What happened?"

They couldn't believe

what happened.

They kept thinking,

"It couldn't have happened.

"She's gonna be alive."

It was... Every impulse that

you have going to the movies,

it was the first time that going

to the movies was dangerous.

HITCHCOCK:

Seven days, 70 setups.

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

I used a nude girl a lot,

and I shot some of it

in slow motion.

Because of

covering the breasts,

you couldn't do it quick...

You couldn't

measure it correctly.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

That's when you feel like this guy

really has his finger on the pulse of,

not only just audience response,

but the world in general,

that the world was ready

for a film like that.

It didn't know it was,

but it was.

This was a small story.

But it represented probably something

much larger on the horizon.

SCORSESE:
At that time as it is

now, we expect certain things.

And it took storytelling

at that time and says,

"No, I'm not gonna

give you that.

"I'm gonna give you

something else."

Because you think

everything is so cool.

You're at the end of the '50s, the

'60s are gonna look glorious to us.

I think it was really important

for who we were then.

You have Vietnam,

you have world revolution,

you have everything

that happened in the '60s,

and the society has

never been the same.

That picture really touched

upon that, I think, Psycho.

Of course, you want everything

so neat and wrapped up.

Well, life isn't like that.

Even the stories I'm gonna tell

you are not like that now.

HITCHCOCK:

My main satisfaction is...

(WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH)

...the film did something

to an audience.

I really mean that.

And in many ways, I feel my

satisfaction with our...

Our art achieves something

of a mass emotion.

It wasn't a message,

it wasn't some

great performance,

it wasn't a highly appreciated

novel that stirred an audience.

It was pure film.

People will say, "What a

terrible thing to make."

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

The subject was horrible,

the people were small,

there were

no characters in it.

I know all this.

But I know one thing,

the use of film in

constructing this story

caused audiences

all over the world

to react and

become emotional.

My only pride in the picture

is that the picture

belongs to filmmakers.

It belongs to us, you and I.

(WOMAN CONTINUES SPEAKING)

HYYCHCOCK:
Yes, how do

you want to handle this?

HALSMAN:
I am the cameraman,

you are the director.

And you are directing

a double portrait

of a Mr. Hitchcock

and of a Mr. Truffaut.

Whatever you want,

any idea that comes into...

HYYCHCOCK:
Really, it's my directing Mr.

Truffaut, isn't it?

HALSMAN:
Yes, but you

direct also yourself.

HYYCHCOCK:
Ah, I got

what you want. Okay.

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT LAUGHS) WOMAN: You

look less worried than he is.

HITCHCOCK:
Now, here we are.

Look, here's the angle.

Now, I'm gonna be

like this, you see.

Now, Mr. Truffaut should half

turn around and look back to me.

(HITCHCOCK SPEAKS FRENCH)

(TRUFFAUT CHUCKLES)

HYYCHCOCK:
Like this.

You see, then?

(ALL LAUGHING)

(TRUFFAUT SPEAKING FRENCH)

HYYCHCOCK:
We better not

have cigars, you are right.

Otherwise, it might make us

look like movie directors.

And God forbid

we ever look like that.

NARRATOR:
The conversation that began

in 1962 extended far beyond the book,

and bloomed into a real friendship.

Hitchcock and Truffaut spoke and

wrote to each other constantly.

They read

each other's scripts,

made story and casting suggestions,

and screened each other's films.

After the first edition of the

book was published in 1966,

Truffaut made a movie a year,

sometimes two.

Hitchcock made

only three more films.

Right to the end, he was haunted by the

question he had raised with Truffaut.

"Should I have experimented more

with character and narrative?

"Did I become a prisoner

of my own form?"

The same old questions

still swirled around him.

Was he an artist

or an entertainer?

Could anyone really

claim to be an artist,

working within the factory

conditions of Hollywood?

(AUDIENCE CLAPPING)

In America, you call

this man "Hitch."

In France, we call him

"Monsieur Hitchcock."

(AUDIENCE CONTINUES CLAPPING)

"Two weeks after the American Film

Institute tribute," wrote Truffaut,

"resigned to the fact that he

would never shoot another film,

"Hitchcock closed his office,

dismissed his staff, and went home."

Frangois Truffaut's energy and his

love of cinema seemed inexhaustible.

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