JMS: When we met in 1954, I was attending the Lycee Voltaire, but only for eight days.
DH: Three weeks.
JMS: Was I? Well, three weeks. Then I left…
DH: You didn’t. You were told it would be better to leave…
JMS: I was kicked out. I was even told why. I knew too much about Hitchcock and that disturbed the class. I was watching her from a distance. We weren’t sitting that close to each other. I didn’t know her. I was just watching her. And every time she uttered something, the others would ask me - why me? - what she’d said. I had to translate. It was taken for granted that I understood.
DH: And did you understand?
JMS: Ah! That’s a mystery! One will never know. They must have noticed that I had fallen madly in love at first sight, and so they thought: he must understand what she says.
- Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, in Où gît votre sourire enfoui? / Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Pedro Costa, 2001)
via Kevin Lee's lovely essay on the film
