In 'Hitchcock/Truffaut,' a tete-a-tete between two titans

NEW YORK (AP) — "Hitchcock/Truffaut," one of the most essential books about moviemaking and a historic tete-a-tete between two of the greatest filmmakers (one a Hollywood veteran, the other a rising star of the French New Wave), began with a letter.

The new documentary "Hitchcock/Truffaut" by critic, filmmaker and New York Film Festival head Kent Jones, is about that extraordinary meeting and its long reverberations through cinema.

Though Hitchcock is now among the most revered directors ever (his "Vertigo," initially received coldly by critics, currently ranks as the top film of all time in Sight & Sound's poll), Truffaut's book was the first full appreciation of his genius.

A post-war cultural exchange between Hollywood and France (the birthplace of cinema) was then stoking a new appraisal of studio films and filmmakers.

Led by the Cahiers du Cinema (for which Truffaut wrote before becoming a filmmaker), French critics saw directors __ good ones, at least __ as the authors of their films, even when working within the confines of the 1940s and '50s studio system.

In the conversation of two titans of filmmaking __ each from wildly different backgrounds, speaking through a translator but united by a common obsession __ lie many of the things that makes movies movies: how shots edited together make a scene; how space is used; how objects take on a hyper, dreamlike significance; what Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman can do together.