This smart and well‐produced book is subtitled Over 3400 Axioms, Criticisms, Opinions and Witticisms from 100 years of the Cinema. The 3,408 quotes (to be precise ‐ they are numbered) are arranged in 31 subject categories such as screenwriting, casting, make up, reviews, and stardom. As well as a running number, each quote is given its author and brief details of its documentary source. A context is also provided where needed. There are two indexes and a bibliography. The bibliography contains all the source documents and includes the page numbers to the article in which the quote features. It is arranged in title order. The source notes and movie title index leads directly to the people quoted ‐ the “source”. The most prolific source, or quotee, seems to be Frank Capra (72 quotes), followed by Federico Fellini (57), Clint Eastwood (48), Woody Allen (39), Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, and John Wayne. The keyword index provides an alternative subject approach, but it is poor. The start, with “abandoned”, “abnormal”, and “about”, all with one quote, promises little. A mite better is “black” with 12, “black and white” (ten), while “black comedy”, “black eye”, “black humor”, “blacklist” and “blacks” promise more. But the index exhibits no sophistication whatever. All the words seem to be those actually quoted, although “We shoot. But we don’t eat” is not indexed by either “shoot” or “eat”, while “A director’s function is to use an actor’s strength and cover up his weakness” is keyworded only once, by “function”, but not by “director”, “actor”, “strength”, nor “weakness”. Finding a quotation again when the source is forgotten, is thus problematical.
Despite this book’s attractive presentation, clear structure and potential value, it is a most disappointing work. Now and again a quote sheds genuine insight on its subject: “What takes the place of good writing is violence ‐ the Esperanto of the modern media world” is a scary thought from Fareed Zakaria in the screenwriting section; and John Ford’s “I don’t like to do books or plays. I prefer to take a short story and expand it, rather than to take a novel and condense it” in the same section, is worth discussion. Mostly, though, the quotes and quips are banal (“Show up on time and know your lines” Humphrey Bogart); opaque (“Animated artistry are reflections of the real world in the fantastic” Lewis Jacobs), uninteresting (“No, thank you. I’m tired. Please, oh please, just let me stay home” Peggy Ashcroft), or tasteless (“I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin” Oscar Levant). Keywords include “bums”, “boobs”, “bust”, “bullshit” and worse.
The editor/compiler writes that the book’s 31 chapters “connect all of the dots of the filmaking process and provide insight into the audience, testing, stardom, celebrity status, critics and review”. It presents the best of what has been quoted and provides “the ultimate reference source of relevant movie industry voices expressing their experiences and expertise”. His industry is impressive, and in among the chaff there is wheat; among the trivia there is wisdom; but it sure do take some finding! I suppose students of film will find the nuggets of wisdom worth the search, and perhaps the movie buffs will enjoy the wisecracks, but the impressive bibliography apart (even if it is in title order!), reference librarians will find it a waste of space. Cut by a half or more and with a proper subject index, it might be useful, but as it stands, it disappoints.
