My first exposure to David Thomson was reading the booklet included with my Criterion Collection of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai. His essay, entitled Death in White Gloves was every bit as evocative as the title suggests. You will forgive me, I’m sure, for including such a large excerpt:
“He is an icon out of his time. He is a hired killer, yet he is a last emblem of honor in a shabby world of compromise. He is a man who believes in tiny adjustments to the perfect shadow cast by the brim of his hat, who exults in the flatness with which he can utter a line, and who aspires to the last lovely funeral of brushes on a drummer’s cymbal.”[1]
Reading Thomson, one quickly gains the sense of being in the presence of a master at work. He has the sort of self-assured arrogance one only develops when they’ve been at the top of their game for a very long time. His knowledge of films is encyclopaedic; that’s not surprising given he’s on the 5th Edition of his hugely popular New Biographical Dictionary of Film. He’s awfully prolific. And for a man of 72 years of age he is remarkably fresh. His articles in The Guardian and The New Republic are enjoyable, full of piercing intellect and sharp, profound observations. His humour is cutting but his wild opinionation is bound to incense, sooner or later.
When first cherry-picking his Biographical Dictionary, after nodding my head in resounding agreement with many entries, I was struck by a sudden rage as I came to a line within Eddie Murphy’s: “However much one appreciates Spike Lee’s Malcolm X, its steadfast length never quite conveys the turbulent, contradictory passions evident in one of Eddie Murphy’s savage smiles. Should he entertain us, or kill us?”[2] Having read and reread that line a number of times over the past few months, I’m still no closer to taking away a meaning that isn’t just a little bit racist. It conjures for me the image of a nervous David Thomson at the lights somewhere in his adopted home city of San Francisco, hastily locking the car door as an African American male pulls up beside him, turns and smiles. Yet if that seems a harsh or unwarranted criticism to level at poor Mr Thomson, I will say in order to be fair that he does go on to find some sympathy (however wrong-headed) for black people, and worry that Eddie Murphy’s film choices could leave Americans believing that “blacks are stupid, low and dirty-minded.” More recently he closed an article on Michelle Pfeifer and her advanced state of aging in The Family with “She was pretty once and insolent toward pushy guys. Nowadays, she ought to be called Maud or Magda. Michelle is a dog that don’t hunt.”[3] He’s saying she looks bored and unhappy with the state of her career, and he’s so unapologetically sure of himself that you almost take his point. Then you watch the movie and quietly and somewhat ashamedly admit to yourself that she does look rather tired.
So here we have a rapidly aging, occasionally vulgar, somewhat sexist, potentially racist fellow, who after nearly fifty years of steady writing is still at the top of his game. Yet for every one of those cringe-worthy moments, there are dozens of gems. What’s more, his gift at seeing deeply into films and why we love them is not just a simple reiteration of what we’re seeing on the screen; it’s a reinterpretation. He utilises his seemingly boundless knowledge of the world of cinema to give a much deeper context than even the well-versed cinema lover would possess. Indeed, this is cinephilia for the true cinephile. He talks about Michael Fassbender’s turn in Shame as a “bold, full-frontal performance that carries the film. He’s so handsome, yet so cold and detached – not a million miles away from Magneto.”[4] And talking about Breaking Bad’s main protagonist he says “Walter becomes a magical criminal; he’s like a loser who breaks the bank at Las Vegas.”[5] Writing of the recently deceased critic Stanley Kauffmann, I think he hits the nail on the head for why he himself is so enjoyable to read:
“He wrote like a young man, or like someone capable of falling in love once a week as he discovered some fresh glory.”[6]
Perhaps this is what makes great film writing. Coming from a position of erudite authority, yet never letting go of that child within. That child for whom it is still possible to see every frame as something new, magical and wondrous. Thomson has an incredible gift for poetically insightful wordplay, and for the budding film writer it is at once daunting and inspiring. His style is at once authoritative and casual; reading Thomson is like speaking to an immensely intelligent friend who knows everything about the movies. He’s a friend you love to listen to, and if he makes the odd crass comment, you’re quick to forgive him because he’s just so damned entertaining.
[1] David Thomson, ‘Death in White Gloves’, Criterion Collection [webpage], (2005), <http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/391-le-samourai-death-in-white-gloves>, accessed 20 Sep 2013.
[2] David Thomson, New Biographical Dictionary of Film, (New York: Random House, 2010), Page 692.
[3] David Thomson, ‘Michelle Pfeiffer’s Evolution: From ‘Scarface’ to ‘The Family’’, New Republic, (2013) <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114687/michelle-pfeiffers-evolution-scarface-family>, accessed 20 Sep 2013.
[4] David Thomson, ‘David Thomson on Michael Fassbender’, Guardian, (2012), <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/05/david-thomson-on-michael-fassbender>, accessed 20 Sep 2013.
[5] David Thomson, ‘An End for Walter White?: How long-form television has changed storytelling’, New Republic [webpage], (2013), < http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114421/breaking-bad-and-how-long-form-television-has-changed-storytelling>, accessed 20 Sep 2013.
[6] David Thomson, ‘Stanley Kauffmann Tribute: A Citizen of a Wider World’, New Republic [webpage], (2013), <http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115111/david-thomson-tribute-stanley-kauffmann>, accessed 31 Oct 2013.
Behind the Fourth Wall
Jenna De Bono
junebullet
Brendan O'Callaghan
SB
Behind the Fourth Wall 