Événement

Hitchcock/Truffaut & Notorious @ SLIFF

Hitchcock/Truffaut
Kent Jones, U.S./France, 2015, 80 min., English & French
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 7 p.m., Webster U./Moore, $15 for double bill with "Notorious"
In 1962, Francois Truffaut persuaded Alfred Hitchcock to sit with him for a weeklong interview in which the great British auteur would share with his young admirer the secrets of his cinema. Based on the original recordings of the meeting -- used to produce the seminal book "Hitchcock/Truffaut" -- this film illustrates the greatest cinema lesson of all time and plunges us into the world of the creator of "Psycho," "The Birds," and "Vertigo." Director Kent Jones -- one of America's finest film critics (see his collection "Physical Evidence") and the director of programming for the New York Film Festival -- elucidates Hitchcock's singular vision through close analysis and interviews with today's leading filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, and Paul Schrader. With an introduction and post-film discussion by Lionel Cuillé of Webster U.'s Centre Francophone.

Notorious
Alfred Hitchcock, U.S., 1946, 101 min.
Tuesday, Nov. 10, 8:30 p.m., Webster U./Moore, $15 for double bill with "Hitchcock/Truffaut"
To help illustrate the cinematic mastery discussed in the documentary "Hitchcock/Truffaut," SLIFF offers a companion film, François Truffaut's own favorite of Alfred Hitchcock's many extraordinary works. In "Notorious" -- written by the great Ben Hecht -- Alicia Huberman (a radiant Ingrid Bergman) is recruited/blackmailed by U.S. government operative Devlin (Cary Grant) to spy on Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains) and a group of former Nazis up to nefarious ends in South America. Devlin is essentially serving as a pimp -- he urges Alicia to become sexually involved with Sebastian -- but a developing romance between handler and honeypot complicates the mission. Roger Ebert, in his "Great Movies" collection, writes: "Alfred Hitchcock's 'Notorious' is the most elegant expression of the master's visual style, just as 'Vertigo' is the fullest expression of his obsessions. It contains some of the most effective camera shots in his -- or anyone's -- work."
Sponsored by Janet & Rob Levy