15 FILMS OF HITCHCOCK
Cinéma du Parc retrospective
Almost 50 years ago, one of the greatest filmmakers published a book paying tribute to the director he felt was a visionary second to none.
The former was French director François Truffaut, and the focus of his attention was Alfred Hitchcock. The book was Hitchcock/Truffaut, a homage to the career of the late/legendary British director culled from a series of interviews conducted by the late/legendary French director. It covers Hitchcock’s work from silent-movie days in England to his relatively big-budget films in Hollywood.
Hitchcock/Truffaut still stands the test of time. So much so that a documentary of the same name was based on the book and is set for release locally Dec. 18.
Jean-François Lamarche has been afflicted by the Hitchcock bug as well. He is also the programmer at the Cinéma du Parc, which will be showcasing the Hitchcock/Truffaut doc in two weeks. But he decided to get a head start on proceedings and to whet the appetites of local cinephiles by presenting Hitchcock As Seen by Truffaut, a 15-film retrospective beginning Friday and running until Jan. 7 at the Parc. The theatre will be screening three different Hitchcock films a week over the next five weeks.
The festivities begin this week with the unspooling of three of the Master of Suspense’s earliest oeuvres: The Lady Vanishes (1938), Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
“Since graduating from film studies years ago, I had always wanted to read Hitchcock/Truffaut and I finally got the opportunity to read it on my last vacation,” Lamarche says.
But being the film buff he is, Lamarche thought he would screen the works in the same order that he was reading about them. After catching the première of the documentary at this year’s Cannes filmfest in May, Lamarche had the brainwave to organize and present this Hitchcock retrospective.
“I was so taken by the documentary, the book and the screenings of his films. So my idea was that I would give the same experience to audiences, that they could see some of Hitchcock’s greatest films after seeing the documentary and reading the book,” Lamarche says.
Lamarche was somewhat limited in the sense that copies of several films were not available and that rights to others — like Notorious, Rebecca and Spellbound — had expired.
“Still, I believe the 15 films picked for the retrospective well represent the various eras in which Hitchcock made his films,” notes Lamarche, who staged a mini-Hitch fest at the Parc in 2012.
As a bonus in this digital age, the Parc will be screening Rear Window, Vertigo and Psycho in — rarely seen these days — 35-millimetre format on Dec. 26.
“What has always impressed me about Hitchcock is the influence he had and that he still has on filmmakers,” Lamarche says. “Hitchcock really transformed the art of filmmaking. What’s also impressive is that when the Truffaut book came out, Hitchcock had already directed about 40 films, but at the time, he wasn’t yet fully respected in the U.S. It was in large part members of the French New Wave, like Truffaut, who wanted to ensure that he got the respect he deserved, that even though he was making commercial films he was still an auteur.”
Lamarche’s criterion for choosing the 15 films was in balancing selections by mixing some of Hitchcock’s lesser known works with a few of his classics.
I believe the 15 films picked for the retrospective well represent the various eras in which Hitchcock made his films.