David Thomson is a highly opinionated, entertaining film writer. With his book, Have You Seen …? A PersonalIntroduction to 1,000 Films, he became the anti-Maltin, the critic who doesn’t hesitate to criticize. After all, not everything that moves is a good movie. Slapping stars onto a blurb is no substitute for analysis.
Thompson’s latest project, the Great Stars Series (published by Faber & Faber), is a set of slender but insightful essays that analyze the lives and work of major actors. In the first four, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis and Gary Cooper, the biographical details are well chosen to outline the lives and illustrate larger points about the stars as artists. Thomson tells of Bogart’s heavy drinking and failed marriages but doesn’t dwell salaciously on details real, rumored or imagined. The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca are much more interesting to think about.
His opinions on specific films will infuriate many movie buffs, but it’s impossible to dismiss his penetrating insights. On page one of Bette Davis, Thomson already nails down one facet of the star’s personality (and persona). She was “not just funny, but able to surmount her own indignity with caustic intelligence.” And on page nine he describes her eyes, “a sadness against which the pluck of her demeanor seemed all the more admirable. It is not crying, but a refusal to cry.”
Brilliant! Anyone who loves classic film should hope that the Great Stars Series continues until it encapsulates the entire firmament of Hollywood—and beyond.
