Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts [Paperback]

David Thomson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 1998

"[Thomson is] one of the finest film
    critics in the English language."
--philip lopate, the new york times book review

If most film critics write about movies, David Thomson creates their literary counterpart with essays that are as dazzling, haunting, and moving as the pictures they discuss. In this bravura new collection, the Esquire columnist trains his eye on Hollywood's ghosts, exploring their tendency to rise from the grave or descend from the screen to intimately haunt our lives.

Thomson conjures up Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, and Cary Grant in any of the pictures where he makes every scene look like a lucky accident. With equal aplomb, he imagines a James Dean who survived the car crash and a post-Saturday Night Fever Tony Manero. We learn the "20 Things People Like to Forget About Hollywood" (Number 3: "You Are Their Playthings, Not the Other Way Around"). And on every page of Beneath Mulholland, we are educated, entertained, and enlarged by a book as savvy and incisive as any Hollywood reportage and as lyrical as the best fiction.

"Not just...one of our sharpest
writers-on-film, but...one of our
wisest and best writers, period."  
--film comment

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Best known for his Biographical Dictionary of Film (LJ 11/15/94) and Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick (Knopf, 1992), Thomson here collects essays written for various publications and a number of previously unpublished works. He is at his best when exploring a subject such as money through the prisms of a wide-ranging group of films to reveal common threads. There is a moving essay on Garbo at 75 and a harrowing piece on Selznick's niece, who died in squalor despite owning a 6.77 percent share of her uncle's greatest legacy, Gone with the Wind. Thomson is at his weakest imagining the lives of stars beyond their life spans ("James Dean at 50") or the ongoing stories of movie characters (Saturday Night Fever's Tony Manero evolving into Pulp Fiction's Vincent Vega). On balance, this is a strong volume, though it will interest mostly the serious moviegoer. For large collections.?Thomas J. Wiener, editor, "Satellite DIRECT"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

A poorly essayed collection of essays and flights of fancy on film and more. Noted film critic Thomson (Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles, 1996, etc.) seems to have fallen victim to one of the occupational hazards of his profession: Apparently discontented with his lot, he has taken a lunge at creativity with this wildly uneven and unrelated gathering of pieces, many previously published in magazines such as Movieline and Film Comment.There's a labored fantasia on ``James Dean at 50,'' imagining the rebel without a cause in middle age. This conceit is followed by ``Suspects,'' a patently unfunny imagining of the future lives of a number of film characters. Then there are tired variations on the Sony acquisition of Columbia Tristar, and various other weak satires. Even if these had been more successfully and wittily carried off, they still would be little more than bantamweight filler. When Thomson isn't at play in the fields of the bored, he can be found fawning over stars. Like Walter Pater obsessing over the Mona Lisa, Thomson celebrates every tic and twitch of actors such as Cary Grant and Greta Garbo. When he steps back and analyzes the roots of his fandom, he begins to verge on astuteness: ``Just the fact that photography is modern and technical does not prevent its fostering superstition. To believe in faces we never meet, and to let their moods affect our lives, depends on irrational faith.'' The closer Thomson gets to his forte--traditional film criticism--the better he gets. His essay on The Sheltering Sky is first-rate, as are his meditations on ``How People Die in Movies'' and the elaborated list of ``20 Things People Like to Forget About Hollywood.'' But these are exceptions to the roil of self-indulgent, free-form folderol. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (November 24, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067977291X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679772910
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #716,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Book!, May 8, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts (Hardcover)

I was really struck by the complexity of thought in this remarkable book. If you love films and want insight into the true Hollywood of 1999, this is the book. Superb essays and flights of truth and fantasy by an outstanding author. I will read this book many times.