Word: thomson
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...movie must begin with words: a book, a script, an acknowledgment from a producer that a concept is not a bankable text. David Thomson, a London-born critic based in San Francisco, reverses the procedure with a work of fiction drawn entirely from old films. His sources are such moody classics as Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, Laura, Casablanca and dozens of other favorites from the Late Show of the American psyche...
While most fans are content to watch Captain Louis Renault and Rick Blaine (Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca) walk off into the fog together, Thomson asks more. Where did the cynical French policeman and the hard-boiled American come from? What will they do after the final fade-out? And what of Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker (Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb in Laura), Guy Haines and Bruno Anthony (Farley Granger and Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train) and Norma Desmond and Joe Gillis (Gloria Swanson and William Holden in Sunset Boulevard...
...Thomson imagines fuller lives for 85 characters. Rick Blaine, for example, was born in Omaha in 1900. Before Casablanca and the Cafe Americain, he played football at the University of Nebraska, organized farm workers in California, fought against fascism in Spain and played the black market in Paris. There he met Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), a language teacher and daughter of a bankrupt Swedish count, who will survive the war to subtitle Ingmar Bergman films, model for Edward Hopper and become Dag Hammarskjold's assistant. She died with the Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1961 when their plane...
...Thomson's romance with the dark side of American cinema leads to complicated relationships. Laura Hunt's older sister is Mary Frances Bailey (Donna Reed), wife of George Bailey (James Stewart) of It's a Wonderful Life. Those who must believe the worst about even the nicest people will be pleased to learn that George and Sister-in-Law Laura enjoyed a pre-Christmas tryst at New York City's Pierre Hotel. Julian Kay (Richard Gere in American Gigolo) was born in an asylum, son of the mad Norma Desmond and Screenwriter Joe Gillis, whom she shot in the last...
Reading Suspects is like compulsively picking chewing gum off the underside of a theater seat. Thomson piles unsavoriness upon unsavoriness: murders, betrayals, secrets and low-budget aphorisms like "People in movies have a sensational now about them and a mysterious past...