Have You Seen..?

In my youth I would scour the shops for French Films (they are a genre all to themselves, hence the capitalisation). I used to look particularly for the Artificial Eye logo; This is not because they are a better distributor than any of the others: No, It was simply because to me, they were a sure chance of a naked willowy young lady.
Other boys had their page threes, I had Charlotte Gainsbourg (still an obsession of mine) in Merci La Vie, in An Impudent Girl, in The Cement Garden. Later I had Simone Signoret, I had Anna Karina, I had Catherine Deneuve. The others could keep their smut. I needed humanity. Bleak, sad, real; funny.

This was my introduction to film. For a while there I thought that Bertrand Blier (director of 'Merci La Vie', of 'Les Valseuses') was as ground breaking as they came. It took a long while for me to fully embrace film to the extent that I discovered him a pale rip off of Godard. Later still that film could be termed an obsession for me. I dallied for a long time at the periphery. Something (or someone) always stopped me from taking that dive into the seemingly pretentious waters.
It took, as it usually does, being enabled; a great video store, for me to be truly liberated. That, and later, the BFI, gave me pleasures, which compare and, in most cases, exceed those pleasures gained from any but the best novels.
Thus I devoured everything by Fritz Lang, by Louis Bunuel, by Murnau, by De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni. I watched anything vaguely Noirish. I explored silent cinema (Feuillade), MGM, New Hollywood, of course the Nouvelle Vague, Italian Realism, German Expressionism.
And last month I quit the video shop because I'd seen everything.

Not everything of course. Just everything that tickled me.

I joined Sofa Cinema and sat there attempting to work our how their boast of having over 60,000 films fitted in with their not having, for instance, Die Nibelungen (an apparent Fritz Lang masterpiece). Of course a great deal of what I really wanted to watch was still not available in the UK; a mixture of rights issues and quality of print- another blog, another time- but I needed films.

Then I heard about the new book from David Thomson. Have You Seen..? is, as it says on the front, 'A Personal Introduction to 1,000 films'. It is alphabetical, its first entry being Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, its first entry by date is 1898. Its a wonderful book.
It is wonderful for numerous reasons; No points system, a wandering eye which plucks from the ranks of the everyday films usually ignored in similar projects (Terminator, Dawn of The Dead) but, equally, a love of the absolutely obscure.
His obsessions, seemingly, mirror mine, which helps. Most of the works of Lang, of Bunuel and Hitchcock help make this tome the heaviest reference book in Christendom. But there are so many fresh, exciting, intriguing additions; I have never seen (am about to watch) anything by Max Ophuls, I am fuzzy on the MGM-ers; George Cukor etc. And this films lays them out on a plate ready for my (and your) devouring.

His writing is passionate but never ever blinkered; he is critical of virtually all of his darlings- raising lesser known works higher in the pantheon and lowering untouchable 'classics', yet he is sparing and never facetious. Each review is stuffed with details of the photographer, the supporting cast and anyone who excels in the film. It is an education.

And now, I'm afraid, my Sofa Cinema list is bustling. I am worried, however, that if this book sells as well as I expect, that there will be a long wait for the titles I most pressinlgly wish to see.

Now, where did I leave that video of Merci La Vie?