I wouldn’t ask the following because it would constitute too much of an insult, but I would’ve loved to have discussed this with Francois Truffaut:
“Due respect, Mr. Hitchcock, but you must have known or at least suspected all along that your direction of children in your films was — no offense — ghastly. Those little school kids in The Birds were an all-time embarrassment. That little girl delivering a Dutch translation of Joel McCrea’s message to the police in Foreign Correspondent was grotesque. One senses that perhaps you were irked by children and had little patience with them. And what about that kid in North by Northwest who plugs his ears before Eva Marie Saint “shoots” Cary Grant? Your continuity person must have spotted that but it went into the film regardless. Why did you let that pass? Seriously, bruh…you might have been the worst director of adolescents in motion picture history….no offense.”