Moments That Made the Movies
Our memories of movies tend to be dreamlike impressions. Often they involve “the look, the pace, the movement, the texture, the context,” a scene, or an image of a film. Film critic Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2003) presents us with his selection of idiosyncratic moments, chronologically arranged, that are guaranteed to pique our interest and prompt us to revisit films or add others to our movie queue. Thomson, sensitive to film’s innate eroticism, begins in 1887 with Eadweard Muybridge’s One Woman Standing, Another Sitting and Crossing Legs, less film than experiment, featuring the titular women in the nude, before moving on to more contemporary films, such as Sunrise, Pandora’s Box, and the famous lovemaking scene in Don’t Look Now. Moments with Jack Nicholson are featured five times, with four films by Hitchcock, three by Antonioni, and two starring Meg Ryan (really). Thomson is authoritative, yet personal, and includes anecdotes, little-known facts, juicy gossip, and a number of surprise selections (see Ryan, above), especially from the past 20 years. Accompanied by wonderfully evocative stills, this eminently browsable book is certain to delight film lovers. --Ben Segedin