Customer Reviews

"Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This series of thumbnail summaries of many many movies is erudite, funny, well-written and infuriating. Like Pauline Kael and Anthony Lane, Thomson is an intrusive critic; we're usually more aware of his own presence than those of the movies he evokes. And his presence is that of the worst sort of Englishman in Southern California, a virus that has infected theSanta Monica region since English directors, actors and technicians (and decades later, music industry folk) began flocking to these shores in the 1900's. They get rich and fat off our pop culture, love the weather, yet feel free to criticize us from their perspective as insider/outsiders who truly have Yanks' measure as no-one else does. Public school class snobbery drips off of these loyal social democrats more than any fox-hunting hyphenate I've ever met; they spend their entire life, when they're not getting drunk, playing hide-the-ball for the fact that they are involved, one way or another, in making mindless entertainment for midwestern american teenages for the benefit of american banks by heaping scorn on the institutions that fatten them.

Thomson is a gruesome offender here -- no matter how much he likes a movie, he's always somehow better than it. Individually, his reviews are terrific, but his flaw-spotting becomes noticable after a while, because it always comes down to the immaturity and infantalism of American audiences that the even the most gifted film-makers are in thrall to, even Kubrick, Altman, the Coppola of The Godfather. He extends this to most global cinema post-1980, seeing folks like Kieslowski as too Hollywoodized; he also hates religion in all its forms, and thus consigns Tarkovski, Bresson, and John Ford to the ash-heap of history, on the implicit grounds that the religious are stupid gullible people.

This from a man who wrote two book-length mash-notes to Warren Beatty and Nicole Kidman, of all people, books all the worse for being highly intellectualized and cerebral. See what I mean about fattening yourself at the trough while biting the hand that feeds?

His book on Orson Welles was the nadir, he clearly loathed the fact that Welles was a popularizer of high culture, and a smiling bad boy who would back down to no-one (unlike Thomson,who writes commisioned works on behalf of Nicole Kidman), and instead of recognizing Chimes at Midnight as being the greatest, smartest Shakespeare cinema adaptation ever, beats up on Welles for his weight and supposed dilletanteism and inability to complete anything, all myths (except the weight part) biographers like Bogdanovich, Leaming, and Rosenbaum have done much to dispel. It comes down to the lamentable notion that if Thomson had been around Welles in 1942, he could have told him a thing or two about better managing his career and putting together his films. What's weird is that this kinda Marxist critic of the US culture industry winds up sounding little different than the executives at RKO who executed Welles' downfall on the grounds that he was too big for his britches and cocky and didn't care what they thought of him.

All of the capsule reviews in this book start to read like this after a while, know-it-all hectoring of the "those who can't do, teach" variety. The self-hating critic's contempt channelled from his job to the works under review. For all his scholarly talk of Sterne and Nabokov tucked away in his movie reviews, he cannot conceal the fact that books like this, and his most famous, similarly thumb-nail entry-organized book The Biographical Dictionary of American Film, are essentially meant to be read while on the toilet.

On the other hand, his novels about the movies Silver Light and Suspects are Borges-like little wonders, fiction about characters from classic movies and their unlikely interactions that actually show a real understanding and empathy for how America's myths often victimize and trap her. Maybe Thomson is just more humble as a fiction writer, aware of his weaknesses out of respect for the form. Both novels, which like 7 people have read, are worth seeking out, more so than his criticism.

I just received this book and so have only spent a couple of hours with it. The book is very engaging, and stirs interest in seeing films that you might have never ever watched, much less heard of. He is good about telling why he likes or dislikes the films, and in some cases suggests that you don't even watch the whole film, but certain scenes, or portions that are not to be missed.
Overall a great reference.
He has most of the reviews from films from the 30's to the 50's. This is intentional on his part, but does a very nice job of covering many decades of movies and he even has a couple of films from 2008.
There is a chronological index in the back of the book, but strangely enough, the book has no Table of Contents, or alphabetical listing of the reviews. I think that the inclusion of an alphabetical listing, and maybe an additional listing by director would have made things more interesting, and the book easier to use as a reference.

I always used to recommend David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film as the most important book on movies for anyone to have. Now I have to recommend two books--the Biographical Dictionary and this one, "Have You Seen . . . ?" A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films.

Like Thomson's Biographical Dictionary, "Have You Seen . . . ?" is as valuable to simply read and learn about movies from as it is as a reference book. I don't know of anyone who knows as much about the art and history of movies as David Thomson. (Another book by Thomson you should read is Suspects but that's for another time.)

These one thousand films certainly aren't all on Thomson's "Best of" list. On The Sound of Music: "[P]roducer-director Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman . . . had killed West Side Story a few years earlier, which was a more serious crime than making The Sound of Music, because the latter had always been brain-dead."

Thomson's interest and knowledge is deepest concerning the 1930s through the 1970s. That's an amazing amount of knowledge, but he's spent his whole life studying film in the way lovers of 1960s "film culture" did--by watching good and/or interesting (not always the same thing) films over and over again.

Thomson is American now, but he grew up in England and he has the perspective of the outsider to shape his view of this country and its movies. On The Truman Show as a 1990s phenomenon:

"No other American film was clearer that the greatest threat to our existence was . . . above all our decision to be cheerful, amiable, and pleasant. . . . It was as if someone at last had realized that the most . . . frightening thing about America was not the menace, . . . but the bonhomie, the salesman oil . . ."

I don't know if it's what Thomson intended, but this makes me think of us charging off into the rest of the world, bringing "freedom" and our friendship whether it's welcome or not.

What I like most about Thomson's writing is that, in making me decide whether I agree with him or not, it makes me realize what I think.

Thomson has his strengths (or prejudices): he takes westerns and especially comedies very seriously. He knows all about film noir and the Europeans who invented this "American" style. I don't think he cares for horror movies much. But he does write about the films that transcend the genre--Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, even John Carpenter's Halloween, which echoes Hitchcock by using suspense, not gore.

So it's interesting that Thomson starts "Have You Seen . . . ?" off with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Talk about a trivial story. But the relationship between Bud and Lou isn't trivial. Thomson gets right to the horror that I sensed when I saw the Abbot and Costello movies on TV when I was ten:

". . . Bud Abbott manages to be the most forbidding figure in sight. Deep down, we know that Bud has abused Lou--it is the secret in their films never quite arrived at."

Reading David Thomson helps me see things in the movies I didn't before, and his writing and thinking about film has helped me train myself to see strange things on the screen too.

The essays are engaging but the book is seriously flawed by not having an index to directors and other principals.

Thomson is the author of the well-known "Biographical Dictionary of Film," and the presentation here is similar. The title says 1,000 films and 1,000 films is what you get, each film the subject of a mini-essay of one page or less (usually somewhat over 500 words). Such limited space makes it hard for a writer to say something worthwhile, let alone original or incisive, on each of his 1,000 subjects. Most of the time Thomson is up to the challenge, although there are some duds. For the most part his writing is supple, his opinions passionate and his views well argued. Even if you disagree with him (and you frequently will), you cannot simply dismiss Thomson's views.

But this is not really a reference book (except of Thomson's opinions). Limited space means too much has to be left out. Plot summaries, for example, are very skinny when given at all. Full, formal cast lists are omitted, major supporting actors usually being merely listed without identifying the character played. There is no index.

Still the book is well worth reading. Thomson has vast knowledge and an acute critical sensibility. He possesses very sensitive detectors for pretentiousness, pomposity and fakery and knows how to skewer them accurately and with wit. He often makes you think again about films that you've seen, sometimes even changing your mind a bit (in my case, for example, about "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"). He can also make you want to see films that you have never heard of or that you had failed to appreciate. An accomplishment at any time but especially with so little space.

I think that the book is best served by being read a few selections at a time. Straight through in large chunks is overload and makes things run together a bit.

My opinion on the quality and entertainment value of the book coincides with the other 5-star reviews here, so I needn't add more other than to echo the comments already stated. However, I do want to add that the only index is of films by release year - no index for actor, director, genre, etc. And no alphabetical listing other than going through the book page by page (it's arranged alphabetically, but you'll need to know your French numerals: 400 = Quatre Cents, for example).

Here's a doorstop-sized book list that some moviegoers will read and argue over, and not necessarily for what Thomson leaves in or out of his survey of a thousand of his chosen must-see films.The reviews are one-a-page, so even the most casual moviegoer familiar with, say, "Jaws", will at least glance at it's opposite-page mate, "La Jetee", Chris Marker's 29-minute film about life after a Third World War.

Or maybe not. These essays are written in the newspaper style of film criticism -- with an assumption that the reader shares a common knowledge of, and admiration for, what goes on the screen, as well as behind it. Others less interested may find such details distracting in essays -- sketches, really -- that run only 750 words in length. And as might be expected, most of Thomson's list draws heavily from films before 1970.

Thomson reviews these films secure in the knowledge that he thinks they're great (and they undoubtedly are, most of them) but his enthusiasm for old Hollywood mostly misses the mark: as an introduction to movies, he tells us names and dates and stars (what makes the movies tick) but never really communicates what would make these films exciting to a first-time viewer. Young movie fans are missing in Thomson's book, unless they have an interest in exploring older films on their own. And without a younger audience of readers interested in movies, "Have You Seen ...?" loses is point, even as it tries to be entertaining.

That observation may sound uncharitable, but consider: Thomson begins his alphabetical list of reviews not with his original first choice, "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" but with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein," so as not to open the book with a film that "would depress the ordinary heart." That's odd: the book is Thomson's personal introduction ... but he's talked into this choice by a Sony Pictures representative, who at least had the grace not to suggest one of his own company's films.

For a film buff such a marketing ploy throws the rest of Thomson's reasoning into a questionable realm. There are great choices in the book of course, but the sheer number of titles dilutes the power of truly great films deserving to be seen (Murnau's "Sunrise") and elevating some that are less than mediocre ("The Incredible Shrinking Man"). Thomson takes aim (repeatedly) at some directors whose reputations are secure at this late date: Kubrick ("strange," "straining," "pretentious") and David Lean (in "Lawrence of Arabia," "the sun shines over the shell of an empty film") are just two examples, and John Ford ("How Green Was My Valley") receives several backhanded slaps apparently for not attempting to be a better director than Carol Reed ("The Stars Look Down").

Since the Kubrick, Lean and Ford movies are included in the book anyway as worth seeing, Thomson's judgements seem awkward and arbitrary, and the reviews don't achieve any critical depth. As with any book of lists, the reader is free to agree or disagree with Thomson's broad generalities employing one's own standard of disbelief.

It's doubtful Thomson's book will spark any serious debate; it's not scholarly, and it's meant to be an introduction to movies that, by far, are not even making the rounds of art houses any more. More than likely it will be a handy, hefty guide next time you're rearranging your Netflix queue on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Thomson's book includes 1000 essays--each confined to a page--reflecting from the vantage point of a lifetime of movie knowledge and wisdom on a thousand different films from around the world and from the silent era to the early 2000s. What makes the book special--even extraordinary--is the richness of Thomson's insights. Beware: the writing and thoughts are not linear: that is, he doesn't lay out the plot and analyze it. Rather, in no particular order at all, he casts his pearls--on acting, filmwriting, direction, production, whatever--on each movie for our further consideration. In doing so, he has given me many new ideas and avenues of approach for my own thinking. What more can a reader ask?

David Thomson's compilation of short reviews of many classic (and not so classic) films is, as the saying goes, a good read, and yet it drove me crazy for its glaring inaccuracies, mistakes and the films Thomson omitted, mostly lower budgeted efforts. Thomson's a good writer and critic but too idiosyncratic to be a "guide" to anything. The book could have used an index and a listing of all the films reviewed. Still, for all its flaws, the book is worth seeking out. The best thing about Thomson is that he thinks for himself, doesn't fall back on jargon or theory, thus at his best he's brilliant and insightful, at his worst, slick and facile. I do recommend this book for movie buffs.

This is an intellectual view of the films that should be watched. That means that the selected films are not there for relaxation, but to stimulate the mind. It is an excellent compendium and should be viewed as the basis for a decade long investigation via a Netflix account.