"The New Biographical Dictionary of Film", David Thomson

David Thomson is a British film historian and critic. Regarded by some as the greatest living writer on film, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film is his most famous work. Voted in 2010, by the British Film Institute, as the best film book, and defended by respected film critic Andrew Sarris as the fifth most important on film criticism, its various editions over the years have proved to be important reference books.

As the title points out, it consists on the organization of a series of personalities related to cinema, accompanied by a brief biography, built entirely on Thomson's subjectivity, whose writing may prove laudatory or destructive, long or short, not always eloquent. In our view, what he writes about Strange Days ("one of the loudest bad films ever made", as he puts) is poorly developed and shockingly reduced, since he completely disdains to refer the incredible work of long and subjective takes or the dystopian and almost prophetic vision that the film presents, preferring to easily criticize Ralph Fiennes's performance. Even his opinions on acclaimed filmmaker John Ford are quite controversial. More important to note is Thomson's neglect of some of the most important and acclaimed international filmmakers, such as Manoel de Oliveira, Philippe Garrel, Chantal Akerman or Jacques Rozier (Jonathan Rosenbaum had already made a similar criticism on the 4th edition). Apparently, this is admitted proudly in Raúl Ruiz's entry (“I refuse to include them all, and I am always happiest to find a new way of sizing up a person”). Equally troubling is the constant emphasis on Oscars (listing all the nominations that a given personality has received and speculating those that did not occur) and the need to make useless gossip ("I'm sure she [Jodie Foster] means to be a real mother, and I think she's succeeded at most things she takes on .." or "She [Susan Saradon] seems to be looking for dignity now—and sooner or later dignity means plastic surgery”). This sportive and merchandising view makes one ask if Thomson is being honest in his intentions.

Why should you read it then? Search for Bogart, Flaherty, Nicholas Ray or Ozu, among others. It shows how he, when he wants, can be an attentive, professional and dedicated critic. These entries should be in another book, simpler and with a more honest title. Therefore, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film must be regarded as a database, without putting aside the skepticism. The first edition was published in 1975. The one we present here is the fifth, and was published in 2010, consisting of about 1500 entries.

Excerpts:

"Ozu’s most important characteristic is his way of watching the world. While that attitude is modest and unassertive, it is also the source of great tenderness for people. It is as if Ozu’s one personal admission was the faith that the basis of decency and sympathy can only be sustained by the semireligious effort to observe the world in his style; in other words, contemplation calms anxious activity. As with Mizoguchi, one comes away from Ozu heartened by his humane intelligence and by the gravity we have learned (...) Ozu is conservative: he does not believe in escape, and so he arranges his tales in moods of acceptance and quietism. (...) So Ozu is a vital lesson to American film, and provocation to us to be wise, calm, and more demanding in what we want of our films." (on Yasujiro Ozu)

"Ray studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright, and then worked as an actor and a traveling researcher into American folklore. Those interests remained alive. Few other directors had such a sense of the effect of locations and interiors on people’s lives, or the visual or emotional relationship between indoors and outdoors, upstairs and downstairs. His characters contract or expand according to the emotional tone of the place in which they find themselves. For example, consider the transient caravan world of The Lusty Men that Susan Hayward tries to domesticate; the courtyard that joins but separates Bogart and Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place; the saloon in Johnny Guitar; the police station, the Stark house, the planetarium, and the deserted mansion in Rebel Without a Cause; and the staircase in Bigger Than Life. There is not a director who films or frames interior shots with Ray’s dynamic, fraught grace and who thereby so explodes the rigid limits of “script” material. No one made CinemaScope so glorious a shape as Ray, because it seemed to set an extra challenge to his interior sensibility (...) More often, friendship and love break down; death severs the odd bond between young and old; the world is regenerated only through destruction. (...) a self-conscious poet of American disenchantment (...) His best work is done with a few characters, where external action expresses their uncontainable dilemmas." (on Nicholas Ray)

Link to the complete book in PDF:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ls3B-PFp_zz-Jn_3lm2TQckk949L2hIy/view?usp=sharing