François Truffaut on the movies that Alfred Hitchcock “could not compete with”
French auteur François Truffaut made waves in both his home country and abroad when he released his debut feature, The 400 Blows, in 1959. The movie ushered in a new mode of filmmaking as part of the French New Wave, with Truffaut soon becoming one of France’s most well-respected cinematic figures.
Throughout his career, Truffaut often made movies which contained elements of shock and surprise, calling back to the classic thrillers made by Alfred Hitchcock. It was no surprise, then, that Truffaut called the Master of Suspense “the most complete filmmaker of all”, looking up to him more than any other director.
In 1966, Truffaut sat down with his hero to conduct a series of interviews about all things cinema, resulting in the book Hitchcock/Truffaut. The French director wanted to prove Hitchcock’s genius to everyone, suggesting that he possessed as much artistic merit as he did commercial viability.
Whenever Truffaut discussed cinema, his thoughts always seemed to circle back to the Psycho director, such as in a 1979 interview with Sight and Sound. He began by discussing the first James Bond movie, Dr. No, which he believed marked “the beginning of the period of decadence in the cinema”.
He added, “Until then, the role of the cinema had been by and large to tell a story in the hope that the audience would believe it.”
With the introduction of Bond movies, Truffaut thought that “throughout the world, mass audiences were exposed to what amounts to a degradation of the art of cinema, a type of cinema which relates neither to life nor to any romantic tradition but only to other films”. Dr No was incredibly popular with the public, although some critics were quick to highlight its silliness. It didn’t take long for a franchise to spawn based on the movie’s success, and soon, James Bond was one of British cinema’s most recognisable and profitable figures.
From here, Truffaut explained his belief that the popularity of James Bond negatively affected Hitchcock’s tenure as a leading director, explaining, “Hitchcock’s career began to suffer from the time of the arrival of the first Bond films since they were a sort of plagiarised version of North by Northwest, his finest thriller.”
Certainly, Hitchcock failed to reach the heights of his earlier career around this time, with movies such as Torn Curtain and Topaz receiving significantly less praise. Still, he made movies such as Marnie and The Birds, which are now considered strong pieces of work by the English auteur.
“He could not compete with the Bond films, and after this, he was increasingly obliged to make small-budget films. Perhaps he was also getting rather too old,” Truffaut surmised. As the cinematic landscape began to change in the 1960s, perhaps Hitchcock’s time as one of cinema’s greatest directors had finally reached its end.
