The ubiquity now of discussion about Hollywood directors (both classic and contemporary) and their artistry, whether in criticism or common talk, marks the enduring triumph of these critics-turned-filmmakers, who are best known under the rubric of the New Wave. Hitchcock, who went to Hollywood in 1939, was at the top of the list. The French directors had wide-ranging tastes, including a seemingly paradoxical passion for American filmmakers enduring the commercial constraints of the Hollywood studio system-the best of whom they considered artists comparable to filmmakers working in any other country or system.

Their main idea was the recognition that-despite the inherently collaborative filmmaking process-a strong director is in effect a movie’s author and, as such, is an artist at a level of creativity and autonomy comparable to that of writers, painters, or composers. These critics became directors in the late fifties they won international acclaim in the nineteen-sixties, and their success as filmmakers provided retroactive validation of their ideas and their tastes. Hitchcock’s critical renown as the best director ever (as suggested by “Vertigo” being named the greatest film ever in Sight & Sound’s 2012 poll) is due to the writings of a handful of French critics in the nineteen-fifties-including Truffaut. In the new documentary “Hitchcock/Truffaut,” opening today at Film Forum and Lincoln Plaza Cinema-about the immediate impact and enduring influence of François Truffaut’s 1966 book of the same title, a collection of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock-the director Kent Jones hits the nail on the head. Photograph by Philippe Halsman / Courtesy Cohen Media Group A new documentary on François Truffaut’s book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock illuminates the relationship between the work of the French New Wave and that of directors for major Hollywood studios.

Hitchcock truffaut françois truffaut