Welles, Orson
Welles, Richard
Wellman, William
Wells, H. G.
Wenders, Wim
Went the Day Well? (1942)
Werner, Oskar
Wernicke, Otto
Weschler, Lawrence
West, Mae
West, Nathanael
Westerner, The (1940)
Westerns
Westfront 1918 (1930)
Wharton, Edith
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
What Makes Sammy Run? (Schulberg, B.)
What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)
What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
Whisky Galore (1949)
White Heat (1949)
White Hell of Pitz Palu, The (1929)
White Noise (DeLillo)
White Rapture, The (1931)
“white telephone movies”
Whitman, Charles
Whitman, Walt
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (TV series)
Why Change Your Wife? (1920)
Widmark, Richard
Wiene, Robert
Wild Bunch, The (1969)
Wilde, Oscar
Wilder, Billy
Wilder, Gene
Wild River (1960)
Wild Strawberries (1957)
Wilkerson, Billy
Williams, Earl
Williams, Esther
Williams, John
Williams, Michelle
Williams, Tennessee
Willis, Bruce
Willis, Gordon
Wilson, Donald
Wilson, Dooley
Wilson, Woodrow
Winchell, Walter
Winchester ’73 (1950)
Wind, The (1928)
Windt, Herbert
Winger, Debra
Wings (1927)
Winsten, Archer
Winter, Terence
Winters, Shelley
Winter’s Bone (2010)
Wire, The (TV series)
Wise, Ernie
Wise, Robert
Wiseman, Frederick
Wister, Owen
Wit (2001)
Wizard of Oz, The (1939)
Wlaschin, Ken
Wolf of Wall Street, The (forthcoming)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Woman in the Moon (1929)
Woman Under the Influence, A (1974)
Woman in the Window, The (1944)
Wood, Natalie
Wood, Robin
Wooden Horse, The (1950)
Woodfall Film Productions
Woodrell, Daniel
Woods, James
Woodward, Joanne
Woolf, Virginia
Woolrich, Cornell
World at War, The (TV series)
World War I
World War II
Wozniak, Steve
Wray, Fay
Wright, Basil
Wright, Norton
Writers Guild
Written on the Wind (1956)
Wrong Man, The (1956)
Wuthering Heights (1939)
Wyler, William
Wyman, Jane
X Factor, The (TV series)
Yank at Oxford, A (1938)
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Yates, Peter
Yellow Rolls-Royce, The (1964)
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963)
Yimou, Zhang
You Bet Your Life (TV series)
You Can’t Take It with You (1938)
Youngkin, Stephen D.
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
You’re a Big Boy Now (1966)
YouTube
Zabriskie Point (1970)
Zaentz, Saul
Zanuck, Darryl
Zanuck, Richard
Zapruder, Abraham
Zavattini, Cesare
Zelig (1983)
Zemeckis, Robert
Zéro de Conduite (1933)
Zetterling, Mai
Ziegfeld Follies
Zinnemann, Fred
Zinner, Peter
Zinoviev, Grigory
Zola, Emile
Zolotow, Maurice
Zona (Dyer)
zoopraxiscope
Zsigmond, Vilmos
Zuckerberg, Mark
Zukor, Adolph
Zu Neuen Ufern (1937)
Zweig, Stefan
Zwei Krawatten (Kaiser)
DAVID THOMSON
THE BIG SCREEN
David Thomson, renowned as one of the great living authorities on the movies, is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition. His recent books include a biography of Nicole Kidman and The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood. Thomson’s latest work is the acclaimed “Have You Seen…?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films. Born in London in 1941, he now lives in San Francisco.
Also by David Thomson
The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder
Try to Tell the Story: A Memoir
“Have You Seen…?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films
Nicole Kidman
The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood
The New Biographical Dictionary of Film
In Nevada: The Land, the People, God, and Chance
The Alien Quartet
Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts
Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles
4–2
Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick
Silver Light
Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes
Suspects
Overexposures
Scott’s Men
America in the Dark
A Biographical Dictionary of Film
Wild Excursions: The Life and Fiction of Laurence Sterne
Hungry as Hunters
A Bowl of Eggs
Movie Man
PRAISE FOR
THE BIG SCREEN
“[David Thomson’s] book works both as an engaging primer on film history and as a map for more numinous shifts in the path of popular art. Where many people see an industry now in decline, Thomson offers a nuanced portrait of a creative business always reaching toward, or away from, the mirage of its own public image … Thomson’s great achievement is to show how a century of creative aspiration took flight from our humblest thrills.”
—Nathan Heller, The New York Times Book Review
“In The Big Screen, British-American film critic and historian David Thomson attempts to answer some fundamental questions about the world’s favorite hobby. How do we relate to the movies? ‘The cinema is the embodiment of “let there be light,”’ he writes. But where does the light come from? Does it illuminate us or blind us? Of course, these are difficult and possibly even unanswerable questions. But Thomson—arguably the world’s most intelligent student of the cinema—proves remarkably up to the task. The Big Screen is beautiful and expansive.”
—Michael Schaub, NPR.org
“What David Thomson doesn’t know about movies probably isn’t worth knowing. But the latest project for the longtime film historian, author of numerous books including the essential Biographical Dictionary of Film, was daunting even for him. His new book, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies, is no less than a sweeping history of movies, from the earliest experiments to up-to-the minute streaming video and TV; seasoned liberally with Thomson’s often-salty opinions and delicious observations … A joy for movie buffs; you’ll feel as if you’re listening to a wise, witty friend who seems to have seen—and remembered—everything.”
—Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times
“It’s panoramic and obsessive and contains more interesting observations about Pretty Woman than you’d expect … I’m deep into it. It’s a work of celebration that’s suspicious of golden age
s but shot through with a profound sense of loss, Thomson’s thinking about the movies’ inadvertent role in making us into who we are today, a whole culture constantly staring at various glowing rectangles.”
—Alex Pappademas, Grantland.com
“As unfettered and full-frontal an expression of movie lust as film criticism gets.”
—Jan Stuart, San Francisco Chronicle
“The Big Screen is a big book about a big subject—a big picture view of the big pictures … Thomson’s writing will make you want to go to the movies, even if it is richer, deeper, and smarter than any of the films that are likely to be playing at a theater near you. His passion for film, his ideas, and the books in which he expresses his passion and ideas are still big as ever. It’s the pictures that got small.”
—Troy Jollimore, The Barnes and Noble Review
“One of the most knowledgeable, enjoyably idiosyncratic, and prolific writers on the movies jumps back and forth in time and across media (TV, YouTube, smartphones, the silver screen) in this insightful study of how movies shape our consciousness, collective and otherwise.”
—Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2012 by David Thomson
All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following previously published material: Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow, copyright © 1974, 1975 by E. L. Doctorow, used by permission of Random House, Inc.; Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard, copyright © 1984 by J. G. Ballard, used by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomson, David, 1941–
The big screen: the story of the movies / David Thomson.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-2771-4
1. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States. 2. Motion pictures—United States—History. I. Title.
PN1993.5.U6 T463 2012
791.430973—dc23
2012009140
www.fsgbooks.com
A NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Eadweard Muybridge series was provided by Lucy Gray and is used with her permission and that of Dover Publications. The Passion of Joan of Arc image of the photo insert is used by permission of the Corbis Collection. All other images are used by permission of the Kobal Collection.
Title-page spread: William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd.
eISBN 9781466827714
*I shall be using the word “movie” in the singular, as an equivalent of “writing” or “music,” to indicate the widening range of moving film.
*“Rentals” are the money returned to a distributor or producer by the theaters. The “gross” is the total sum taken in at theater for tickets.
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