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‘WHAT HAD BEEN DREAD BECAME DELIGHT’ Hitlist THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES*
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Y A R G Y C U L
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To kick off a Christmas film book special, Miles Fielder talks to film theorist David Thomson about his new bumper book
I f you’re looking for a film book for Christmas you could do no better than David Thomson’s marvellous Have You Seen...? Billed as ‘a personal introduction to 1,000 films – masterpieces, oddities and guilty pleasures (with just a few disasters)’, it’s a half a foot thick bumper-sized edition containing half a million words penned by the veteran London-born, San Francisco-based cineaste, who is arguably the finest film writer working today. Having already made an indelible mark in his field with the acclaimed and similarly weighty tome, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Thomson has come up trumps again with a book that’s not only an invaluable reference tool, but also a wonderful read in its own right. As the tag line for one of Thomson’s favourite films (Citizen Kane) ran, ‘It’s terrific!’
‘I dreaded doing it,’ Thomson says. ‘I didn’t feel I had another book in me of this length. But the publishers made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Once I began I found the challenge of bringing a film down to 500 words was so intriguing that I really began to enjoy the challenge. And after about 50 entries I found a way into the writing and it really took off, and what had been dread became delight.’ That delight is evident in the typically informed and gloriously idiosyncratic writing. From the leftfield opening essay on Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (‘Deep down, we know that Bud has abused Lou’) through Hollywood classic His Girl Friday (‘one of American film’s most joyous insults to its own mainstream’) to cult favourite Zabriskie Point (‘It would have been so much more coherent if
52 THE LIST 11 Dec 2008–8 Jan 2009
Antonioni had been free of script or actors’), Thomson finds something new and surprising to say every time.
‘I had to plug away at it,’ Thomson says, ‘three essays a day over a two-year period. I tried with feeling that came from watching or re-watching the film, and re-encountering a film is a testing experience. You see a film in your teens, let’s say, and then you don’t see it again for decades. Maybe you have changed. Maybe the film has dated badly. Once upon a time I couldn’t have managed to live without Rebel Without A Cause; I look at it now and I see a pretty silly film. But I don’t want to completely disown the original experience, so it’s in the book. Films in time mean different things. They’re an interesting measure of time and memory and nostalgia.’ Nostalgia is something there’s a lot of in Have You Seen...? While the film selections span both the geographical and chronological history of cinema, the focus is on American movies made between the late 1920s and the late 1950s. ‘In the Golden Age of cinema,’ Thomson says, ‘the business – or the art – had such a confidence in what it was doing, because people went to the movies out of habit. Hollywood was the factory. And then it lost its confidence when television came along. Now, what people do with their leisure time is so much more varied, so Hollywood in that old sense hardly exists. It’s akin to the end of religion.’
Have You Seen . . . ? is available from bookshops and libraries now. See Film Books Round-Up, page 57.
✽✽ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Sam Peckinpah’s masterful and murderous 1974 road movie/thriller. See review, page 55. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 2 Jan. ✽✽ Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr Hunter S Thompson Long but fascinating documentary about the great American journalist and writer. See review, page 56. Selected release from Fri 19 Dec. ✽✽ Far North Bleak and beautiful emotional three- hander set on the Arctic tundra. See review, page 54. GFT, Glasgow from Sun 4 Jan- Tue 6 Jan. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 9-Thu 15 Jan. ✽✽ Che: Part One The first half of Steven Soderbergh’s epic biopic. See review, page 55. Selected release from Fri 2 Jan. ✽✽ The Reader Sensitive and intelligent adaptation of Bernhard Schlink’s much loved Holocaust novel. See review, page 53. General release from Fri 2 Jan. ✽✽ Bicycle Thieves Restored print of Italian neo-realist classic. See Also Released. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 19-Thu 1 Jan. ✽✽ It’s A Wonderful Life Christmas classic. Listen to a panel discussion at www.list.co.uk. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 12-Wed 24 Dec. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 19-Wed 24 Dec. ✽✽ Have You Seen...? Legendary film writer David Thomson’s very personal introduction to his favourite films. See interview, left. Out now (Penguin).