Philippe Halsman
Friday: Hitchcock/Truffaut, an affectionate tribute to the towering figures of cinema.
Cinephiles, prepare to test your mettle. You’ll need almost eight hours of screen time this weekend: 80 minutes for a tribute to the most famous interview in cinema history, and 380 minutes for one of the best films of 2015.
On Friday, UW Cinematheque screens Hitchcock/Truffaut, Kent Jones’ affectionate ode to the legendary book-length interview between master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock and French New Waver François Truffaut (Friday, Jan. 22, 7 p.m.). On Saturday, Cinematheque showcases the only local screening of Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes’ three-part, six-hour epic, Arabian Nights.
The book, now popularly known as Hitchcock/Truffaut, changed how many regarded Hollywood cinema because of the filmmakers’ insightful and practical discussion of how to tell stories visually with style.
I cherish my copy, purchased almost 30 years ago. (The book was published in France in 1983; the English translation came out in 1984.)
Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel) describes his worn-out paperback copy as a pile of paper held together by a rubber band. Other filmmakers, mostly American and French males (including Martin Scorsese and Olivier Assayas), talk about how the book changed how they watch and understand movies.
Jones argues that Hitchcock’s films freed Truffaut as an artist, and Truffaut reciprocated by liberating Hitchcock from his reputation as a light entertainer. For those unfamiliar with Hitchcock (particularly younger audiences), Jones provides a vivid introduction to Hitchcock’s films and ample motivation to read Hitchcock/Truffaut.
But to use the old cliché: The book is better. Jones gives short shrift to the relationship between Hitchcock and Truffaut (and the role of collaborator/translator Helen Scott) and relies too heavily on commentary from contemporary filmmakers. I’d rather hear Hitchcock and Truffaut discuss one of Hitchcock’s lesser films than hear James Gray (The Immigrant) or Arnaud Desplechin (A Christmas Tale) discuss his best.
There’s fascinating material here, thanks to access to the original interview recordings, which capture moments, for example, when portrait photographer Philippe Halsman invites Hitchcock to “direct” the book’s publicity photos. Despite veering from his central topic, Jones reminds us just how shocking Psycho was in 1960, and he assembles an engaging discussion of the critical rehabilitation of Vertigo.
I just wanted more Hitchcock and Truffaut.
Saturday: Arabian Nights, one of 2015’s most audacious film projects.
Hitchcock once lamented to Truffaut that he should have experimented more with narrative form. Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes need not worry about such regrets after making Arabian Nights, one of the most ambitious, audacious and satisfying films of 2015 (Saturday, Jan. 23, 1 p.m.).
Gomes appears literally buried up to his neck and seemingly overwhelmed in an early cameo in this wildly ambitious epic that explores the socioeconomic realities of austerity-stricken Portugal.
For Gomes, storytelling is an urgent matter, just as it was for Scheherazade in the original One Thousand and One Nights. She needed to tell stories compelling enough to keep her alive. If the tales of contemporary Portugal are not told, Gomes suggests with Arabian Nights, the Portuguese people might lose what little agency they have left since the economic crisis of 2008.
Gomes tells these stories — some somber, some absurd — with an urgency akin to U.S. writers during the Great Depression. Opening titles explain that stories were collected when “the country was held hostage to a program of economic austerity executed by a government apparently devoid of social justice.” These stories transform through shifting narrative modes — fiction, nonfiction and hybrids — providing many cinematic delights.
Arabian Nights is never simply a political tract. It borrows from bawdy folk tales, the theater of the absurd, neo-realism and cinema-verite. Volume One, The Restless One has relatively abrupt shifts, but afterward, Gomes allows the stories time to breathe.
Although presented as three films (Volume Two, The Desolate One was Portugal’s entry for the Academy Awards), I put myself at a disadvantage watching them separately. The delay, for example, diluted a beautiful visual rhyme between the end of The Desolate One and the beginning of Volume Three, The Enchanted One.
When Scheherazade belts out “Perfidia” on a mountaintop in The Enchanted One, you realize that almost anything Gomes tries here will mesmerize you.
Gomes dedicates Arabian Nights to his young daughter, hoping she’ll watch the film when she’s old enough and will “derive from it what she well pleases.” I came away with the same feeling I had reading Hitchcock/Truffaut 30 years ago: excitement for what the cinema can be.
