What do you mean you don't love me?(Book Review)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 28-DEC-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM by David Thomson Little, Brown, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 963, ISBN 0316859052

This is the fourth edition of a masterwork which first appeared in 1975 and was last issued in 1994. David Thomson reports that it contains 300 new entries, many on newcomers, `but some on ancient figures who might have been included earlier'. Admitting that he is today less often exhilarated by a new film, less `in love with cinema', than in his youth, Thomson confesses, `I think that I have learned that I love books more than films.' He wonders whether the fault lies in himself or in the new generation of movies. In our ageing selves, I suspect. Film art has not declined during the half-century since directors held one spellbound with their heavily scripted, dialogue-shackled, theatre-rooted productions. As one of Thomson's generation,...

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