Having enjoyed David Thomson's The Big Screen - The Story Of The Movies And What They Did To Us, I was looking forward to his new book about directors. I guess it was obvious he would start with To Be A Master - Fritz Lang
Of course the book concentrates on his Metropolis from 1927. We were told how the film went hugely over budget with a cost of Five Million Marks. Lang gave up writing early in his career, it was his second wife Thea Von Harbor who wrote his German films. Moving alone to the United States, he was contracted to MGM and first released Fury in 1936. Then dashing through to 1953 when The Big Heat was a big success.
Next up was Everyone's Friend - Jean Renoir
The book has a lot to say about his La Regle du jeu released in 1939 and restored in 1958. It was originally a big commercial failure with French audiences. But Thomson wonders if this one of THE great movies? I was more interested in the fact that at the end Thomson name checks Pedro Almodóvar's Pain and Glory as a masterpiece of compassion. Not sure about that, but my top film of that year.
The award winning director In Dreams - Louis Bunuel
Thomson is obviously impressed as expected by Bunuel's Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. The first (1967) won European awards, the second (1972) the Oscar for best foreign language film and the third nominated in that same category in 1977.
Earlier he had retired from film making until nearing fifty he returned to Mexico where his Los Olvidados won the best director prize at Cannes and later a jury award there for Nazarin. His final film in Mexico was The Exterminating Angel.
Next a director I knew well, especially from the series on Sky Arts. This was A Natural Liar - Howard Hawks
Thomson talks about the film Red River having made a big impression on an eight year old Hawks. I think I might have liked Westerns at that early age but they no longer have any interest for me. Most of his movies made big profits, he has a huge list of successes. There was a nice piece about his film Bringing Up Baby. Also see post on The Directors on Sky Arts.
I was looking forward to seeing what Thomson would write about Alfred Hitchcock.
I'm never sure about Thomson's prose. What does this mean: He was anxious to be unique and even on the spectrum. I have no idea. So much in this chapter was very familiar. However there was a nice comparison between the British and Hollywood film industries. Then Vertigo was a serious flop when it opened , but now made the 2012 "Sight and Sound" poll as best film ever made.
Next an outstanding chapter about God? - Orson Welles
Him and Hitchcock, two very big guys in both sense of the words. Neither wrote screenplays, although Welles claimed he did. Citizen Kane is described as "the best ever American Film" (the author, not me). Thomson expands "a study on the futility and the addiction of trying to be great at the expense of life". An interesting piece on The Magnificent Ambersons. Welles the actor is dismissed, except for his role as Harry Lime.
His excursions to Europe ended with a return to direct and act in A Touch of Evil with "that serpentine opening shot in which a car goes over the border before exploding. Called a superb movie and "an effective dark thriller. I have always thought it was Welles best film, even after watching Citizen Kane. Thomson wraps up this chapter with his last neglected films including F for Fake. (Also a clip from Citizen Kane with the newspaper headline "Fraud at the Polls". I wonder who used that?)
A strange section on director Godordian - Jean Luc Godard
His productivity (15 films in eight years) is compared with Terence Mallic (10 films in 47 years). Why is Thomson comparing Godard's low budget films with David Lean's Doctor Zivago? And why a whole piece on Lean and British films in cash strapped post war Britain, interesting though it may be? The title of this chapter "Godardian" (his influence on future directors) gave the author the opportunity to discuss many of his followers. So then over eight pages before we get to "Jean Luc Goddard was born in Paris ......". And later "when Geoff Hurst scored the fourth goal at Wembley in 1966". What does that have to do with anything here? Something to do with being alive?
Then I'm not at all interested in advice about the plot of his films. Pierrot le Fou (for instance) has a full page. Sometimes I wonder if Thomason is not too intellectual for me, especially when he describes Godardian as "also a forecast of confusion where once there seemed marvels fit for a Rousseau jungle". I have no idea.
Is The Ghost of Nick Ray a one hit wonder?
A chapter with the title The Ghost of Nick Ray. He could have been a ghost as I had never heard his name. But in 1955 he directed the iconic movie Rebel without a Cause. Prior to that his films included Flying Leathernecks in 1951 with John Wayne and Johnny Guitar in 1954 with Joan Crawford. At fifty he directed the biblical epic King of Kings in 1961. With a budget of $5 Million, it earnt $13 Million. And "Orson Welles read the gravity-heavy narration, without credit and for cash in hand".
His next film in 1963 wasn't so commercially successful. But I liked 55 Days at Peking. Although Ray had to be replaced during the shoot as he went off the rails. There was a great description of a troubled man that ends "If only Nick Ray had had some wise producer to look after him - someone like Stephen Frears".
A Very English Professional - Stephen Frears
I think Thomson likes Stephen Frears: "His record is exceptional in it's variety and skill". Mary Reilly, Dangerous Liaisons, The Queen and A Very English Scandal have all been "talking points". The author discusses State of the Union (another TV hit) where married couple Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd meet in a pub before their latest therapy session, just ten minutes for each ten minute episode written by David Hare. I thought they were marvellous.
My Beautiful Laundrette is only mentioned in passing and Thomson chooses instead Sunset Across The Bay (A Play for Today on the BBC) as one of the best things Frears has done. He also liked 1984's The Hit which he called "very entertaining". Frears has two Oscar nominations and won three out of seventeen BAFTA nominations. A very English professional.
The American Auteur
Here was a nice introduction about how directors became universally recognised and now reaching "celebrity status". An interesting piece about Peter Bogdanovich and his "remarkable debut" Targets followed by "three beauties in a row" until he went downhill. Next Thomson talks about Robert Altman and photographer Gordon Willis, before he spends some time on Francis Ford Coppola. A couple of pages about Terence Mallick (not my favourite director, although I might try his first film Badlands. I had also forgotten he directed The Thin Red Line which I enjoyed and Thomson called an "outstanding film". Before he tells us "I didn't mean to write so much about Mallick).
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas get a mention then briefly passing Roman Polanski before looking at Stanley Kubrick and The Shining. His last words here are "There is no better short description of what a director is, and no other film so demonstrates the incoming tide of Jack". This may form a question on a film studies course: "Discuss".
Onto Michael Cimino and the opposing critical and commercial outcomes of The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate. Another exam question? But then Thomson remarks that the full 219 minutes of the latter's extended version, seen on the big screen, "is a masterpiece". A short mention on Woody Allen takes us to Paul Thomas Anderson whose Casino is as good as Scorsese's Taxi Driver. (Discuss).
A Female Gaze
This is a study of women directors that starts with a criticism of the Oscars not recognising Greta Gerwig's Little Women. (I also thought it should have been up there). Thomson asks why there has been a lack of women directors until recently, so he asks the question "Can women only be in charge when they allow themselves to be seen". (Make of that what you will). Then "The history of women making films is more complex than you might think". Obviously Kathryn Bigelow is discussed, especially her The Hurt Locker. There follows lots about women and Hollywood (directors and those behind the scenes) with the fact that now a third of all Academy voters are women. A good piece about Leni Riefenstahl and others including Ana Lily Amirpour and Jane Campion.
Alone - The Nature of Minority
This chapter starts with a sweeping up of people Thomson missed, but an increasingly intellectual piece where you have to be a much bigger student of film than me to absorb even some of it. However, we then find out about Barbara Loden and her 1970 film Wanda that Thomson calls "an essential film, a great film". (She never made another!) A section about Jewishness in American Cinema followed by a bit about the first black player to win an Oscar, Hattie McDonald in Gone with the Wind. Although apparently her producer David Selznick bowed to pressure and she was not invited to the 1940 premier in Atlanta, Georgia. At the Oscars she was also "required to sit at a small table in the corner of the rom" instead on Selznick's huge table of white people. How embarrassing is that. Spike Lee is treated to a long piece, but Thomson ignores his Inside Man, that brilliant thriller. I wonder why? (See my post on Spike Lee on Sky Arts - The Directors).
The Kid From The Video Store - Quentin Tarantino
"He really is so good, and that bad". Thomson has huge mixed feeling about Tarantino, I just wonder why he has devoted a long chapter to him. And why spend four pages on Reservoir Dogs when he says "In 1992 I wanted to walk out on the picture ...... "and to reject it's vicious smugness" .... "I still feel that". The film did better in the UK than the USA, I guess because it is quite theatrical in it's setting and ceaseless outstanding dialogue. So Thomson then agrees with it's "profuse talk ..... in the opening scene was inspired and nearly delicious". He tells us dialogue was falling into misuse in 1992 "yet here was a writer with exceptional ear and rhythm".
I think he liked Pulp Fiction ("the best thing QT has done") and the fact that it's female characters )including my favourite Maria de Medeiros) are treated "with affection". An independent film that cost $8.5 Million and earned $213 Million and counting. ( I think that Kill Bill 1 and 2, Inglorious Basterds and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood are equally good.) And on the subject on the latter, why do we get nearly six pages on a film he may despise and sets out to destroy so much in it, when no other gets that devotion in the book. "The film is so spoiled, it is beyond protection".
And how dare he explain the final scene in so much detail (again totally messing with the general ethos of the book) and why has he seen the film "several times" when he calls it a "disgrace"? But then "a marvel of entertainment"? And what would the Harry Potter producer say when he visited Tarantino's home to read the script when those two films are polar opposites, except maybe for "entertainment". I thought Tarantino's treatment of this films female characters was worth a deeper look, comparing the Margaret Qualley as Pussycat (just a vehicle for getting Cliff to the Spahn Movie Ranch?) and the wonderful Julia Butters as Trudi Fraser (for her conversation with Rick).
I also thought for the first time how Tarantino twisted history for the violence at the cinema in Inglorious Basterds and that final violent scene in Once Upon a Time ...... I will have to read this chapter again as I originally thought that Thomson had lost the plot. But the book does deserve a second reading.
The Last Irishman
I will not dwell on this final chapter as Martin Scorsese's film was meant for Netflix, with only a three week release in cinemas (very limited screens, David, so why did you not say that). With no nationwide release, so for me not a proper cinema movie!
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