The Big Screen (90 page)
Authors: David Thomson
On Michelangelo Antonioni
See Seymour Chatman,
Antonioni, or The Surface of the World
(1985); Ian Cameron and Robin Wood,
Antonioni
(1968).
Ingrid Sees a Movie
See Laurence Leamer,
As Time Goes By: The Life of Ingrid Bergman
(1986); Ingrid Bergman and Alan Burgess,
Ingrid Bergman: My Story
(1981).
“If you need a Swedish actress”: Bergman and Burgess,
Ingrid Bergman
, p. 4.
Sing a Noir Song
On Film Noir
See Raymond Borde and Ãtienne Chaumeton,
Panorama du Film Noir Américain, 1941â1953
(1955);
The Film Noir Reader
, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (1996); Foster Hirsch,
Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen
(1981);
Kings of the Bs: Working Within the Hollywood System
, ed. Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn (1975); Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,”
Schrader on Schrader
, ed. Kevin Jackson (1990); Eddie Muller,
Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir
(1998).
On
Detour
, see Noah Isenberg,
Detour
(2008); interview with Edgar G. Ulmer,
Kings of the B's
, pp. 377â409.
“
Click!
â¦Here it was”: Patrick Hamilton,
Hangover Square
(1941), p. 15.
On the Musical
See John Russell Taylor and Arthur Jackson,
The Hollywood Musical
(1971); Ronald Haver, A Star Is Born:
The Making of the 1954 Movie and Its 1983 Restoration
(1988); Emanuel Levy,
Vincente Minnelli: Hollywood's Dark Dreamer
(2009); Stephen Harvey,
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
(1989); Aljean Harmetz,
The Making of
The Wizard of Oz (1977); John Mueller,
Astaire Dancing
(1985); Stephen M. Silverman,
Dancing on the Ceiling: Stanley Donen and His Movies
(1996); Richard Dyer, “Peach Perfect” (on
Meet Me in St. Louis
),
Sight & Sound
(January 2012).
Part II: Sunset and Change
“Hollywood's like Egypt”: Ben Hecht,
A Child of the Century
(1954), p. 467.
“A few good movies”: Ibid., p. 467.
On
Sunset Blvd
.
See Maurice Zolotow,
Billy Wilder in Hollywood
(1977); Ed Sikov,
On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder
(1998).
“There's a speed limit”: Dialogue from
Double Indemnity
.
“But it seemed to me”: Alfred Hayes,
My Face for the World to See
(1958), p. 14.
On
Queen Kelly
, Swanson, and Kennedy, see Cari Beauchamp,
Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years
(2009).
“You bastard”: Zolotow,
Billy Wilder in Hollywood
, p. 168.
On cinema attendance figures, see Finler,
The Hollywood Story
, pp. 378â79.
On
The Best Years of Our Lives
, see A. Scott Berg,
Goldwyn
(1989); Axel Madsen,
William Wyler
(1973).
“This is one of the very few”: James Agee, “What Hollywood Can Do,”
The Nation
, December 7, 1946.
On television statistics, see Finler,
Hollywood Story
, p. 375.
On William Paley, see Sally Bedell Smith,
In All His Glory
:
The Life of William S. Paley
(1990).
“because of the size”: Ibid., p. 186.
“Television offers”: Ibid., p. 362.
On the name “Loman” and Fritz Lang, see Arthur Miller,
Timebends: A Life
(1987), pp. 177â78.
On
I Love Lucy
, see Stefan Kanfer,
Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball
(2003).
“I've never found her”: Groucho Marx, quoted in ibid., p. 60.
“like a two-dollar whore”: Kanfer,
Ball of Fire
, p. 65.
“He is a Latin-American”: Jesse Oppenheimer quoted in ibid., pp. 122â23.
“The show was built”: Susan Sontag quoted in Kanfer,
Ball of Fire
, p. 308.
“The only red thing”: Kanfer,
Ball of Fire
, p. 170.
On Las Vegas and gambling
See Russell R. Elliott,
History of Nevada
(1987); Sally Denton and Roger Morris,
The Money and the Power: The Rise and Reign of Las Vegas and Its Hold on America, 1947â2000
; David Thomson,
In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance
(1999).
“Los Angeles had seen”: Reyner Banham,
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies
(1971), p. 124.
On James Stewart's New Deal
See Jonathan Coe,
James Stewart: Leading Man
(1994); Mark Eliot,
Jimmy Stewart: A Biography
(2006); Jeanine Basinger,
The
“
It's a Wonderful Life” Book
(1986).
“Frank [Capra] really saved”: Quoted in McBride,
Frank Capra
, p. 524.
On Lew Wasserman, see Kathleen Sharp,
Mr. & Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire
(2003); Connie Bruck,
When Hollywood Had a King: The Reign of Lew Wasserman, Who Leveraged Talent into Power and Influence
(2003).
On Myron Selznick, see David Thomson,
Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick
(1992); Mary Mallory, “Agent Provocateur: The Tradition and Influence of Myron Selznick on the Motion Picture Talent Agency Business,” University of Texas master's thesis, 1990.
On 1950s Westerns, see Robert Warshow, “The Westerner,”
The Immediate Experience
(1962);
The BFI Companion to the Western
, ed. Edward Buscombe (1988).
“they were great”: Anne Edwards,
Ronald Reagan: The Rise to Power
(1987), p. 452.
“a good upright”: Ibid., p. 453.
On
From Here to Eternity
See Bob Thomas,
King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn
(1967); Frank MacShane,
Into Eternity: The Life of James Jones, American Writer
(1985); interview with Daniel Taradash,
Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s
(1991).
“It was the typical gesture”: Fred Zinnemann in
Fred Zinnemann: An Autobiography
(1992), p. 117.
“Cohn always liked”: Taradash,
Backstory 2
, p. 317.
“I believe they went”: Ibid.
“immensely fine”: MacShane,
Into Eternity
, p. 133.
“fourteen-carat entertainment”: Farber,
Farber on Film
, p. 447.
“uses a hard light”: Ibid., p. 446.
“that it is too entertaining”: Ibid., p. 447.
On Clift and Brando, see Patricia Bosworth,
Montgomery Clift: A Biography
(1978); Peter Manso,
Brando: The Biography
(1994).
On Elia Kazan
See Elia Kazan,
A Life
(1988); Richard Schickel,
Elia Kazan, A Life
(2005);
Kazan on Kazan
, ed. Michel Ciment (1974); Jeff Young,
Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films
(1999);
On the Waterfront
, ed. Joanna E. Rapf (2003).
On Paddy Chayefsky
“You play charades”: Betsy Blair,
The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris
(2003), p. 218.
“Rarely has a single picture”:
Variety
, February 14, 1956.
On Humphrey Bogart
See A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax,
Bogart
(1997); Bacall,
By Myself
(1979).
On Nicholas Ray
See Bernard Eisenschitz,
Nicholas Ray: An American Journey
(1993); Patrick McGilligan,
Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director
(2011); Nicholas Ray,
IÂ Was Interrupted
, ed. Susan Ray (1993).
“Rearedâ¦in a household”: John Houseman,
Front and Center
(1979), p. 178.
“a maniacal fury”:
New York Times
, May 18, 1950.
“In Hollywood, a Howard Hawks”: Truffaut,
The Films in My Life
, p. 143.
On Robert Aldrich
See
Robert Aldrich
, ed. Richard Combs (1978); Alain Silver and James Ursini,
What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich? His Life and Films
(1995).
On
The Night of the Hunter
See Davis Grubb,
The Night of the Hunter
(1953); Simon Callow,
The Night of the Hunter
(2000) and
Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor
(1987); Preston Neal Jones,
Heaven & Hell to Play With: The Filming of
The Night of the Hunter (2002).
“Present!”: Callow,
The Night of the Hunter
, p. 32.
“audacious”: Bosley Crowther,
New York Times
, September 30, 1955.
“To make only one film”: Robert Benayoun,
Dossiers du Cinéma
(1971).
On
Sweet Smell of Success
See Kate Buford,
Burt Lancaster: An American Life
(2000); Alexander Mackendrick,
On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director
, ed. Paul Cronin (2004).
“was like dripping lemon”: Buford,
Burt Lancaster
, p. 183.
On Tony Curtis, see Tony Curtis with Peter Gollenbock,
American Prince: A Memoir
(2008).
“Burt and Sandy started arguing”: Ibid., p.181.
On Alfred Hitchcock
On
Rear Window
, see also Francis M. Nevins, Jr.,
Cornell Woolrich: First You Dream, Then You Die
(1988).
On
Vertigo
, see Dan Auiler,
Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic
(1998); François Truffaut,
Hitchcock
(1967).
“Social problems present themselves”: Joan Didion, “Good Citizens,”
The White Album
(1979), p. 88. 296 On Sergius O'Shaughnessy, see Norman Mailer,
The Deer Park
(1955).
“Who should come out”: Walker Percy,
The Moviegoer
(1960), p. 15.
“He is an attractive fellow”: Ibid., p.15.
“Holden has turned down”: Ibid., p. 16.
On Deaths
“He idealized womanhood”: Lillian Gish, with Ann Pinchot,
The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me
(1969), p. 353.
“We have new ways of seeing”: Schickel,
D. W. Griffith
, p. 613.
On Marilyn Monroe
Anyone browsing in this section of the book will be aware that the subtitles to film books are a rich but repetitive and over-egged domain. So in the hopeless task of finding, or writing, an adequate book on Marilyn Monroe, I'll simply offer this selection of subtitles: “Private and Undisclosed,” “The Complete Last Sitting,” “The Biography,” “The Lost LOOK Photos,” “A Case for Murder,” “Intimate Exposures,” “The Secret Life,” “From the Private Archive,” “In Her Own Words,” “My Story,” “Metamorphosis”â¦
“She was psychotic”: Axelrod,
Backstory 3
(1997), p. 11.
On Japan
See Donald Richie,
One Hundred Years of Japanese Cinema
(2005), and
The Films of Akira Kurosawa
(1999); Akira Kurosawa,
Something Like an Autobiography
(1983); Noel Burch,
To the Distant Observer
:
Form and Meaning in the Japanese Cinema
(1979); David Bordwell,
Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
(2007); Paul Schrader,
Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer
(1972).
“I thought I'd seen”: Dialogue from
Objective, Burma!
France in the 1950s: Robert Bresson and Max Ophüls
See François Truffaut, “Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français,”
Cahiers du Cinéma
, January 1954.
“not beautiful images”: Robert Bresson,
Notes on the Cinematographer
, trans. Jonathan Griffin (1986), p. 45.
“When a sound”: Ibid., p. 37.
“a man alone”: Schrader,
Schrader on Schrader
, p. 163.
“[Bresson] did not want”: François Leterrier,
Express
, September 21, 1956.
“the most important film”: Truffaut,
The Films in My Life
, p. 191.
“In this country”: Kael,
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
, p. 306. 308 On Max Ophüls, see
Souvenirs
(2002); Richard Roud,
Max Ophüls: An Index
(1958); Susan M. White,
The Cinema of Max Ophuls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman
(1995).
“For the first time”: Truffaut, “Max Ophuls Is Dead,”
The Films of My Life
, p. 234.
On Ingmar Bergman
The Bergman script for
A Doll's House
is in the David O. Selznick archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.
“When Harriet had”: Ingmar Bergman,
The Magic Lantern
(1988), pp. 178â79.
“He was by no means”: Ingmar Bergman,
Images: My Life in Film
(1990), p. 125.
On American Films of the late 1950s
On Douglas Sirk, see Jon Halliday,
Sirk on Sirk
(1971); Edinburgh Film Festival,
Douglas Sirk
, ed. Laura Mulvey and Jon Halliday (1972).
