Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do that?

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Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do that? is the German title of the 1966 original French book Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock (literally: Das Kino nach Hitchcock ) by the film critic and director François Truffaut . There is an approximately 50-hour interview that Truffaut conducted with the film director Alfred Hitchcock in August 1962. It is still considered one of the main works in film literature to this day. The 2015 documentary Hitchcock / Truffaut ( English title) is about the book.

background

Truffaut, supported by his colleague Helen Scott, asked Alfred Hitchcock, whom he admired for his work, about all of his 50 films to date. Truffaut himself spoke French, Hitchcock English, and Helen Scott translated the conversation. The follow-up work on the book took a lot longer than planned. The reasons were the volume of material, necessary research into the intended illustration and, above all, problems with the translation of the tape recordings. Therefore, in July 1966, there was a final interview on Hitchcock's two films, Marnie and The Torn Curtain , which had meanwhile been completed .

The manuscript finally had 750 pages and over 300 photographs. The French original edition, which went on sale in November 1966, had a large format of 22 cm × 24 cm and had 260 pages and 450 photos. While only 5,000 copies were initially sold in France , the book was a hit in the USA : a total of 36,000 copies were sold as hardcover and paperback. The book was first published in 1973 in Germany as a paperback under the title Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? . The translation was done by the film critics Enno Patalas and Frieda Grafe , the number of images was significantly reduced compared to the original.

In 1984 a new edition of the book appeared in France under the title Hitchcock . This edition was completed by Truffaut about a year before his death and contains a supplementary new foreword and an additional chapter dealing with the years 1966 to 1980. This book first appeared in German translation in 1999 under the title Truffaut, Hitchcock . This was the first bound German-language edition of the classic, which also contained all the images that had previously been omitted from the paperback edition. This book also contains an afterword by the German editor, which reflects the genesis and publication history of the work.

criticism

  • The Paris press wrote on November 14, 1966 that the book was "the best way to approach cinema through two people talking about their jobs."
  • Les Nouvelles littéraires magazine wrote: "This book is a revolution in film criticism"
  • L′Aurore said: "'Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock' replaces four semesters of lectures at IDHEC."
  • The weekly newspaper Candide called it "the most extraordinary book ever dedicated to a director during his lifetime".
  • Benjamin Heinrichs wrote in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “[...] the book is more than a book, it is great fun and a great adventure, a journalistic masterpiece, a director's biography, a textbook about film and filming, a great one Hitchcock Retrospective, a collection of unpublished, unfilmed Hitchcock inventions. And the most exciting thing: When you talk about films, a new film is created: a two-person film with and about François Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock. "
  • Hitchcock himself wrote to Truffaut in December 1966: "I think the book is wonderful and I congratulate you on it."

literature

(Original: Le cinéma selon Hitchcock , 1966; German first edition 1973, Carl-Hanser-Verlag)
  • François Truffaut: Truffaut, Hitchcock . Diana Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-8284-5021-0 .
  • Antoine de Baecque, Serge Toubiana: François Truffaut, biography . Egmont, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-8025-3417-4 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ IDHEC = L'Institut des hautes études cinématographiques