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Hitchcock/Truffaut Explained: How a 1962 Conversation Became a Film

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Hitchcock/Truffaut is Kent Jones’s documentary about the week-long 1962 Hollywood conversation between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut. Their recorded discussions became the source for Truffaut’s influential interview book, published in 1966. Jones’s 2015 film returns to those recordings and places them alongside reflections from filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, David Fincher and Olivier Assayas. It is both a portrait of an extraordinary exchange and an account of how that exchange shaped the way generations discuss Hitchcock’s craft.

What is Hitchcock/Truffaut about?

The documentary follows the encounter between two directors who approached cinema from very different positions. Alfred Hitchcock was an established Hollywood filmmaker whose work in suspense had made him internationally famous. François Truffaut was a younger French director and critic associated with the generation that treated the director as the central creative force in filmmaking. In 1962, Truffaut arranged a concentrated conversation with Hitchcock in Hollywood. They met for a week to discuss directing and filmmaking, and the sessions were recorded.

Those recordings did not remain private notes. They became the working source for Truffaut’s interview book, which appeared in 1966. Kent Jones’s film revisits the encounter through the recordings and asks why the conversation still matters to directors and serious film viewers. The result is not a conventional biography of either man. Its subject is the exchange itself: Hitchcock explaining decisions, Truffaut pressing him with close questions, and later filmmakers responding to the ideas that emerged.

The Festival de Cannes identifies the film as directed by Jones and produced in 2015 by France and the United States. The festival lists an 80-minute running time. Those details describe the Cannes listing rather than every catalog entry; other platforms use slightly different metadata.

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How the 1962 interviews became a book and then a documentary

The project has a clear chain of sources. Understanding that chain prevents a common mistake: treating Jones’s documentary as if it were the original interview, or as if the 1966 book were simply a transcript published without shaping.

  1. Truffaut proposes the idea. The story begins in 1962, when Truffaut proposes an extended interview with Hitchcock. The purpose is to examine directing choices in detail rather than collect short promotional comments.
  2. The directors meet in Hollywood. Cannes describes a week devoted to directing and filmmaking. The sustained format gives the discussion room to move from individual scenes and techniques to broader questions about how a director controls information, emotion and audience attention.
  3. The conversations are recorded. The recordings preserve the back-and-forth that made the project distinctive: Truffaut’s prepared interest in Hitchcock’s body of work and Hitchcock’s explanations of how he built films.
  4. Truffaut shapes the material into a book. The original recordings were used to develop the interview book published in 1966. The book therefore serves as the primary published legacy of the meeting, while the tapes provide the documentary’s central historical material.
  5. Jones returns to the encounter. Decades later, Jones builds a film around that recorded exchange and the way contemporary directors understand Hitchcock’s work. The documentary turns a historical interview into a conversation across generations.

This sequence also explains why the documentary is useful even for readers who already know the book. It lets viewers hear the source relationship rather than encountering only the edited literary form, then adds present-day directors who can test the conversation against their own practice.

What viewers actually see and hear

The core is the recorded Hitchcock–Truffaut encounter. Jones uses that archival material as the documentary’s spine and surrounds it with commentary from contemporary filmmakers. Cannes names Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, James Gray, David Fincher, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Arnaud Desplechin, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader among those reflecting on Hitchcock’s work.

That group gives the film a deliberately broad perspective. The participants are not presented as a single school with one interpretation. Their presence shows how Hitchcock’s methods continue to be read by directors working in different national cinemas, genres and generations. The documentary’s historical question is therefore paired with a critical one: what, exactly, do later filmmakers find in Hitchcock’s choices, and how does listening to him change the way those choices are understood?

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Because the film is built around a recorded conversation, its appeal is different from a fast-moving career overview. The emphasis is on concentration and analysis. Viewers should expect an essay-like documentary organized around ideas, voices and the historical importance of the tapes, not a chronological account of every production in Hitchcock’s career.

Why the Hitchcock–Truffaut exchange matters

A master explains his working decisions

The interview format asks Hitchcock to discuss filmmaking as a practical activity. Instead of relying only on reputation or retrospective praise, the project places his own explanations beside Truffaut’s questions. That makes the material valuable as a record of a director thinking through craft in conversation with another director.

A younger filmmaker treats criticism as a form of inquiry

Truffaut’s role is more than that of an admirer. By organizing a sustained interview, he treats close criticism as a way to recover how films are made. The 1966 book gave that method a durable form, and Jones’s documentary demonstrates how the method can be revisited through the original recordings.

A document that outlived its moment

The meeting happened in 1962, but the book appeared four years later and the documentary arrived much later still. That timeline matters: each version reaches a new audience while retaining the central encounter. The film is consequently about transmission as much as it is about Hitchcock—how one conversation becomes a book, an archive and a new piece of cinema.

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Film details and why listings differ

Catalogs do not present one perfectly uniform set of metadata. Use the listing you are consulting when citing a year or duration.

Listing Year shown Runtime shown What it establishes
Festival de Cannes 2015 80 minutes Jones’s documentary; France/United States production; built from the recorded Hitchcock–Truffaut encounter and contemporary filmmakers’ responses.
Apple TV catalog 2015 1 hour 20 minutes A catalog entry matching the 80-minute Cannes duration, with 2015 film metadata.
ARTE program listing 2014 1 hour 19 minutes A program-version listing with a 2014 production year and a one-minute-shorter duration.

The available listings do not explain whether the one-year and one-minute differences reflect cataloging, a broadcast version or another edit. It is more accurate to say “the 2015 Cannes listing” or “ARTE’s 2014, 1-hour-19-minute listing” than to declare one universal year and runtime. The difference is small, but precise attribution prevents confusion when a platform displays information that does not match a festival page.

Do not confuse it with the 1999 documentary

Another film covers related history: Robert Fischer’s Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock, made in 1999. The Criterion Channel describes Fischer’s film as a half-hour account of the story behind the interview book, from Truffaut proposing the idea in 1962 to publication four years later.

Film Director and date Primary focus Source relationship
Hitchcock/Truffaut Kent Jones, 2015 Cannes production listing The recorded week-long encounter and its continuing significance to filmmakers. Uses the original interview recordings and adds reflections from contemporary directors named by Cannes.
Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock Robert Fischer, 1999 The story behind the interview book. Explains the proposal, the 1962 meeting and the book’s publication four years later; Criterion describes it as approximately 30 minutes.

Choose Jones’s film when you want the recorded exchange placed in a wider conversation about Hitchcock’s influence. Choose Fischer’s when your main interest is the origin story of the book itself. They overlap in historical subject but are not alternate titles for the same documentary.

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What is the Hitchcock/Truffaut book?

The book is Truffaut’s published result of the 1962 interviews with Hitchcock. Cannes and the Criterion Channel’s account both place publication in 1966. Its significance comes from the method: a director conducts an extended, focused interview with another director, using specific films and decisions as the basis for a sustained discussion about filmmaking.

Jones’s documentary is a direct companion because it draws on the recordings that served as source material for that book. Reading the book and watching the film are therefore related but distinct experiences. The book presents the material in its edited, published form; the documentary lets the recordings function as historical evidence and adds later filmmakers’ responses. If you are buying or borrowing the book, verify the edition because a current edition and retail availability are not established by the film listings.

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How to watch it with the history in mind

  1. Check the exact listing. Record the service, territory and displayed year or runtime. The Cannes, Apple TV and ARTE entries do not use identical metadata.
  2. Identify the version. An 80-minute festival or catalog entry and ARTE’s 1-hour-19-minute program listing may not be identical presentations. Do not assume a shorter listing is an error.
  3. Keep the source chain in view. Remember that the documentary uses recordings from 1962, those recordings informed a book published in 1966, and Jones’s film adds later commentary.
  4. Separate the two documentaries. Confirm that the title is Jones’s Hitchcock/Truffaut, not Fischer’s 1999 Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock, if you are seeking the film built around contemporary directors’ responses.
  5. Use the book as a companion, not a substitute. The book is the published interview legacy; the documentary supplies the recorded encounter’s film context and a multi-generation critical frame.

Current streaming territories, physical-media inventory and program availability vary by country and date. The cited listings establish catalog metadata, not a guarantee that the film can be watched in every territory or that a particular edition remains in stock.

Who is this documentary for?

  • Film-history readers: The film connects a 1962 meeting, a 1966 book and later critical responses in one concise historical arc.
  • Directors and students: The recorded interview offers an example of craft discussion conducted at length rather than reduced to isolated quotations.
  • Hitchcock viewers: The contemporary participants provide a way to reconsider familiar films through the eyes of filmmakers from different generations.
  • Readers interested in criticism: The project demonstrates how an interview can become a major critical document and then be reinterpreted in another medium.

It may be less suitable if you want a complete, chronological biography of Hitchcock or a detailed production history of every film. Its organizing principle is the Hitchcock–Truffaut conversation and the afterlife of that conversation, not exhaustive coverage of either director’s entire career.

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What the available evidence does—and does not—establish

The official listings establish Jones as director, the 2015 Cannes production attribution, France and the United States as production countries, the 80-minute Cannes runtime, the 1962 Hollywood meeting and the 1966 publication history. They also identify the contemporary filmmakers whose reflections are included in the Cannes description.

They do not establish a universal streaming territory, a current physical edition, a single definitive runtime across all presentations, audience totals, box-office figures or a specific retail edition of the book. No reliable quantitative audience or commercial statistic is necessary to understand the documentary, so none should be inferred. Treat availability and pricing as changeable and verify them in your own territory before planning a viewing or purchase.

Bottom line

Hitchcock/Truffaut is a documentary about a conversation that became a cornerstone of film criticism. Kent Jones uses the recorded 1962 Hitchcock–Truffaut meeting, the source of the 1966 interview book, and responses from later filmmakers to show how an encounter can keep generating new interpretations. The 2015 Cannes listing is the clearest reference for the film’s identity and 80-minute duration, while Apple TV and ARTE display slightly different catalog metadata. Keep those distinctions—and the separate 1999 Fischer documentary—in mind, and the film becomes an unusually direct bridge between filmmaking practice, criticism and film history.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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Alfred HitchcockFilm Documentariesfilm historyFrançois TruffautHitchcock/TruffautKent Jones

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