The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded Review

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The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded ReviewIf you're looking for a standard reference work, look elsewhere (Katz is probably your best bet). That said, this is one of the finest books I've discovered in years. You can read it from cover to cover and never get bored, which is probably impossible to say about any other reference book.
David Thomson is absolutely brilliant. I disagree with about half of what he writes here, but even when I disagree I respect his opinions and greatly admire the way in which he articulates them. Very often in these entries you will find that unexpected beauty and strangeness that are the hallmarks of all great literature and all great art in general. Some of the passages are heartstopping. Here's Thomson on Jean Vigo:
"L'Atalante is about a more profound attitude to love than Gaumont understood. It is love without spoken explanation, unaffected by sentimental songs; but love as a mysterious, passionate affinity between inarticulate human animals."
Have you ever heard a more haunting, uncanny definition of love than this one? I haven't. After reading these words for the first time, I sat there like a fool in shock for five or six minutes, ruminating on their simple profundity.
Thomson is also not afraid to be nasty, which is refreshing in this age of mindless, frothy hype being spewed in all directions on just about everyone. Here he is on Roberto Benigni:
"Then came the thing called La Vite E Bella. As a matter of fact, I often echo that sentiment myself, but if there is anything likely to mar the bella-ness, it is not so much Hitlerism (I am against it), which is fairly obvious, as Benigni-ism, which walks away with high praise, box office, and Oscars. I despise Life Is Beautiful, especially its warmth, sincerity, and feeling, all of which I belive grow out of stupidity. Few events so surely signaled the decline of the motion picture as the glory piled on that odious and misguided fable."
Sometimes that nastiness reaches the heights of pure poetry. Here is Thomson on Richard Gere:
"There are times when Richard Gere has the warm affect of a wind tunnel at dawn, waiting for work, all sheen, inner curve, and posed emptiness. And those are not his worst times."
Lest you think that Thomson is merely a fusty old curmudgeon, let me emphasize that in many other places (through most of the book, in fact), he displays a humanity and generosity of spirit that are nothing short of exemplary.
This book is not so much a reference on film as a meditation on life and everything in it. In these past hundred years movies have covered exactly that kind of encyclopedic range, both in their subject matter and in the lives of their makers. Thomson uses the world of cinema as a vehicle with which to explore the magnificent enigma of life and existence, and somehow manages to pack more of that life into its 963 pages than practically any other book of any genre. Opinionated, yes, but then again so is the Bible. A true desert island book. An absolute masterpiece.The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded Overview

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