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“Hitchcock/Truffaut” spends a fair amount of time on “Vertigo”, which isn’t surprising given that film’s current placement atop the Sight and Sound list. Paul Schrader calls it “a forbidden document.” Martin Scorsese discusses how difficult it was to get a copy of the film screened back in the '60s, as Hitchcock’s films were looked at with scorn and derision by the art theaters of the day. Since the film was not a success upon first run, Hitchcock sounds a bit reserved when talking about the film; people didn’t discuss their flops back then. “You have a problem with it?” asks Truffaut. Hitchcock responds that he took issue with “the hole in the story” regarding the murderer. This is an interesting contrast to his view on the numerous plot holes in hits like “North by Northwest." “I have this saying,” he tells Truffaut in regard to those who complain about implausibility: “Logic is dull.”

Throughout “Hitchcock/Truffaut”, Jones gives us delicious quotes from the interview. "'The Lodger' is the first movie where I exercised any style," says the man who started out in silent movies when he was 23. Before directing, Hitchcock wrote dialogue titles and used his engineering background to draw and layout scenes. Truffaut suggests that those who started out as silent film directors know something that those who started out in the sound era will never know. The lack of sound forced a purer evocation of the cinema as a visual medium. “You can watch a Hitchcock movie with the sound off,” we’re told, “and you’ll still be able to follow it.”

This notion extends to the use of the suspense element for which Hitchcock is most known. The visuals transcend the language barrier. “The Japanese audience should scream at the same time the Indian audience does,” Hitchcock says. Jones uses a Tippi Hedren scene from “The Birds” to supplement Hitchcock’s discussion on how he uses space and an actor’s place within it to heighten tension, bringing out a particular element that I hadn’t noticed in the numerous times I’d seen the film.

“Hitchcock/Truffaut” offers a lot of ideas to contemplate and discuss, especially if you’re a lover of Hitchcock’s works. Its most intriguing takeaway is a question Hitchcock posed to Truffaut. In so many words, he wonders if he should have experimented more with characters and if he had become “a prisoner of my own form.” It’s a fascinating question, one I carried with me after I left the theater. Wisely, Jones doesn’t provide any answers, for there isn’t a definitive one to be had. Instead, he gives us David Fincher’s quote that “there was a set of rules, and Hitchcock broke them all.”

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