The New Biographical Dictionary of Film - Softcover

Thomson, David

4.23

704 ratings by Goodreads

9780316726603: The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0316726605 ISBN 13: 9780316726603

Publisher: Little, Brown & Co., 2003

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'This book is both more and less than history, a work of imagination in its own right, a piece of movie literature that turns fact into romance.' Gavin Lambert was reviewing the first edition of David Thomson's monumental work in 1975. In the eight years since the third edition was published, careers have waxed and waned, reputations been made and lost, great movies produced, trends set and scorned. This updated fourth edition has 30 entirely new entries and every original entry has been re-examined. Thus the roster of directors, actors, producers, screenwriters and cameramen is both historical and contemporary, with old masters reappraised in terms of how their work has lasted. Each of the 1,330 profiles is a keenly perceptive, provocative critical essay. Striking the perfect balance between personal bias and factual reliability, David Thomson - novelist, critic, biographer and unabashed film addict - has given us an enormously rich reference book, a brilliant reflection on the art and artists of the cinema.

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From the Back Cover:

“The single most stunningly informative, learned and provocative book I’ve encountered about the movies...The breadth of Thomson’s research and his skill in writing about that knowledge will take your breath away, whether you are a scholarly aficionado or a weekend filmgoer.”
–William W. Starr, The State (Columbia, SC)

“Thomson’s love for the medium is proprietary, possessive, suffused with an academic’s breadth of knowledge and a fan’s mad crushes. He is by turns analytical and ardent, dryly appalled and moistly enthralled–and his book deserves a home on whatever flat surface is available between you and your DVD player.”
–Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly

“Even more seductive than the last edition . . . One of the most influential books on cinema ever written.”
–Henry Cabot Beck, New York Daily News

“And now, [The Biographical Dictionary of Film] stands before us again, as grand and eccentric as Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, or one of the madder, more imaginary encyclopedias you’ll find in the pages of Borges . . . Mr. Thomson is, I think, the last of the great film writers, up there with Graham Greene and Pauline Kael–not least because he has the courage to wonder aloud whether film is greatness’ proper medium . . . [He] is here to sing the multiplex blues–sitting there, at the back to the cinema, amid the torn velour and spilled Pepsi–but this book is the most beautiful of torch songs, and more than bright enough to light up the gloom.”
–Tom Shone, New York Observer

“Thomson has demonstrated wit and originality beyond a reasonable doubt . . . in the latest edition of his deservedly treasured reference work, the book's third and biggest revision since it first appeared in 1975, Thomson proves anew that he is irreplaceable. . . . [The New Biographical Dictionary of Film] is starting to feel like a public resource . . . Thomson's monologue has blossomed into an unlikely, searching dialogue about what to value in the movies . . . Thomson adds another honest wrinkle to one of the most probing accounts ever written of a human being's engagement with the movies.”
–Sarah Kerr, New York Times Book Review

“A reference book of extraordinary literary merit, this eccentric, audacious, sparkling work returns–revised, updated, and bulging with 300 new entries . . . Probably the greatest living film critic and historian, Thomson, an Englishman who lives in San Francisco, writes the most fun and enthralling prose about the movies since Pauline Kael . . . The book is a marvel.”
–Benjamin Schwarz, Atlantic Monthly (lead review)

“When this book was first published in 1975, it ignited arguments among many film buffs . . . This latest upgrade–which includes 300 new entries–promises to do the same . . . Thomson often nails the essence of a personality or career in less than a dozen words . . . One still turns to [him] for witty writing and potent, razor-sharp insights. With immense passion for pictures, he plunges past the IMDb [Internet Movie Database] into the very soul of film.”
–Publishers Weekly

“Thomson’s massive, invaluable attempt to comprehend and compress more than 100 years of movie history into a single volume . . . The massiveness of his erudition and the brisk confidence of his manner–he’s an awfully good writer–render Thomson something of a dangerous character . . . Earlier editions have been my constant compansions for decades, consulted almost weekly . . . I happily welcome this latest . . . May our quarrels never end.”
–Richard Schickel, Los Angeles Times

“An intellectual Filmgoer’s Companion . . . an invaluable standard text for students, fans, and serious enthusiasts.”
–Peter Bogdanovich

“One of the finest film critics in the English language.”
–Philip Lopate, New York Times Book Review

“This dictionary could be declared the best book on the movies ever written in English . . . It is a delight to browse through, to leaf through, to read aloud to a constant companion in the dark . . . The secret of this book is the secret of the movies: it gives you pleasure . . . Thomson is the Dr. Johnson of film.”
–Guillermo Cabrera Infante, The New Republic

“A treasure . . . Unique, fascinating and more than a little addictive . . . A great critic’s great work.”
–Laura Miller, San Francisco Examiner

“Delicious, one of the best and most useful books written about the movies.”
–Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle

From the Inside Flap:

For twenty-five years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview), not merely the “desert island book” of art critic David Sylvester, not merely “a great, crazy masterpiece” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian), but also “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone).

Now it returns, with its old entries updated and 300 new ones—from Luc Besson to Reese Witherspoon—making more than 1300 in all, some of them just a pungent paragraph, some of them several thousand words long. In addition to the new “musts,” Thomson has added key figures from film history—lively anatomies of Graham Greene, Eddie Cantor, Pauline Kael, Abbott and Costello, No�l Coward, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Gish, Rin Tin Tin, and more.

Here is a great, rare book, one that encompasses the chaos of art, entertainment, money, vulgarity, and nonsense that we call the movies. Personal, opinionated, funny, daring, provocative, and passionate, it is the one book that every filmmaker and film buff must own. Time Out named it one of the ten best books of the 1990s. Gavin Lambert recognized it as “a work of imagination in its own right.” Now better than ever—a masterwork by the man playwright David Hare called “the most stimulating and thoughtful film critic now writing.”
From the Hardcover edition.

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