But wait just a minute here: "The timing of the research" could be a crucial issue. You can drop it and move on if you like but it's not as simple a matter as you assert. It concerns nothing more nor less than how you watch a movie.

You confuse me about Korean films. How could their surge be a decade if it began with the Nouvelle Vague, which was in the late Fifties and early Sixties? Or are you just not explaining? What was "not quite a decade"??

I hope I AM LOVE is as good as it seemed to me. I have some reservations about the editing and camerawork, but I was way more impressed than I expected to be.

Do you think there's a big difference between the first edition of the Truffaut/Hitchcock book and later editions? Is that why you keep mentioning that it was the first edition that you read?

I think it's possible to get two opposite impressions of Truffaut from these interviews. At times T. seems very deferential, agreeing to things he says rather enthusiastically. T is always referring to Hitchcock as "Monsieur Hitchcock" while Hitch refers to him as "François" (but they both use the third person because they're talking through Helen Scott, the interpreter).

Hitch agrees readily with things T. suggests too. They're friendly, not combative. At other times young Truffaut holds forth at length, describing a Hitchcock film and giving his opinion about it (which seems to annoy blogger Tom Sutpen no end), or saying a film wasn't a success, or asking if Hitchcock doesn't think it was unsuccessful -- and that hardly sounds meek. Whether you are right that Truffaut "never challenges Hitchcock's assertions" is a slightly different issue and something I'd have to consider but over the course of these many hours I'd be surprised if he doesn't.

But what matters is, does anything of value come out of these interviews, and if so, what? I think they provide valuable insight into how Hitchcock thought about his films. Are you saying as far as you can remember they don't, because Truffaut isn't probing enough?

Let's grant that that may be so. But if he had been more probing, would it have worked? How?

What do you mean when you say "He is no Pete Bogdonovitch." What is Peter Bogdonovitch as a film critic or interviewer of directors that you think Truffaut falls short of rising to?