![]() Cover of the 2004 paperback edition, featuring a still from the film To Have and Have Not | |
Author | David Thomson |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Film criticism, reference work |
Publisher | Knopf |
Publication date | November 16, 2004 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 1008 |
ISBN | 0-375-70940-1 |
OCLC | 57691971 |
791.4302/8/0922 22 | |
LC Class | PN1998.2 .T49 2004 |
Preceded by | A Biographical Dictionary of Film, Third Edition |
Followed by | The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, Fifth Edition |
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is a reference book written by film critic David Thomson, originally published by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd in 1975 under the title A Biographical Dictionary of Cinema. [1]
Organized by personality, it is an almost exhaustive inventory of those involved in international cinema, whether contemporary or historical, elite or esoteric, "from Abbott and Costello to Crumb 's Terry Zwigoff", in the words of critic Richard Corliss. By the fifth edition, Thomson had expanded his scope to include a film composer (Bernard Herrmann), a graphic artist (Saul Bass), a critic (Pauline Kael), a sound designer (Walter Murch), a cinematographer (Gordon Willis) and even an animal actor (Rin Tin Tin) who he thinks are among the best in their fields, as well as writers like James Agee, Graham Greene, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard who have written for or about film. Beyond its scope, the tome is most notable for infusing subjectivity into its fact-based form; the technique may best be described as a playful deconstruction of the "reference book." Thomson's writing is highly personal, as he mixes biography and criticism with his own memories of seeing the films he describes: " The Third Man has one of the most intense atmospheres the screen has ever delivered—seeing it again always brings back the scent of the grandmother who took me to see it." [2] It is currently available in its sixth edition, released in May 2014. [3]
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film has garnered wide acclaim throughout the releases of its various editions; in a 2010 poll by the British Film Institute in Sight & Sound , it was voted the greatest of all books about film. [4] Roger Ebert wrote that "When a great star or a director dies, critics all over the world haul down David Thomson's big Biographical Dictionary of Film, because it does the best job in the fewest words of summing up the essence of its hundreds of subjects", citing Thomson's entry on Robert Mitchum. [5]
Although it looks very much like a dictionary or encyclopedia, each of the book's roughly 5,000 brief biographical sketches is highly subjective; a typical entry may begin with a birthplace and filmography, but concludes with something closer to criticism and memoir, as the author examines his connection to the subject's career both academically and personally.
Of Cary Grant, he writes: "There is a major but very needed difficult realization that needs to be made about Grant—difficult, that is, for many people who like to think they take the art form of film seriously. As well as being a leading box-office draw for some thirty years, the epitome of the man-about-town, as well as being the ex-husband of Virginia Cherell, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake, and Dyan Cannon, as well as being the retired actor, still handsome executive of a perfume company—as well as all these things, he was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema." [6] Thomson makes no attempt to hide his preferences; he begins his piece on Angie Dickinson by writing "The author is torn between his duty to everyone from Throlod Dickinson to Zinneman and the plain fact that Angie is his favorite actress." [7] The book is notable for the attention given to supporting and character actors; in his entry on John Cazale, Thomson writes that "In heaven, I hope, there will be no stars, just supporting actors. And one of the great strengths of American film is such people." [8]
The entries range in length from a few sentences to several pages. They are written in various forms; Thomson's piece on W. C. Fields begins with an imagined letter from Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins about the death of Fields, as Fields acted in adaptations of Dickens, was something of a Dickensian character, and because he died on Christmas: "Nor could even your own ingenuity for narrative, my dear Collins—and you know what honest admiration I have for it—begin to trace the anxiety with which Fields hid away his money in some several hundred separate bank accounts, nor invent the strange names in which those accounts were lodged." [9]
Thomson is notable for his literary style, which often imitates his subjects, and for his humor. His entry on Hoagy Carmichael imagines how Howard Hawks asked Carmichael to appear in To Have and Have Not . Thomson looks at images and themes that feature in a director's films; his entry on Jean Renoir describes how the image of the river recurs in his work, and closes with Rumer Godden's narration in Renoir's The River : "The river runs, the round world spins/ Dawn and lamplight, midnight, noon./ Sun follows day, night stars and moon./ The day ends, the end begins." [10] In the entry on Michael Powell, Thomson writes: "Black Narcissus is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns." [11]
The Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd-published first edition—the 600-page Biographical Dictionary of Cinema [1] —was followed by Biographical Dictionary of Film, published by William Morrow & Co in June, 1980; [12] the third, entitled A Biographical Dictionary of Film, was released on November 17, 1994, by Andre Deutsch Ltd; 328 pages longer than the first edition, it added 200 new entries, including Molly Ringwald. [13]
The 2004 edition was a major overhaul. Although the book's first edition contained 600 pages, the fourth was enlarged to 1,080 pages, updating older entries and adding 30 new personalities. The book's cover art was reworked, and the word "new" was added to its title. [14] The 4th edition cover featured Lauren Bacall and Hoagy Carmichael in a scene from To Have and Have Not ; the 5th edition cover had Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood and the 6th has Marilyn Monroe from Some Like It Hot . The epigraphs come from Ingmar Bergman's autobiography The Magic Lantern and Howard Hawks's comment on Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby : "The great trouble is people trying to be funny. If they don't try to be funny, then they are funny."
In the Acknowledgments, Thomson thanks "all the people who, one way or another, have shared in the ongoing 'conversation' about movies. All at once, he realizes that he has such lively company, such friends and arguers. Moreover, the thanking has become the more enjoyable since I stumbled into the game of asking people for their favorite films." Thomson asked people involved with the book's production, fellow critics, and members of his family to name their three favorite films. In the 2010 edition, he writes "After careful tabulation, the poll (with an electorate of 72) has three favorite films in second place (with 4 votes): Vertigo , Sunrise and Madame de..., but our winner, with 5, are His Girl Friday and Citizen Kane ." Thomson lists his own three favorites as His Girl Friday , Mississippi Mermaid and Celine and Julie Go Boating . [15]
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for work in the suspense, crime and psychological thriller genres. De Palma was a leading member of the New Hollywood generation.
The Best Years of Our Lives is a 1946 American drama film directed by William Wyler and starring Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo and Harold Russell. The film is about three United States servicemen re-adjusting to societal changes and civilian life after coming home from World War II. The three men come from different services with different ranks that do not correspond with their civilian social class backgrounds. It is one of the earliest films to address issues encountered by returning veterans in the post World War II era.
Paul Muni was an American stage and film actor from Chicago. He started his acting career in the Yiddish theater and during the 1930s, he was considered one of the most prestigious actors at the Warner Bros. studio and was given the rare privilege of choosing his own parts.
Alain Resnais was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct short films including Night and Fog (1956), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.
Jean Vigo was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor, author and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to utilize new communication technologies such as old-time radio broadcasts, television, microphones, and sound recordings.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) is a dictionary of American English published by HarperCollins. It is currently in its fifth edition.
Kyril Bonfiglioli was a British art dealer, magazine editor and comic novelist. His eccentric and witty Mortdecai novels have gained a following since his death.
David Thomson is a British film critic and historian based in the United States, and the author of more than 20 books.
Kevin Brownlow is a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. He is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era, having become interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. Brownlow has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of early mass-entertainment cinema. He received an Academy Honorary Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on 13 November 2010. This was the first occasion on which an Academy Honorary Award was given to a film preservationist.
The Monthly Film Bulletin was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with Sight & Sound. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a narrow arthouse release.
Michael is a 1924 German silent drama film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, director of other notable silents such as The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Master of the House (1925), and Leaves from Satan's Book (1921). The film stars Walter Slezak as the titular Michael, the young assistant and model to the artist Claude Zoret. Along with Different from the Others (1919) and Sex in Chains (1928), Michael is widely considered a landmark in gay silent cinema.
Brian Lester Glanville is an English football writer and novelist. He was described by The Times as "the doyen of football writers—arguably the finest football writer of his—or any other—generation", and by American journalist Paul Zimmerman as "the greatest football writer of all time."
Edgar Austin Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist. He is the earliest professional novelist from the English-speaking Caribbean. He was able to develop a readership in Europe and North America, as well as the Caribbean; and established himself in London, where he lived almost exclusively by writing fiction. He is considered "the most prolific novelist to be produced by the Caribbean".
Fredric John Warburg was a British publisher, who in 1935 founded the company Secker & Warburg. He is best known for his association with the author George Orwell. During a career spanning a large part of the 20th century and ending in 1971, Warburg published Orwell's major books Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), as well as works by other leading figures such as Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. Other notable publications included The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa, Pierre Boulle's The Bridge over the River Kwai, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Ephraim Katz was a writer, journalist and filmmaker who devoted his life to gathering the information in his book, The Film Encyclopedia, first published in 1979.
Voyage to Cythera is a 1984 Greek film directed by Theodoros Angelopoulos. It was entered into the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the award for Best Screenplay.
The bibliography of George Orwell includes journalism, essays, novels, and non-fiction books written by the British writer Eric Blair (1903–1950), either under his own name or, more usually, under his pen name George Orwell. Orwell was a prolific writer on topics related to contemporary English society and literary criticism, who has been declared "perhaps the 20th century's best chronicler of English culture." His non-fiction cultural and political criticism constitutes the majority of his work, but Orwell also wrote in several genres of fictional literature.
Disorder and Early Sorrow is a 1925 novella written by Thomas Mann. It follows the fortunes of the Cornelius family through the perspective of Abel Cornelius, a 47-year-old history professor at the local university, whose status in society was once highly respected but has diminished markedly. The Cornelius family is, in part, a reflection of Mann's own family. The novella explores the psychological and social impact of the Weimar hyperinflation. It first appeared in 1925 in a Festschrift celebrating Mann's 50th birthday in the publication Neue Rundschau. It first appeared in English in The Dial in two installments in 1926. As an individual book, it was published in an English translation by Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter in 1929 and in one by Herman George Scheffauer in 1930. It was translated in 2023 by Damion Searls as "Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow".
John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. He has won the Booker Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature; has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; knighted by Italy; is one of the most acclaimed writers in the English language.