Author: Kenneth Turan
Manning the film critic post for the L.A. Times since 1991, Kenneth Turan's eminence among the nation's best critics is a given. Any pan or rave from Turan carries more weight and credibility than most critics and his love for the cinema is beyond question.
Turan earned a certain measure of fame--or notoriety--depending on one's point of view, for having the audacity (note my sarcasm) to pan James Cameron's Titanic; one of the few critics who had the perspicacity to do so. Turan's negative review incurred the wrath of uber-jackass Cameron, who couldn't tolerate anyone dissing his bloated, theme-park ride of a film. Cameron's vengeful attack on Turan included an attempt to have the critic fired from the L.A. Times, which exposed the director's vindictive pettiness. Turan described the film as being so bad "it almost makes you weep in frustration." Hooray for Turan.
Growing up in an observant Jewish family, Turan's father wasn't always tolerant of his son's Saturday afternoon movie excursions but the future critic mentions risking his father's ire to see Kirk Douglas in Ulysses. With access to the cinema severely limited, Turan fondly recalls time blissfully spent watching movies on television. Shaping his cinephiliac path further were the weekend, college campus films Turan devoured during his undergraduate life at Swarthmore. A key to his eventual career as a critic was choosing journalism as a graduate school pursuit at Columbia, where a seminar in film by famed New York film critic Judith Crist inspired Turan to choose film criticism as a vocation. Turan speaks glowingly of Crist's influence; "She was the first to make me believe I could do this work professionally..." Stints with the Washington Post, where Turan first cut his teeth as a film critic and a magazine called Progressive led him eventually to his role as the incumbent critic at the L.A. Times.
Turan's wonderful new book isn't about his feud with Cameron or anything as forgettable as Titanic, but about his favorite films; a list that spans the entire history of cinema. Many critics have compiled their film-favorites in book form before (which are always fun) and though Turan has written on film previously, (Never Coming to a Theater Near You and Now in Theaters Everywhere, to name a few) he had yet to offer his own list.
Listmania has been a pandemic for some time and if you're like me, you avoid the endless lists found on Amazon and IMDB but it is always worthwhile to read a professional film critic's two-cents on movies and learn why some films are granted status on one's list while others suffer omission.
One finds on Turan's list some favorites one might on another major critic's selection, such as Casablanca and The Godfather but what often distinguishes a selection are the unexpected and offbeat. Turan offers both, which he covers in brief but engaging commentaries.
Turan explains his choices, which the reader will gather are not representative of the best but his favorites--a critical distinction. Beginning with the first decade of the 20th century with the french film Fantomas, Turan chooses several films from every decade; completing his journey in the first decade of our current century. He mixes personal views with anecdotal film history to make compelling prose. Of course the beauty of a book like Not to be Missed is its subjectivity and how one compares or contrasts one's own favorites with that of the author's.
The list continues with the 1920s' and Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Pass the Gravy, a 1928 release by director Fred R. Guiol; a film I hated to admit I knew nothing about. One of the many pleasures of Turan's book is the feeling of being on a tour of a great museum curated by the tour-guide himself and having one's appreciation expanded with the inclusion of a work not normally celebrated by the mainstream.
Turan moves into the 30s' with Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugiive From a Chain Gang and Victor Fleming's Bombshell, which share space with The Dybbuk and a Leo McCarey double feature Make Way for Tomorrow and Love Affair. While enjoying Turan's thoughtful reflections, I found myself keeping a list of the films I hadn't seen for later viewing.
The 40s' and 50s' are the decades most represented in the book, with eleven and twelve, respectively, which makes sense; film-lovers tend to love the films from their formative years the most though Turan gives the first decade of the 21st century strong consideration. Again, the famous and widely regarded mingle with the more obscure. For the 40s', the justly praised The Third Man is among a group that includes Random Harvest; a film Turan loves but which elicited dismissive reviews from some critics, like the famous Bosely Crowther, who wrote it off as "a strangely empty film." In spite of critical indifference, Turan provides us with the astonishing fact that the film played Radio City Music Hall for a record-setting twelve weeks, with additional screenings scheduled to satisfy public demand.
The 60s' are represented by the mostly oddball (and terrific) while the 70s', though considered its own golden age in cinema, has only two entries in the collection: The Godfather and Chinatown, which might disappoint those who hold that decade in high regard (like me). The 80s' selections are few as well but, as one is wont to find in Turan's book, hardly predictable. I was relieved to find only one film in the 90s' and the new century I hadn't seen. Another of the book's attributes is how it stokes one's desire to not only see what one hasn't, but to revisit those one has. The book concludes unpredictably with two final selections from a great master of the past.
A smattering of Turan's piquant observations and opinions:
On Children of Paradise:
"In many ways the most classic of classic French films, with a climax that astonishes no matter how many times it's seen, Children of Paradise is a miracle many time over. As a piece of romantic/dramatic cinema, its peers are few, its superiors simply nonexistent."
On Vertigo
"Now, after multiple viewings spaced out over decades, Vertigo stands out in my mind as what it probably always was, an audacious, brilliantly twisted movie, infused with touches of genius and of madness. A disturbing meditation on the interconnectedness of love and obsession disguised as a penny dreadful shocker, a Tristan and Isolde-style romance of lovers doomed by their passion for each other, it's more impressive today than when it debuted because of several interconnected factors."
On The Godfather
"It's not only that this film, like those sixteenth-century dramas (Shakespearean), can be watched repeatedly without loss of interest. Its that The Godfather is overflowing with life, rich with all the grand emotions and vital juices of existence, up to and including blood."
On Unforgiven
"Simultaneously heroic and nihilistic, reeking of myth and morality but modern as they come, this is a Western for those who know and cherish the form...it was obvious that this was not cowboy business as usual."
On meeting Orson Welles
"When I was brought over and introduced, I told Welles what I felt, that he was the greatest of American film directors. Then I added, in a sense apologizing for wasting his time with so commonplace and pedestrian a sentiment, "But you probably hear that all the time." Welles hadn't responded to my first sentence, but he put his head back and literally roared with laughter at the second. "You can't" he said with conviction born of experience, "hear that too often."
As a fun read for the more casual film-lover or any cinephile, Not to Be Missed is a worthy addition to any bookshelf of film writings. It is readible, intelligent, thoughtfully arranged and it could easily serve as a reference or simply as a source for those who need something to stimulate a late-night what can I watch? dilemma.
Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites From a Lifetime of Film
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