The Big Screen (89 page)
Authors: David Thomson
“All the wooden structures”: DGA Oral History, p. 2.
“One day I had a talk”: Vidor,
A Tree
, p. 111.
“Well, I suppose”: Ibid., p. 145.
“Just because I stop you”: Ibid., p. 150.
On Vidor and the Directors Guild, see David Thomson, “The Man Who Would Be King,”
DGA Quarterly
(winter 2011).
“I was glad to get out”: DGA Oral History, p. 281.
On Josef von Sternberg
See Josef von Sternberg,
Fun in a Chinese Laundry
(1965); Steven Bach,
Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend
(1992); O. O. Green (Raymond Durgnat), “Six Films of Josef von Sternberg,”
Movie
13 (Summer 1965).
“I saw Fräulein Dietrich”: von Sternberg,
Fun in a Chinese Laundry
, p. 231.
“Turn your shoulders”: Ibid., p. 253.
On Frank Capra
See Frank Capra,
The Name Above the Title
(1971); Joseph McBride,
Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success
(1992); Bob Thomas,
King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn
(1967); Dan Callahan,
Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman
(2012); Raymond Carney,
American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra
(1986).
“You know”: McBride,
Frank Capra
, p. 307.
“I feel as happy as”: Mason Wiley and Damien Bona,
Inside Oscar
(1996), p. 57.
“I was just an innocent”: McBride,
Frank Capra
, p. 326.
On John Ford
See Joseph McBride,
Searching for John Ford: A Life
(2001); Scott Eyman,
Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford
(2001); Tag Gallagher,
John Ford: The Man and His Films
(1986).
On Gary Cooper
See Larry Swindell,
The Last Hero: A Biography of Gary Cooper
(1980); Patricia Neal,
As I Am
(1988); Jeffrey Meyers,
Gary Cooper, American Hero
(1998).
On Fred Astaire
See John E. Mueller,
Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films
(1985).
France
“The cinema doesn't suit”: Jean Renoir,
My Life and My Films
(1974), p. 45. On Méliès, see John Frazer,
Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès
(1979).
“Fantômas was a genius”: Suzy Gablik,
Magritte
(1970), p. 48.
“This is a film”: Nelly Kaplan, “
Napoléon
,” in
British Film Institute Film Classics
, vol. 1 (originally published separately in 1994), p. 51.
“Gance does not”: François Truffaut,
The Films in My Life
(1978) p. 33.
“simply one of the funniest”: Kael,
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
, p. 287.
“The clearest”: Gerald Mast,
A Short History of the Movies
(1976), p. 245.
“We willingly admit”: René Clair,
Four Screenplays
(1970), p. 221.
“Beware of the dog”: Jean Vigo,
Vers un Cinéma Social
(1930), quoted in screenplays for
L'Ãge d'Or
and
Un Chien Andalou
(1968), p. 81.
On Luis Buñuel
See John Baxter,
Luis Buñuel
(1994); Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière,
My Last Sigh
(1984); Raymond Durgnat,
Luis Buñuel
(1990).
“Once Upon a Time”: Original shooting script for
Un Chien Andalou
in screenplays for
L'Ãge d'Or
and
Un Chien Andalou
(1968), p. 93.
On Jean Vigo
See P. E. Salles Gomes,
Jean Vigo
(1972); Marina Warner,
L' Atalante
(1993).
Renoir
See Jean Renoir,
Renoir, My Father
(1962); Jean Renoir,
My Life and My Films
(1974); Jean Renoir,
Letters
, ed. Lorraine LoBianco and David Thompson (1994); Alexander Sesonske,
Jean Renoir: The French Films, 1924â1939
(1980).
“She was sixteen”: Renoir,
Renoir, My Father
, pp. 398â99.
“We wentâ¦nearly”: Renoir,
My Life and My Films
, p. 49.
“This betrayal marked”: Ibid., p. 108.
On
Boudu Sauvé des Eaux
, see Richard Boston,
Boudu Sauvé des Eaux
(1994).
On
Partie de Campagne
, see screenplay,
L' Avant Scène du Cinéma
21 (1962).
“a film of pure sensation”: Truffaut,
The Films in My Life
, p. 38.
“trapped, almost wounded”: Kael,
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
, p. 342.
On
la caméra stylo
, see Alexandre Astruc, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo” (1948), in
The New Wave
, ed. Peter Graham (1968), pp. 17â23.
“cowardly pacifism”: Guillermo Cabrera Infante,
A Twentieth-Century Job
(1991), pp. 305â9.
“We had an argument”: Renoir,
My Life and My Films
, p. 166.
“âGentlemen, tomorrow we shall'”: Screenplay for
The Rules of the Game
(1970), p. 168.
“an exact description”: Interview between Renoir and Marcel Dalio in ibid., p. 6.
“I was deeply disturbed”: Ibid., p. 9.
American
See Simon Callow,
Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu
(1995), and
Orson Welles: Hello Americans
(2006); Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich,
This Is Orson Welles
, ed. Jonathan Rosenbaum (1992); John Houseman,
Run-Through
(1972): Robert L. Carringer,
The Making of “Citizen Kane
” (1985); Pauline Kael, “Raising Kane,” in
The Citizen Kane Book
(1971), which also includes the shooting script and the cutting continuity; Peter Conrad,
Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life
(2003).
“Mankiewicz's contribution?”: Welles and Bogdanovich,
This Is Orson Welles
, p. 52.
On the “Rosebud” rumor, see Gore Vidal, “Remembering Orson Welles,”
United States, Essays 1952â1992
(1993), p. 1197 (originally published in the
New York Review of Books
, June 1, 1989).
“was a hero”: Welles and Bogdanovich,
This Is Orson Welles
, p. 87.
“a great motion picture”:
The Hollywood Reporter
, March 12, 1941.
“a film possessing”:
Variety
, April 15, 1941.
“It comes close”: Bosley Crowther,
New York Times
, May 2, 1941.
“the majority of”: Archer Winsten,
New York Post
, May 2, 1941.
“It's as if you never”: Cecilia Ager,
PM
, May 1941.
“fatuously overrated as”: James Agee,
The Nation
, December 26, 1942.
“an exciting, but hammy”: Manny Farber, “The Gimp,”
Commentary
(June 1952), and in
Farber on Film: The Complete Writings of Manny Farber
, ed. Robert Polito (2009), p. 394.
“But by now the lesson,” Farber,
Farber on Film
, p. 397
a shallow masterpiece: See Kael, “Raising Kane,” p. 4.
Ambersons
“overdirected his masterpieces”: Gilbert Adair,
Flickers
(1995), p. 95.
On
Ambersons
at 132 minutes: See Jonathan Rosenbaum, “Appendix: The Original
Ambersons,
” in Welles and Bogdanovich,
This Is Orson Welles
, pp. 454â90.
“a labyrinth with”: Jorge Luis Borges, “An Overwhelming Film,”
Sur
, 1941, and in
Borges In/And/On Film
, ed. Edgardo Cozarinsky (1988), p. 77.
Howard Hawks: The “Slim” Years
See Todd McCarthy,
Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood
(1997); Slim Keith, with Annette Tapert,
Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life
(1990); Robin Wood,
Howard Hawks
(1968).
“seriously dumb” and “truly intelligent”: Keith, with Tapert,
Slim
, p. 57.
“was ill a great part”: Ibid., p. 60.
“But what do you do”: Lauren Bacall,
By Myself
(1979), p. 120.
“If anything”: Keith, with Tapert,
Slim
, p. 87.
“I don't know which”: Ibid., p. 90.
“Hawks's behavior”: McCarthy,
Howard Hawks
, pp. 543â44.
Films Were Started
See Charles Drazin,
The Finest Years: British Cinema of the 1940s
(1998); Charles Barr,
Ealing Studios: A Movie Book
(1993); Raymond Durgnat,
A Mirror for England: British Movies from Austerity to Affluence
(1970).
On Graham Greene
See
Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader
, ed. David Parkinson (1993); Graham Greene,
A Sort of Life
(1971), and Graham Greene,
The Pleasure Dome
:
The Collected Film Criticism, 1935â40
, ed. John Russell Taylor (1980).
On Alexander Korda
See Michael Korda,
Charmed Lives: A Family Romance
(1980); Karol Kulik,
Alexander Korda
(1975); Simon Callow,
Charles Laughton
(1987).
On Michael Balcon
See Michael Balcon,
Michael Balcon Presents: A Lifetime of Films
(1969).
“very conventional”: Michael Powell,
A Life in Movies
, p. 225.
On Alfred Hitchcock
See Patrick McGilligan,
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light
(2003).
On John Grierson
See James Beveridge,
John Grierson: Film Master
(1978); Jack C. Ellis,
John Grierson: Life, Contributions, Influence
(2000).
On Humphrey Jennings
See Alan Lovell and Jim Hillier,
Studies in Documentary
(1972);
The Humphrey Jennings Film Reader
, ed. Kevin Jackson (1993).
On Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
See Michael Powell,
A Life in Movies
(1987) and
Million Dollar Movie
(1992); Ian Christie, ed.,
Powell, Pressburger and Others
(1978); Kevin Macdonald,
Emeric Pressburger: The Life and Death of a Screenwriter
(1994).
“To stop this foolish production”: Christie, ed.,
Powell, Pressburger and Others
, p. 107.
On Laurence Olivier
See Terry Coleman,
Olivier
(2005); Laurence Olivier,
Confessions of an Actor: An Autobiography
(1985).
On Robert Hamer
See Drazin,
The Finest Years
, pp. 71â88.
On Carol Reed
See Nicholas Wapshott,
Carol Reed: A Biography
(1990); Charles Drazin,
In Search of the Third Man
(1999); Graham Greene,
Mornings in the Dark
, pp. 429â34; Rob White,
The Third Man
(2003).
Brief Encounter
See Kevin Brownlow,
David Lean: A Biography
(1997); Noel Coward, David Lean, Ronald Neame, and Anthony Havelock-Allan, “
Brief Encounter
: A Screenplay,” in
Masterworks of the British Cinema
(1990); Richard Dyer,
Brief Encounter
(1993); Stephen Silverman,
David Lean
(1989); Gene D. Phillips,
Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean
(2006).
“When emotion threatens”: Lindsay Anderson,
Sequence
(1951).
“She looks quite ordinary”: Roger Manvell,
The Film and the Public
(1955), p. 157.
War
“He rested in the padlocked entrance”: J. G. Ballard,
Empire of the Sun
(1984), p. 55.
“How wonderful was”: John Boorman,
Adventures of a Suburban Boy
(2003), p. 19.
“There we were”: Ibid., p. 19.
“We don't make hate pictures”: Axel Madsen,
William Wyler: The Authorized Biography
(1973), p. 215.
On
Casablanca
See Aljean Harmetz,
Round Up the Usual Suspects
:
The Making of
Casablanca (1992); Rudy Behlmer,
Inside Warner Brothers, 1935â1951
(1985).
On Jean-Pierre Melville
See Ginette Vincendeau,
Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
(2003); Rui Nogueira,
Melville on Melville
(1972).
Italian Cinema
See Pierre Leprohon,
The Italian Cinema
(1972).
On Luchino Visconti
See Geoffrey Nowell-Smith,
Luchino Visconti
(1967).
“Visconti brought to the project”: Ibid., p. 39.
On Roberto Rossellini
José Luis Guarner,
Roberto Rossellini
(1970); Roberto Rossellini,
My Method: Writings and Interviews
, ed. Adriano Apra (1987); Peter Brunette,
Roberto Rossellini
(1987).
“You feel that”: Rossellini,
My Method
, p. 221.
“I made a child”: Ibid., p. 21.
On Vittorio de Sica
“So we're in rags?”: Leprohon,
The Italian Cinema,
p. 98.
“one of the first examples,” André Bazin,
What Is Cinema?
, vol. 2 (1972), p. 48.
“Plainly there is not enough”: André Bazin, Ibid., p. 50.
“Have I already said,” Ibid., p. 82.
