RIP Jennifer Jones

[ToddBaesen]

Duplicate post deleted

[mido505]

Happy New Year, Glenn, Todd, and Keats. Thank you for your thoughful responses to my posting of David Thomson's mangy Jennifer Jones obit. Glenn, I was going to post a rather lengthy reply to your post, but Todd did such an excellent, thorough job that I am left with little to add. I would like to point out that, while pity can be a generous emotion, it can also be condescending and cruel ("Poor Dolly, she can't help being so fat, it's the genes, you know."). Thomson's pity is decidedly of the latter sort, snarky and misplaced. Was there ever an actress (or person) less requiring of pity than Jennifer Jones? She seems to have lived her life exactly as she wanted to, and if she has had her share of tragedy, so have many of us, and she handled hers with grace and dignity. She may be deserving of our sympathy, but pity is another matter. For a far more sympathetic view of Jones, that does not hide the warts and controversy, check out the links to GREENBRIAR PICTURE SHOW that I posted above.

As Todd notes, contrary to the established notion that Jones refused to talk to anyone about her Hollywood past, she did speak to at least one biographer, Ron Haver. Why did Jones turn down Thomson? Perhaps she had read the Welles bio, and new what she (and Selznick) were in for.

If, as you state, Glenn, that Thomson is getting tired of the game, why not stop? Jones did, without blinking. Perhaps that is the source of Thomson's resentment. Certainly, he is not doing his reputation any favors with his last few productions. His book on the making of Hitchcock's PSYCHO has been brutalized by a number of reviewers over at Amazon. One reviewer describes the book as "as dry and dessicated as Mrs. Bates' corpse". Ouch! Who says metaphor is dead?

Keats is correct in pointing out that the biggest problem with Thomson is the tyrannous Thomson hegemony. He seems to be everywhere, even when he is not needed. Coincidentally, I sat down to watch the MURNAU BORZAGE AND FOX documentary last night, and who pops up but Thomson, blathering away. Why? He is not by any stretch of the imagination a true historian of film, and certainly not a specialist of the silent era. His comments were neither insightful nor interesting, and Thomson looked bored. Why not get Kevin Brownlow, or someone who knows what they are talking about? Like Keats says, he's quoted because he's quoted.

As I stated previously, Jones may have not been the star that Selznick imagined her to be, but she was close enough, and that was good enough. The morning after she passed, I dropped by a restaurant that I frequent, and my regular waitress came over, said hello, and asked, "Did you hear that Jennifer Jones died?" She is not a film scholar, just somebody who likes the movies. Jennifer Jones, gone but not forgotten.

[Glenn Anders]

Ane Happy New Year to you, mido505 (and other commentators): As I feared, my modest defense of David Thomson brought swift counter attacks. Thank you for calling my piece "thoughtful," mido, because my purpose here is increasingly to establish some balance. Thomson may err in personalizing his relationship with Jennifer Jones (as he did so disasterously with Nicole Kidman) or in his personal disillusionment with the Myth of Orson Welles, as I point out, but he is an established authority, as I would put it, on the reputations of films and film figures, especially as they are contrasted against the History of Motion Pictures, dominated for so many years by Hollywood and the Studios. No doubt it is understandable, then, that he raises the hackles of those who tend to blind hagiographers who allow no criticism, unfair or not, of their idols or their own prejudices. I have never found you in that camp, and admire your balance here in response.

While disagreeing that Thomson's piece is an "obit," certainly not a "mangy obit," I am in full agreement that "pity" is not usually as commendable as sympathy or empathy or, as I put it,

[ToddBaesen]

Mido:

Thanks for reminding me about Mr. Thomson's latest book, which appears to be another re-tread about Hitchcock's PSYCHO. As I noted previously, Thomson doesn't bother to write about little-known directors or films, but always seems to pick films and directors who have already been well-documented.

PSYCHO is probably the one film that at this point in time, least needs to have another another book written about it -- especially if it is by Mr. Thomson!

PSYCHO may be the most written about film after CITIZEN KANE. There have been several "making of" books written about the film already, including excellent books by Janet Leigh and Stephen Rebello. I wonder what Mr. Thomson thought he could possibly bring to the movie that was new or unique? It certainly can't have been any kind of original research on his part!

Let's face it, David Thomson is what Pauline Kael would call, "a shallow critic."
I'm not a big fan of Pauline Kael's writing about CITIZEN KANE, but I think she would abhor most of Thomson's books. He apparently does little to no original research on any book he has ever written. He also never seems to write about anyone or anything that hasn't been fully documented beforehand.

Of course, maybe Thomson's book on PSYCHO is a great masterpiece. He may have found something that the great critic Robin Wood missed in his groundbreaking essay on the film. Although after reading Richard Masloski's review of the book, I sort of doubt it. Apparently Thomson spends 69 pages (nearly half of the book) on a plot synopsis! For a film that anyone who buys the book would presumably have seen! The great Thomson must think he can write the story of PSYCHO greater than Robert Bloch.

To me, this sounds like another Thomson Narcissistic book, that should be avoided at all costs.

Here is what Richard Masloski wrote about Thomson's book on PSYCHO at Amazon.com:

I get a kick out of books with grandiose subtitles anymore - there are so many of them! And the subtitles hardly EVER deliver what they claim they will deliver if only you'll shell out the bucks for the book - in this case $22.95 for 167 pages (how much is that per page?). The subtitle: HOW ALFRED HITCHCOCK TAUGHT AMERICA TO LOVE MURDER is gimmicky and catchy and a publisher's and author's dream. But in this case, David Thomson offers next to naught in edifying us as to HOW Hitch TAUGHT we Americans to LOVE murder. It just isn't there, folks.

What is there, in this trifling effort to seemingly make a fast buck, is 19 pages of extremely sparsely detailed back-story followed by 69 pages - 69, count 'em! - of SYNOPSIS of the film that had me reaching for my DVD and wondering why I was reading what I already knew when I'd rather be watching it. This is then followed by a chapter cheaply entitled "HITCH-COCK" that runs for about 24 pages and tells us about the Maestro's career post PSYCHO - and then, the real low-point of the book, is 20 pages listing films influenced by PSYCHO but not going into any real depth at all and coming across as what it actually is, and that's filler, a listless laundry list. Then a few chapters about critical reactions, loneliness and what it is like to drive across America. This book is about as skeletonized and desiccated as Mrs. Bates herself.

During the synopsis sequence, Thomson constantly returns to the theme of his never buying into the plotline that Norman's Mother overtakes him "psycho"logically. He calls it "fanciful," and guesses that Hitch himself never "believed in this idea of a character taking over another." He also writes, regarding Mrs. Bates' corpse: "It's impossible that the mother's corpse sits up as a living person." Why not? She's been stuffed! He goes on: "Above all, I mean that I don't credit half a second of this rigmarole about Mother having taken over Norman." Those are outrageous and ill-informed jabs. Had Mr. Thomson spent some time on researching the source of the Robert Bloch novel, he'd have found that reality is much more outrageous than film: Ed Gein, Norman Bates' inspiration, was a real man, a true "psycho" who dug up his own mother, killed other women, used their bones to build furniture out of...and wore their skinned and preserved faces and breasts to BECOME them! So why is Norman Bates' psychic submission to the mother he murdered "rigmarole'? I think Thomson feels that Anthony Perkins is too likeable in the role to go as bonkers as the script makes him - and yet Ed Gein was a well-liked member of his own little town...yet no one knew what was really in his psycho head - or in his barn where he had his last victim hung upside down like a steer, naked, gutted, head cut off. When the townsfolk wondered where this well-liked lady had vanished to, Gein told them she was in his barn - but people took him to be kidding, because he was wacky and fun to be around. And what about Ted Bundy? He had wit and charm and a "killer" smile - literally. When he saw young, lovely women he didn't see them in "bed" - he saw them..."dead." Who could have guessed, such a handsome, articulate chap!

Anyway - there are other bizarre critical points Thomson makes regarding the film (especially about its second half) that really don't wash. He feels that Arbogast's killing evokes no sympathy for him - "He is just the figure in a tour de force execution." I don't agree: as we follow Arbogast down the stairs in a physically impossible backwards fall, it is precisely THAT which makes his killing so tragic and makes us travel to Death with him. We've first seen him as the big head entering the hardware store a few scenes earlier - and now we are seeing that same extreme close-up on Martin Balsam's face as his blood squirts across it. It is a very moving scene - and the overhead shot which distances (and disguises the killer's identity out of story-telling necessity) is actually what makes the scene all the more tragic: we had a God's eye view of the killer's approach to an unsuspecting Arbogast and then a sudden cut to the shocked and blood-spattered face - and we stay with that face, feeling his every amazement at his own agony as he careens down the stairs he just so carefully and silently climbed. Thomson feels that the "virtuoso crane shot" is "baroque and decadent" because it conceals information. Although he finds it "very beautiful" he also brands it as "style for style's sake." I think that Thomson falls into his own trap and offers up criticisms for criticisms' sake, he being a "critic" and all. Thomson also feels that Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony (which Lila finds an LP of in Norman's room) is a clue to "the source of some of the Herrmann music." How and why he feels this way is not further explained. I'm familiar with both pieces of music and hear no similarity in them whatsoever.

Another reviewer on this board rightly wrote that this "book" seems more like an extended magazine article, or something to that effect. In fact, it does. Very much so. And not a very interesting one at that. I can hardly wait now to pick-up and read what looks to be a much more informative, exciting book - PSYCHO IN THE SHOWER - another Christmas gift from...my loving mother!

_____

So, what will that great film writer, David Thomson's next project be?

Probably a examination of the reasons why James Cameron's AVATAR is such a big box-office hit, but certainly it won't be published until at least two or three authors write in more detail about all the details behind the making of the film, and what it actually means. Then Mr. Thomson can "absorb" that information and come up with his own "unique" take on the movie.

Needless to say, I can't wait to see it... look for it in about five years time.

[mido505]

Hey Glenn. Thank God for your modest defense of Thomson, and the few swift (boat?) attacks in response - that's what makes the Wellesnet message board fun! As you are surely aware of by now, I am, on the whole, a Thomson admirer. As a critic he has balls, and I appreciate his unabashedly subjective approach to criticism; it's a fan's approach; it's how we as fans relate to the movies, so that when Thomson connects with us, either positively of negatively, he connects hard. Thomson is an amateur in the best sense of that term, the opposite of a dry-as-dust scholar or specialist, but one who has the extraordinary knowledge of the scholar to back up his passion. I love the fact that Thomson is unafraid to look like a horse's ass - when he flops, he flops badly, but when he succeeds, no one can touch him. It is his most Wellsian quality. Gordon Jackson, who acted with Welles in the stage version of MOBY DICK REHEARSED, said this about Welles: "He is a big man who thinks big! His idea of ham acting is to do the same thing every night. According to Orson, you must search for something different, in the interpretation or the effect. Some nights--because of this attitude--he'd go all out, and find himself at the end of a limb, with egg dripping down his face. Other nights, he absolutely soared, and was magnificent!" I think this perfectly describes Thomson as a critic, and if Thomson's Welles biography is ultimately a big fat failure, I admire the attempt. As I have written previously, it is Thomson who suffers for that failure, not Welles.

What is ultimately problematic about the Thomsonian method, as it were (I am being very Vidalian (Jamesian?) with my prose here, for a variety of appropriate reasons), is that when the passion wanes, the entire project falls apart, and as you correctly point out, the passion seems to be waning for David Thomson. Thomson's brutal entry on John Ford in THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM only works because Thomson is passionately brutal - he feels so strongly that we are forced to take his criticism of Ford seriously. Without the passion his criticism is just...mean, and passion is what is conspicuously lacking in that article (obit?) on Jennifer Jones, so that it comes across as tediously, vindictively personal and petty. Every great talent (and I think Thomson is a great talent) is a mixture of the best and the worst that man has to offer; unfortunately, the best seems to die off sooner than the worst, leaving....Gore Vidal? Fortunately for our hero, Orson Welles, while there was a dimunition of output in the latter years, he seems to have retained what was best in his personality and genius until the end. Let's hope that David Thomson, despite his missteps, follows the example of the latter, and not the former. If Thomson is really a fan of Welles, it would be the right thing to do, and might, in the cosmic scale of things, balance out ROSEBUD...

[ToddBaesen]

Keats:

Thanks for reminding me about Jennifer Jones being the topic of this thread.

My favorite film of hers is without a doubt the David O. Selznick production of PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, which featured the haunting "Jennie's Song" written by Bernard Herrmann. I was delighted when I found an old LP which had Jennie's Song on it, along with music from King Vidor's RUBY GENTRY.

The mention of MADAME BOVARY reminded me of the great score to that film, especially the waltz scene, written by Miklos Rozsa.

Selznick's DUEL IN THE SUN featured narration by Orson Welles.

Herrmann also scored THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT, as well as one of Jones last films, F. Scott Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT.

Jones final film, THE TOWERING INFERNO, was nominated for a best picture Academy Award, and featured a score by John Williams.

[mido505]

Todd:

You've nailed it right on the head in describing Thomson as a "shallow" critic, as was Kael herself. I am intrigued by your observation that Thomson only writes books about films and directors that have been well-documented already. I wonder why; is it ego? Laziness (unlike another problematic Welles biographer, Thomson doesn't seem to enjoy doing basic research)? Certainly ego must be a great part of it, coming from a man who describes himself as "the biographer of the husband who named you Jennifer Jones" in an article about said actress that all but accuses her of being a senile old bat in her latter years. Those two observations got me to thinking about why Thomson's books are so unsatisfactory, until I realized that Thomson is simply incapable of writing one. By that I mean that the extended analysis and the accumulation of fact necessary to make a long work vital is not Thomson's forte, which is why his books consist of a few acute, brilliant observations, opinions, sentences, and paragraphs, surrounded by an ocean of pointless and self-obsessed drivel. Thomson's one true work of genius, THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM (his CITIZEN KANE, as it were; unfortunately, no AMBERSONS or CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, no future "flawed masterpieces" for Mr. Thomson; just one), is a series of short, sharp opinions with all the fat burned away. His next best work, the decent but hardly indispensible (the DICTIONARY is indispensible IMO) HAVE YOU SEEN...? has the same format. His articles, longer than the DICTIONARY entries but shorter than the books, are usually 50/50.

That being said, I too would like to go back to Jennifer Jones. As anyone here at Wellesnet who has followed my posts knows, I have some big holes in my appreciation of film, movies that smart people treasure, but which leave me cold. VERTIGO is the shining example, but another is BEAT THE DEVIL. I really want to like it, it seems like a great idea for a movie, but every time I put it on I fall asleep. To me, BEAT THE DEVIL is slack, unfocused, and unfunny, with Bogie looking so thin, tired, and sickly that I can barely watch him. As a Peter Lorre fan, I'll take Roger Corman's THE RAVEN any day. Anyone want to help me out on this one?

[Magentarose67]

Gina Lollobrigida was in Beat the Devil, as well. I read that during the filming of that movie, Humphrey Bogart was in a car accident that knocked down some of his teeth (Ouch!) and he couldn't speak very well, so John Huston got Peter Sellers (!) to dub some of of Bogie's lines. And I agree that Jennifer Jones proved that she could hold her own such a campy movie like this..and she and Bogie made the movie at least watchable for me...