On completing David Thomson's rather slight introduction to Hollywood: A Celebration!, - a compilation of Kobal Collection movie photographs - aside from anticipating visual pleasure, I did not expect a particularly rich or stimulating learning experience. Having made some relevant, if relatively uninspiring, points about the youthful history of cinema, the development of southern California and the way in which films have crucially altered our relationship with reality, Thomson concluded his opening gambit with some schmaltzy parting comments: "So, turn over the following pages. Bring back the memories. Remember titles you may never have heard of. Keep a list for trips to the local video store - for many of the 900 are available somewhere. And they are waiting for you." Suspiciously nostalgia-laden, this homily did not thrill me. Still, I persevered and on closer inspection was soon mollified and drawn in: with the limitation of space, Thomson's narrative comments are necessarily pithy, but, read in succession in one sitting, quickly add up to a substantive whole. Also - and its obvious to say it - but one does forget just how many generically different, inspiring and alluring films have been made by mainstream Hollywood. Each photograph is an aide memoire.
The book is divided into nine sections. The first, which ranges from 1915 to 1929, is entitled 'The Golden Age of the Silents', and each subsequent chapter is then devoted to a single decade, through from the 1930s to the 2000s. So the ways in which historical events and the advance of technology have affected output, shaped careers and altered modes of cinema-going are brought into sharp focus. Like a Robert McKee lesson in scriptwriting, the over-arching grand narrative draws the reader inexorably toward the year 2002, while the smaller sub-narratives and one-off events shock and entertain along the way. We are reminded how huge stars such as Clara Bow fell victim to the advent of sound, how the movement of cinematographers was initially restricted because of their machinery, that the Second World War brought the bleakest of noir angst and the most fantastically lush musicals, that CGI could become really annoying in the wrong hands, and so on. While some of the more subtle changes in the use of colour and framing become discernible over a few pages, an extreme close-up from John Cassavetes's Faces of Gena Rowlands immediately stands out amongst the more classically shot pictures; reminiscent of Bergman, a bold signal of the difference of his mode of film-making, and of the links between Europe and Hollywood.
Although there were very few films mentioned that I had never heard of (if a fair few I had not seen), there were some exceptions, which whetted my appetite: Suddenly, for instance, a 1954 film starring Frank Sinatra as a man who plans to shoot the president, I have never come across before and now intend to seek out. Years that yielded a good crop of films that happened to be personal favourites also jumped out: 1950, I particularly enjoyed for its classy, noir-tinged offerings - Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve and In a Lonely Place.
It would have been interesting to have some discussion on the nature of photographs - the part they have played in shaping the history and myth of Hollywood, from promotional stills of stars, through on-set shots and poster pictures, and the role of the people that actually took them - but that, I suppose, is a different book altogether. So, in the final conclusion, worth a look, but at £30 maybe not a buy - perhaps just a little too heavy as a potential shopping list for those trips to the video store.
Reviewed by Hannah Patterson
