By David Thomson
In 1975, David Thomson released his Biographical Dictionary of Film, and few movie books have loved greater press or such regular sales.
Now, thirty-three years later, we've got the better half quantity, a moment publication of greater than 1,000 pages in a single voice—that of our such a lot provocative modern movie critic and historian.
Juxtaposing the fanciful and the excellent, the previous favorites and the forgotten, this sweeping assortment offers the movies that Thomson deals in accordance with the query he will get requested such a lot often—“What should still I see?” This new booklet is a beneficiant background of movie and an attractive severe appraisal written with as a lot humor and keenness as ancient wisdom. no longer content material to settle on his personal best movies (though they're here), Thomson has created an inventory that might shock and pleasure you—and ship you in your top motion picture condominium service.
But he additionally probes the query: after 100 years of movie, which of them are the easiest, and why?
“Have You obvious . . . ?” indicates a real canon of cinema and one that’s virtually thoroughly obtainable now, due to DVDs. This ebook is a needs to for someone who loves the silver monitor: the correct confection to dip into at any element for a flavor of controversy, little-known evidence, and concepts approximately what to work out. it is a quantity you’ll are looking to go back to repeatedly, like a pricey yet argumentative buddy at nighttime on the movies.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Extra resources for "Have You Seen . . . ?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films
Example text
The film was made in Kyoto, a proper feature film of 92 minutes about the juxtaposition of a group of sailors and a married couple on a jungle island long after the Second World War is over. Sternberg was the producer, the director, the writer, the photographer, and the narrator of the film, though it’s notable that Japanese talent was also credited in all departments except that of (1954) direction. It was not filmed on a deserted island. Indeed, the essential characteristic and beauty of the venture is that it is all done on sets, with the trees and foliage of the jungle constructed and rendered synthetically.
Coming out of the University of Southern California, Lucas had been the quiet kid, with Francis Coppola the talker. It was no surprise (1973) that as Francis leaped ahead with The Godfather, George bombed with THX 1138, a gloomy sci-fi picture about a world short on trust, warmth, and rock and roll. George does not like to bomb, and American Graffiti was a shift to something he knew—and something he guessed would sell. Francis was his godfather, acting as producer (with Gary Kurtz) and telling the studio to leave the kid alone.
A year passes with natural and unnatural ceremonies: Fascist parades, snow falling, big-bosomed women giving Titta their nipples to suck—unlikely bits of theater. It’s an episodic film, although I do think there’s a conscious effort to suggest that fascism is an adolescent ideology. But nothing hints at why fascism had come to Italy, or at the process that would remove it. Fellini knew that bad time, of course, but Amarcord is a case of leaving nostalgia uninspected. Equally, it’s a movie that did nothing to disturb or chasten those thousands of Americans who spent their carefree summers in Italy.