David Thomson (1) (1941–)

In every generation of film historians and critics there seems to be one who is more...more astute, more talented as a writer, more opinionated, more infuriating at times, and more acute. US critic Pauline Kael was a perfect earlier example but the current heir to her throne is British expatriate David Thomson. No one thinks as he does or writes as he does and Thomson and his works are always interesting, even if one doesn't always go with his opinions (which would surely please him).
He show more has written many vital and important books on film history but one of his most fascinating is Suspects, a book which wildly and cleverly weaves not just fact and fiction but fact and several fictions into a deceptive whole.
One of the basic ideas upon which this book is built is that movies quite often distort the lives of real people with the many purported biographical films Hollywood has made (and, make no mistake, this book is about Hollywood movies), so why wouldn't the movies do the same to fictional characters and their lives?
The book starts off, and proceeds for quite a while, looking like a group of case histories. Each section starts, logically enough, with the character's name, the actor portraying the character in parentheses (and this will become important as the book progresses) and the film in which the character appears. Some entries relate the character's early life, others what happened after the story in the movie ended (fans of Rebel Without a Cause may never get over Thomson's fate for Natalie Wood's character and the future he creates for Diane Keaton's character in The Godfather movies, written long before Godfather III, is very hard to shake).
For a good while it seems as though this book is just a collection of movie related historical fan fiction. However, little by little, it starts to become apparent that there is a singular narrative voice uniting these stories. The voice turns out to belong to a beloved Hollywood film character from a film both light and dark. Also, while some of the stories stand unto themselves, others begin forming a larger story of its own. They storyline of the narrator's film eventually joins with that of a famous mystery film noir and the two stories mesh and climax when joined with a third film, a film starring the actor who played the narrator and was directed by the man responsible for the mystery film. Along the way the narrator also meets up with, or is related to characters from several other films, both classic and more recent (let's just say that he ends up with a jaw-dropping array of children and siblings).
However, there are still other things going within this book. Though it doesn't greatly intrude on the larger story the book is creating, the neo-noir classic Chinatown becomes a very significant marker to the tone and theme of the work. Also, quite significantly, the lives of the actors playing the characters and other roles which these actors have played start to intermingle with the character the chapter initially appears to concern. For example, one character chosen is Laurel Gray, the female lead in the film noir classic In a Lonely Place. While the first part of the chapter deals with the author's take on the events of the film, the second co-ops major details from the life of actress Gloria Grahame, the character's protrayer (and those details couldn't have been made up). By the same token, the characters played by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco and Edward G Robinson and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity morph into other characters the actors played at other points in time. The mash ups aren't too convincing in and of themselves but the real point is that the actors' careers could encompass all of these roles and imprint all of the characters on the minds of the audience members.
In some sense this book is a bit of a parlor game with smart cinephiles identifying films, roles, actors. However, Thomson is also making a big point about that and the very fact of watching as opposed to doing. In fact, the author sets a trap for that type of reader which is sprung near the end of the book with the chapter involving Judy Barton from Alfred Hitchcock's classic Vertigo (if that chapter bothers the reader, then that reader has been good and caught).
Perhaps this book is preaching to the choir in some senses. If one doesn't know the films and the characters and actors who are contained in them, the book might not be of interest (though quite well written). However, the author also seems to take such readers with something of a grain of salt. However, if the reader is in the target range for this book's target readership, it's a great (if sometimes very dark) ride. show less

Thomson’s book is part of Yale’s excellent Jewish Lives series. The Warner brother’s studio has given us many wonderful films to enjoy including one of my favorites – CASABLANCA which was rushed into production to make the most of the war effort at the time. Warner Brothers was a studio run by a family of Jewish emigres, headed by Jack Warner. Thomson describes Jack as “not just a clown, a singer and a show-off, but a modern showman who was going to end up telling the family story show more and smiling at America”. Under his stewardship, the studio gave the country gangsters in great suits, dames, gunfire, wisecracks, and above all, a tone – “wry, fond of sentiment yet hard-boiled, as if to say we’re Americans, we can take it and dish it out”. Three of the four brothers were born in a small village north of Warsaw, when Poland was part of the Russian empire. Their father was a shoemaker. He took his family from there to Hamburg, to Liverpool, to Ontario (where Jack was born) and then finally resting in Baltimore, MD. For those wanting a more thorough understanding of the Warners’ complex relationship with their Jewish heritage, Neal Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own” is a more impressive achievement. (you can find that one in our library as well). However, this new book charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. These four brothers arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants and founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. It is a very worthy addition to the Jewish Lives series. show less

As a cinephile who has perhaps seen at least 2000 films predating 1970 alone, I felt like this volume should be in my small collection of books on film. My approach has been to read it as one would a book, starting at page one. It being the work of a single film critic, it is subjective — one man’s opinion. What I found is that Thomson can write well with considerable insight one moment, only to be bafflingly ignorant the next. His style also relies heavily on the rhetorical question. By show more the way, mine is the third edition, published in 2002. Not that that should matter too much, as it covers at least ninety of the last one hundred and twenty years (and I predict that those most recent twenty years won’t produce many classics).

Thomson has a lot of preconceived ideas of about cinema; what should constitute a good or great film. It is not enough, for instance, to be entertaining (and that means “entertaining” to Thomson). An example is Wes Anderson, whom he dispenses with in three very short sentences: snark alert!

At times he is very obtuse, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what he’s getting at. He can start out an entry seemingly hostile and then later on be praising. Hey, I’m not reading this as your therapist, dude! Talk about conflicted…

It’s this lack of consistency that is so irritating. Then there is his prejudices about female actors. He seems to have crushes on certain mediocre or merely competent ones (such as Rebecca De Mornay, Candice Bergen, or Melanie Griffith) and mostly dismissive of better ones (such as Faye Dunaway). Then, out of the blue, he writes an insightful entry on Kate Hepburn.

Still, I do find him refreshing in his opinions on some directors, such as Allen, Bergman, and Fellini. For many critics and fans, these guys are infallible geniuses; for me, much of their work does not age well and they have become easy targets for the parodists over the years. Elsewhere, he may trash directors I find creative and refreshing.

Perhaps his most baffling opinion is on Kubrick (someone who apparently does not fulfill his preconceived notions about what Kubrick should have been doing, although there are other directors whom he could have trashed for the same reasons). He especially despises "A Clockwork Orange" and makes it central to his diatribe; of course, this is just one film. His takes follow..."2001": trite sensibilities, its vacuity, intellectual pretensions. "Full Metal Jacket": an abomination. "Eyes Wide Shut": a travesty. He only likes "The Shining", but barely mentions "Dr. Strangelove" in passing, with no mention at all of "Paths of Glory" and "Barry Lyndon"! This is definitely, what, anti-cherrypicking? There is a website called "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?" that number-crunches hundreds of critic and filmmaker lists of the best films of all time. Currently, Kubrick had five films in the top 100 and two others in the top 500. I leave it to the reader to come to their conclusions. Personally, I suspect that Thomson has let some emotion affect his critical eye, and the cause of that emotion can only be speculated upon. (Other sacred cows skewered include Billy Wilder and Orson Welles.)

His choices on whom to include or exclude can also be baffling. For no explicable reason he includes obscure figures whose work is almost impossible to view; is this some form of showing off about his street cred with other critics? (For example, Axel Corti.) It’s more difficult to gauge whom he might have overlooked unless he or she is one of your favorites and is glaringly missing. (No Jeff Goldblum or Penelope Cruz, sorry.) As I believe other reviewers have noted, there are preciously few cinematographers and screenwriters featured; surely we could have more entries for them and fewer of the obscure directors and actors? (In his entry on composer Bernard Herrmann, he calls screenwriters "feeble bystanders" and says that "photography itself is more the miracle than what individuals do with it." This is a breathtakingly stupid comment for someone who wants us to take him seriously as a film critic.)

Okay, he does say this is a personal selection, but behold then the conceit of calling it a "dictionary". It's not like a compiler of a dictionary can say, you know, I don't like that word, so I'm going to leave it out. Kieran Hickey gets over a page; who? you may ask. He was Thomson's best friend and died of an embolism. His tender tribute is touching, but this is not the place for it - perhaps a personal memoir instead, David? The book could have been titled "The New Biographical Listing of Who David Thomson Wants to Write About, Mostly Actors and Directors, With a Few Token Others Included Who Would Be Glaringly Missing Otherwise".

At times, he is merely petty: he is inordinately upset that Michael Caine was given a knighthood. What does that have to do with his acting ability? IMO, he should be more upset that there is still a monarchy that awards these things. Others have noted the inclusion of inappropriate entries, such as Johnny Carson, or perhaps his lengthy essay on Graham Greene, who contributed only a few screenplays; not nearly as many as, say, William Goldman. And he wants us to know that he considered the real-life Garbo ordinary and dull.

How can one write an entry on George C. Scott and not mention his performance in Dr. Strangelove?

So, in summary, a mixed bag. (My examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.) Still, he has made me curious about those films I have overlooked; hopefully, tracking them down will not be a disappointment. Of course, with Thomson’s erratic views, who knows? show less

Another delving into the long-ago purchased and neglected virtual Kindle pile. If anybody could bring off a one volumes history it is David Thomson and many of his other books have given me pleasure, but here he seems too aware of both some notional restriction on length and a desire to be comprehensive. In practice this means the book is short on the insight, eye for detail and originality that characterise much of Thomsons’ work and just feels pretty dutiful. But it will nevertheless show more give you a reasonably clear chronological picture.

Is it fair to take Taruskin’s 'Oxford History of Western Music' as the benchmark for single author history in the arts? OUP obviously gave Taruskin carte blanche but if you compare his volume on the first part of the 20th Century (fearless in opinion, unmatched in authority, not afraid to deep dive to a very technical level and ruthless in its narrative omission) it does expose the faultiness in a book like Thomson’s. show less