Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films

Thomson's book includes 1000 essays--each confined to a page--reflecting from the vantage point of a lifetime of movie knowledge and wisdom on a thousand different films from around the world and from the silent era to the early 2000s. What makes the book special--even extraordinary--is the richness of Thomson's insights. Beware: the writing and thoughts are not linear: that is, he doesn't lay out the plot and analyze it. Rather, in no particular order at all, he casts his pearls--on acting, filmwriting, direction, production, whatever--on each movie for our further consideration. In doing so, he has given me many new ideas and avenues of approach for my own thinking. What more can a reader ask?

One page per movie. Very idiosyncratic choices, not meant as a "best of" (he doesn't care for some of the included moves, just thinks they're interesting for one reason or another). Leaves out a lot of canonical, especially foreign, films and writes about many you've never heard of. But the writing is always interesting, perceptive, personally biased, guaranteed to hold your interest even if it may get your dander up. Betcha can't read just one....

Thomson is the author of the well-known "Biographical Dictionary of Film," and the presentation here is similar. The title says 1,000 films and 1,000 films is what you get, each film the subject of a mini-essay of one page or less (usually somewhat over 500 words). Such limited space makes it hard for a writer to say something worthwhile, let alone original or incisive, on each of his 1,000 subjects. Most of the time Thomson is up to the challenge, although there are some duds. For the most part his writing is supple, his opinions passionate and his views well argued. Even if you disagree with him (and you frequently will), you cannot simply dismiss Thomson's views. But this is not really a reference book (except of Thomson's opinions). Limited space means too much has to be left out. Plot summaries, for example, are very skinny when given at all. Full, formal cast lists are omitted, major supporting actors usually being merely listed without identifying the character played. There is no index. Still the book is well worth reading. Thomson has vast knowledge and an acute critical sensibility. He possesses very sensitive detectors for pretentiousness, pomposity and fakery and knows how to skewer them accurately and with wit. He often makes you think again about films that you've seen, sometimes even changing your mind a bit (in my case, for example, about "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"). He can also make you want to see films that you have never heard of or that you had failed to appreciate. An accomplishment at any time but especially with so little space. I think that the book is best served by being read a few selections at a time. Straight through in large chunks is overload and makes things run together a bit.

I always used to recommend David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film as the most important book on movies for anyone to have. Now I have to recommend two books--the Biographical Dictionary and this one, "Have You Seen . . . ?" A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Like Thomson's Biographical Dictionary, "Have You Seen . . . ?" is as valuable to simply read and learn about movies from as it is as a reference book. I don't know of anyone who knows as much about the art and history of movies as David Thomson. (Another book by Thomson you should read is Suspects but that's for another time.) These one thousand films certainly aren't all on Thomson's "Best of" list. On The Sound of Music: "[P]roducer-director Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman . . . had killed West Side Story a few years earlier, which was a more serious crime than making The Sound of Music, because the latter had always been brain-dead." Thomson's interest and knowledge is deepest concerning the 1930s through the 1970s. That's an amazing amount of knowledge, but he's spent his whole life studying film in the way lovers of 1960s "film culture" did--by watching good and/or interesting (not always the same thing) films over and over again. Thomson is American now, but he grew up in England and he has the perspective of the outsider to shape his view of this country and its movies. On The Truman Show as a 1990s phenomenon: "No other American film was clearer that the greatest threat to our existence was . . . above all our decision to be cheerful, amiable, and pleasant. . . . It was as if someone at last had realized that the most . . . frightening thing about America was not the menace, . . . but the bonhomie, the salesman oil . . ." I don't know if it's what Thomson intended, but this makes me think of us charging off into the rest of the world, bringing "freedom" and our friendship whether it's welcome or not. What I like most about Thomson's writing is that, in making me decide whether I agree with him or not, it makes me realize what I think. Thomson has his strengths (or prejudices): he takes westerns and especially comedies very seriously. He knows all about film noir and the Europeans who invented this "American" style. I don't think he cares for horror movies much. But he does write about the films that transcend the genre--Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, even John Carpenter's Halloween, which echoes Hitchcock by using suspense, not gore. So it's interesting that Thomson starts "Have You Seen . . . ?" off with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Talk about a trivial story. But the relationship between Bud and Lou isn't trivial. Thomson gets right to the horror that I sensed when I saw the Abbot and Costello movies on TV when I was ten: ". . . Bud Abbott manages to be the most forbidding figure in sight. Deep down, we know that Bud has abused Lou--it is the secret in their films never quite arrived at." Reading David Thomson helps me see things

I just received this book and so have only spent a couple of hours with it. The book is very engaging, and stirs interest in seeing films that you might have never ever watched, much less heard of. He is good about telling why he likes or dislikes the films, and in some cases suggests that you don't even watch the whole film, but certain scenes, or portions that are not to be missed. Overall a great reference. He has most of the reviews from films from the 30's to the 50's. This is intentional on his part, but does a very nice job of covering many decades of movies and he even has a couple of films from 2008. There is a chronological index in the back of the book, but strangely enough, the book has no Table of Contents, or alphabetical listing of the reviews. I think that the inclusion of an alphabetical listing, and maybe an additional listing by director would have made things more interesting, and the book easier to use as a reference.