Thomson

After reading somewhere that it was the best bathroom book ever written (how can you ignore an endorsement like that?), I capitulated and bought David Thomson's 1,008-page The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated [2004]. It's $24.95 list, $18.95 at Amazon, $13.18 for the Kindle edition. Having had it for a few weeks, I can tell you it is also good airplane, taxi, and waiting-for-the-kids-to-get-out-of-school reading.

I'll discuss the (many) good points in a minute, but first a complaint.

Thomson's book made me more aware of a property of film that really has no parallel in other media. Movies provide a bridge across borders, cultures, and generations, and make it possible to really see how people talked, moved, and looked (or wished they could look) in 1941 San Francisco, 1929 London, 1964 Malaysia, or 2006 Singapore.

In theory, at least, film lets us see clearly across barriers of time and place. So film criticism should be among the most objective of the critical arts. We're all looking at the same thing - Fred Astaire's right there, there's not much ambiguity, right?

The experience of reading Thomson (b 1941) has set me straight on this. On topics think I know something about (e.g., Astaire, the Marx Brothers), he has a wildly different take. Some of this is cultural (he started out English though he lives in San Francisco now), but I think most is generational. He is a pre-Boomer, and then adjusted his critical response as the Boomers turned the cultural world upside-down. He can tell you a lot about Pauline Kael ("she watched the films, but she watched the audiences, too, and she loved what happens in the dark") or what it was like to teach westerns to the college kids of 1971 ("Red River never had a chance because they would not stomach John Wayne").

To ask him to make another turn - to understand post-Boomer existential absurdity - is just too much. This is most apparent when he grapples with the comedians who emerged in the 70s and 80s. A few illustrations:

• "The greatness of Cleese is not in Wanda, or even in Monthy Python; it is Fawlty Towers..."
• "[Steve Martin] - it seems to me - is fundamentally averse to acting."
• Austin Powers is marred by "the plodding dirty-mindedness, the deterioration of invention, the belittling of women..."
  
• Most damning, there is no mention of the movie Airplane! in the book.

It is not just the latest generation of comedians. He seems impatient with any kind of comedy based on cultural reference. Groucho is the only Marx Brother worth a damn (I beg to differ), Mel Brooks is "a brash superficial personality dependent on the role of stage schmuck" (so what's your point?).

Thomson has another interesting quirk. He mentions Pauline 16 times, sometimes respectfully, sometimes not. He evidently has tremendous respect for Sarris, not just mentioning him, but frequently (12 times) quoting or referencing his views almost as scripture. But Ebert does not, apparently, exist. For a man who makes his living pointing out the blind spots of others, it is a telling omission. Ebert has no problems quoting him, so I don't know what the problem is there.

That's it for the complaints. The book is gold. How many ways can we praise him?

• Man, can he write. His small books (really long essays or collections of essays) are excellent, but he really comes into his own in the 200-1000 word format. A random sentence (about Joseph L. Mankiewicz): "Above all, he created the atmosphere of a proscenium arch, a little Shavian in the way he arranged action for an audience."
• He writes great leads. On the big essays you are pulled in almost by force: "[Peter Lorre] was the squat, wild-eyed spirit of ruined Europe, shyly prowling in and out of Warner Brothers shadows, muttering fiercely to himself..."
• Did I mentioned he could write a lead? "Sometimes a movie ad reveals the secret being of a star. In the American promotion of Coming Home (78, Hal Ashby), a rapturous embrace between Jane Fonda and Jon Voight was being watched by a wistful, suspicious Bruce Dern, his eyes lime pits of paranoia and resentment."
• He knows how to get in, he knows how to get out. Not every time, or even most times...but often enough he finishes with a crusher. [Of Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner]: "The shot of [Margaret] Sullavan's gloved hand, and then her ruined face, searching an empty mailbox for a letter is one of the most fragile moments in film. For an instant, the ravishing Sullavan looks old and ill, touched by loss." Then, on to George Lucas.
  
• The bigger they come, the harder they fall. "The Shining, for me, is Kubrick's one great film...", or "I must confess to being daunted by the booze mythology of complacency and sentimentality in Ford's films." Agree or disagree, he's going to tell you where he is and why. Of Henry Fonda in the late 70s: "He had not made a good film in ten years. One hoped that someone might give him a chance as, say, a bogus-priest, rapist-confidence-trickster who picks his nose. That wicked prospect never dawned."
  
• I am picking favorites and, really, he only occasionally descends into bitchiness. But when he does... "[Kael] seemed to make a perverse case out of attacking Orson Welles and Citizen Kane (for the sake of being provocative) when both were so much her kind of thing (shallow masterpieces)." Whoa! Orson, watch out for the backswing!

Thomson seems to me to be a good throwback, the kind of critic we don't see anymore because so many have failed, typically by underestimating the intellectual and emotional demands of his approach. He is strictly fundamental - he is who he is, and before he sets pen to paper he critically examines his own response to the work. (If I may misquote Misalliance: "Read Walter Pater!") Modern conceptions of the work's "significance", "context", or "importance" are not given much weight. For Thomson it's a straight-up investigation, inquisitorial in method, although I don't mean that in a bad way. It this real, he asks, or is it sham?

Of course, David, it's all sham, but you know that, don't you? Even Shakespeare threw himself upon the mercy of the court:

And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

It's a very fine book, and everyone should have a copy. Where you read it is your business.