Pity poor David Thomson. Hailed as just about the greatest living writer on film (especially now that Pauline Kael is no longer with us) by the likes of David Hare, Hanif Kureishi, J.G. Ballard and John Updike on the dust jacket of this new edition of his most famous book, it's something of an anti-climax to discover in his new (and rather perfunctory) introduction that ... well ... he's rather off film. Admitting to feeling his age a bit and that his once hypersensitive palate is feeling jaded, he writes: 'Perhaps the movies belong to the young? The risk of such a conclusion for me is that of feeling less in love with movies than at other times in my life'. Presumably not the reaction Thomson's publisher hoped-for when they approached him about re-visiting the project on which, like it or not, his reputation is built.And, indeed, this rather half-hearted and weary attitude is present in a number of the new entries - apparently over 300 in all – most scandalously so, in this writer's opinion, in his entry for Wes Anderson, which reads:
'Watch this space. What does that mean? That he might be something one day.'
That's it. No, really. Now, I recognise that Anderson's films might not be to everyone's taste. Philip French in his Observer review of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) wondered aloud what all the fuss was about but felt compelled to do so because, as he saw it, of the great claims that were being made for the picture. But Thomson can't be bothered even to do this. Does he really have nothing to say about Anderson, his exquisite taste in collaborators, his work's formal qualities? At the very least, one might expect the tartness of the films to interest a man who writes, again in his introduction: 'I am so much more conscious of the things films can't do now – or of things they don't try to'.
A number of established directors whose work he previously held in esteem no longer excite him. Demme is 'boring'; Scorsese still 'has it in him' to be a great but he considers his recent work to be, by turns, 'muffled' (The Age of Innocence, 1993), 'a desperate attempt to believe in something' (Kundun, 1997) and 'marking time' (Bringing Out the Dead, 1999). All of which may be true, incidentally, but it only reinforces the impression abroad that Thomson just isn't interested anymore in what even the best are doing. Of the newcomers he is kinder to Atom Egoyan, P.T. Anderson and David Fincher (whose Panic Room (2002) he describes as 'brilliant', which suggests he hasn't attempted a second viewing). Further, the browser with an enquiring mind will search in vain of much evidence of Thomson's knowledge of contemporary world cinema. While it may be a disappointment rather than a surprise to find no entry for Takeshi Miike, despite his prolificacy, I was genuinely astonished to find no entries for Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano or, especially, Wong Kar-wai. Having recently been canonised by Sight and Sound, a magazine that Thomson regularly contributes to, as director of one of the best films of the last 25 years (Chungking Express, 1995), one might have thought that Thomson would have something to say about arguably the most significant auteur to emerge since the previous edition of the Dictionary. Apparently not.
While contesting individual entries or absences would normally be a critical dead-end in reviewing a reference book, I don't think this is the case here. For one thing, Thomson's work is not, and never has been, a reference work in the traditional sense. As its title suggests (whose 'biography' is it recording?), it's a sort of precursor to the Nick Hornby 'Fever Pitch'-type of memoir, a record of a life lived intensely through a consuming passion, perhaps to the cost of other areas of the personal arena (as Thomson himself admitted at a recent NFT appearance). For such an approach to work, the author needs to communicate this enthusiasm and relate it to the subject matter. But if we are to believe his latest remarks, Thomson just hasn't seen much worth getting excited about in the last 10 years or so, which makes this fourth edition somewhat redundant.
But let's be generous (which is the kind of thing Thomson himself might write in the face of a disappointment from an earlier favourite). No-one around now really writes as well – and not always favourably - as Thomson about figures from Classical Hollywood and the wave of foreign language film-makers who influenced the immediate post-Classical era. Cary Grant 'was the best and most important actor in the history of cinema'. On Garbo: 'She was all in the silver'. Godard has 'one of the great critical yet poetic minds in the medium'. (See what I mean about enthusiasm?) And his uncharacteristic but entirely appropriate demolition of Roberto Benigni deserves a loud hurrah.
It's instructive that the dust jacket endorsements are largely from literary writers rather than, as it were, film people. Ballard, Kureishi and Hare have all had their brushes with the movies (I write as Hare has been Oscar nominated for his adaptation of The Hours) but none of them are closely identified with film. Rather, they are celebrated stylists who know one of their own when they read him, and it is this facility with language, rather than a life in thrall to the moving image, that they are endorsing. Thomson's literary credentials are indeed impeccable and, if it doesn't already go without saying, ownership of his Biographical Dictionary in one edition or other should be mandatory for the serious film buff or anyone who just likes good writing about the movies. But sadly this Fourth and, in all likelihood, final edition (at least by the current author; perhaps it will re-emerge Halliwell-like, by and for another generation) is not in itself an essential purchase.
Reviewed by John Atkinson
