In 1962 François Truffaut carried out a series of extensive interviews with Alfred Hitchcock at his offices in Universal Studios.

They were recorded to audio tape and the content eventually edited down into Truffaut’s famous book Hitchcock.

A landmark meeting of two great directors, the conversations cover Hitchcock’s life and career in great detail as they discuss films such as Blackmail (1929), The 39 Steps (1935), Sabotage (1939), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), The Birds (1963), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North By Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960).

Truffaut did not speak much English, so he hired Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York to act as the translator for the sessions.

The half hour sessions were subsequently broadcast on French radio and in 2006 Tom Sutpen started posting audio files on his blog ‘If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats‘.

You can download all the tracks as a zip file by clicking here (if that doesn’t work then try these mirror sites).

Or you can listen to the 25 parts individually below (just click on the relevant links to download as single tracks):

PART 1: Childhood through to his early years in the film industry (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 2: Mountain Eagle through to the end of the silent era (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 3: Blackmail through to a discussion about American audiences (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 4: Rich and Strange through to realism in films (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 5: The 39 Steps through to plausibility in film and film critics (28 mins) [MP3]

PART 6: Secret Agent and Sabotage (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 7: Young and Innocent and The Lady Vanishes (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 8: Final years in Britain through to his move to America (28 mins) [MP3]

PART 9: Rebecca (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 10: Discussion about Hollywood through to Notorious (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 11: Mr and Mrs Smith through to Suspicion (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 12: Saboteur through to Shadow of a Doubt (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 13: Lifeboat through to Spellbound (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 14: Notorious through to The Paradine Case (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 15: Rope (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 16: Rope and Under Capricorn (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 17: Stage Fright through to Strangers on a Train (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 18: Strangers on a Train through to I Confess (28 mins) [MP3]

PART 19: Notorious through to a discussion about suspense (27 mins) [Mp3]

PART 20: Initial discussion about the The Birds through to Rear Window (27 mins) [Mp3]

PART 21: The Wrong Man through to Vertigo (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 22: North by Northwest through to Psycho (26 mins) [MP3]

PART 23: Psycho (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 24: The Birds (27 mins) [MP3]

PART 25: Psycho through to characterisation in films (27 mins) [Mp3]

> Find out more about Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut at Wikipedia
> Buy Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut from Amazon UK