Customer Reviews
brilliant - By: , 02 Feb 2006 
Take no notice of Thomas from Norway - this is a fabulous work. I'm an Oscar nominated screenwriter & there is no better volume for understanding what film could & should be. It is fabulously opinionated, but always thoughtful & never churlish. I have found it a real joy & endless resource. It doesn't purport to be a comprehensive reference but you'll get a wider understanding about the scope of what cinema has meant than reading any other single work. It is clearly written by someone who loves cinema. It is neither cold, intellectual nor indulgent. It is acerbic, smart & learned. Dip or read it right through.
Essential film criticism - By: , 06 Jan 2004 This is a magnificent book: if I were allowed only one book on film then I would unhesitatingly choose this one.
Arranged alphabetically, & covering virtually every important actor, director & producerin film history (and many other figures associated with film), it provides fairly thorough filmographies, but it’s not intended as a reference book. On questions of fact (‘Who won Best Supporting Actorin 1975?’; ‘Who played Marlowein Murder My Sweet?’) this is not the most convenient work to consult, & often the answer simply cannot be found.
Rather, this is film criticism – & Thomson is an acutely perceptive, intelligent & eloquent critic. Invariably passionate, often funny, frequently challenging & provocative, & occasionally annoying, he is a brilliant writer & a model of how to say a lotin few words. In little more than a sentence or two he can offer a profound observation or opinion which radically alters one’s own view on a film or individual.
He can be wonderfully iconoclastic. For example, both John Ford & Stanley Kubrick, widely esteemed as great directors, are (rightly to my mind) shown up for their severe shortcomings. Sometimes he can be spectacularly & justifiably savage, about Roberto Benigni or Wes Craven for example. Equally, he is very good at extolling the virtues of underrated individuals, Barbara Stanwyck for example. Above all he provides honest, thoughtful & sophisticated appraisals,in most cases amounting to miniature essays, which rarely fail to open up new insights.
Thomson is no snob or elitist: he may lambast Tony Scott & Madonna, but he has good things to say about Spielberg & Schwarzenegger, Tarantino & Sharon Stone. His favourite director is Howard Hawks, his favourite actress Angie Dickinson, & he has a deep fondness for American film. But he is as at home with world cinema as he is with Hollywood. Bergman, Dreyer, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Bresson, Riefenstahl, Renoir & Rivette are among numerous figures explored at length. All the great figures from past & present film are here, but so too are many who are obscure or minor but interesting or deserving of reassessment – for example, Yilmaz Guney, Larissa Shepitko or Kon Ichikawa (names unfamiliar to me before Thomson).
This is an ideal book for dipping into frequently, emerging each time with a widened & deepened appreciation of film & a starting point for further discovery; but it could even be read from cover to cover & provide an excellent (albeit unorthodoxly alphabetical) film education. If you love film & regard film as a serious medium rather than merely entertainment, if your film world is not restricted to mainstream Hollywood & a few old favourites but embraces the whole history of film from around the world, if you enjoy intelligent argument & strong opinions, then you will love this book.
One of the greatest film books available... - By: Jason Parkes, 31 Dec 2003 The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is a revised edition of Thomson's seminal book on cinema- one of the key film books alongside The Cinema Book, Film Art & Susan Hayward's glossary of film terms. Quite simply, it is a book no serious fan should be without- & is of far more interest than things like Halliwell's or Virgin's Film Guides (you can get all that info off IMDB).
Thomson is one of the greatest writers on cinema &in this 900-plus page tome, he scans cinema (filmmakers, actors, writers) from A to Z from standard figures (Hitchcock, Welles) to more recent cinematic figures (Lars Von Trier, Halle Berry, Renee Zellweger, Nicole Kidman). Some of the essays/mini-essays are long- the Graham Greene entry being an example of this; while Tarantino is dispatchedin a few tight paragraphs. The introduction does point out that the book is intended to provoke argument & develop thought about cinema...& it does just that.
Spielberg comes off better than he deserves, while Scorsese gets a kicking with an argument that I can't help but agree with; I don't think he had Kieslowski down. But the writings on Lynch's Blue Velvet & Mulholland Drive, on Bertolucci's The Conformist, on the dire Demme films Beloved & Philadelphia & so many examples I could cite are spot on. As too George C Scott, Coppola, Beatty (whom Thomson has written the best biog of, this side of Easy Riders Raging Bulls), Roberto Rossellini, Visconti, William Goldman, Warren Oates, Bob Fosse...look, the whole book!
In many ways, this book is a forerunner of the internet forum/review site, ultimately it's just an opinion- but an interesting one. Brilliantly written, insightful & always interesting, this is a film book to get lost in- I'm even thinking about reassessing my view of Vertigo (I'm not as keen as I am on NBNW & Rear Window). At this price, this is wonderful value & a book no serious film fan/writer can live without. The reviews of critics like Douglas Kennedy, Anthony Quinn & Chris Roberts are spot-on- you may not agree with some of the opinions, but they are valid & film-writing at its finest. The entry on Michael Bay is just one of the reasons this book is great, reminding me of a recent article Thomson wrotein the Independent on Sunday contrasting Pearl Harbor with From Here to Eternity. Up there with the great film-writers, as Chris Roberts statedin his Uncut review "brilliant, provocative & essential".
In line with the book, I'll offer: The Conformist, If.... & Sunset Boulevard (all of which are brilliantly written on here...). Simply put: OWN!!!!!!!!
