David Thomson: Abbott and Costello

I have been reading one or two entries a day in David Thomson’s incomparable The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated. It’s a treasure-trove.

In his opinion, the three greatest film actors were Cary Grant, James Stewart and Robert Mitchum. . Therefore, his words on Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando and some other of my favorites are fascinating. Because in his opinion – they LACK something that the top three had. Whether or not you agree with his assessment is irrelevant. There are some people who write critics off who disagree with one of their precious opinions – I don’t get that. If the critic is a good writer, his job is not to agree with me. His job is to explain why he thinks something is good or bad. Good critics are hard to come by, man! It’s not just about “I liked this” “I didn’t like that” – it requires a great deal of CONTEXT to be a good critic – a sense of the past, of who has done what before … Thomson has that. All the great ones have that. I particularly adore his entry on Jeff Bridges – he thinks he’s one of the greatest actors working today, and the most under-rated. He thinks he could rise to the level of a Mitchum if he were given the right part. Interesting that he would see Bridges in the MITCHUM continuum and not the Grant or Stewart continuum – but it really made me think, when I read that. I think he’s onto something. There’s a certain sense of menace in Bridges, a sense of isolation – which, with the right film and the right performance, can be devastating. He’s not a “family guy”. It just doesn’t … that’s not his sensibility. I hadn’t really picked up on that, though, til I read Thomson’s piece on him.

It’s alphabetically organized – the first entry in the book is for Abbott and Costello and I thought I’d post it here – I just love his LOVE for all this stuff. He is certainly not uncritical – he has a great eye – but when you just LOVE something, you might as well SAY it. So many critics forget that. If you love something, you give up your DISTANCE on it – and many critics are so unable to give up their distance that they seem to not have a LOVE bone left in their body. Everything is there to be criticized. I love the critic who can just say, “You know what? I loved this.” Ebert does it a lot and he gets a lot of flak for it – but that’s one of the reasons why I love him. Because I feel that way about certain movies and certain actors too. I just flat out love them and that’s that!!

David Thomson, who appears to be an absolute BRAINIAC, hasn’t forgotten his love of cinema.

Now – onto Abbott and Costello:

The marital chemistry (or the weird mix of blunt instrument and black hole) in coupling is one of the most persistent themes in tragedy and comedy. At their best, you can’t have one without the other. More than fifty years after they first tried it, Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” sketch is about the best remedy I know for raising laughter in a mixed bag of nuts — or for making the collection of forlorn individuals into a merry mob.

Many people know the routine (written, like most of their stuff, by John Grant) by heart. Amateurs can get a good laugh out of it. But Bud and Lou achieve something lyrical, hysterical, and mythic. Watch them do the sketch and you feel the energy and hope of not just every comedian there ever was. You feel Beckett, Freud, and Wittgenstein (try it!) You see every marriage there ever was. You rejoice and despair at the impossibility of language. You wonder whether God believed in harmony, or in meetings that eternally proved our loneliness.

Lou is the one who has blood pressure, and Bud hasn’t. So they are together in the world, yet together alone, doomed to explain things to each other. They are companions, halves of a whole, chums, lovers if you like. But they are a raw display of hatred, opposition, and implacable difference. They are also far better than all the amateurs. And if Lou is the performer, the valiant seeker of order, while Bud is the dumb square peg, the one who seems oblivious of audience, still, nobody did it better. If I were asked to assemble a collection of things to manifest America for the strager, “Who’s On First?” would be there — and it might be the first piece of film I’d use.

At the same time, they are not very good, rather silly, not really that far above the ocean of comedians. It isn’t even that one can separate their good work from the poor. Nor is it that “Who’s On First?” is simply and mysteriously superior to all the rest of their stuff. No, it’s only that that routine feels an inner circle of dismay within all the others, the suffocating mantle next to Lou’s heart. It isn’t good, or superior; it’s divine. Which is why no amount of repetition dulls it at all. I think I could watch it every day and feel the thrills and the dread as if for the first time.

It’s lines like: “It isn’t good, or superior; it’s divine” that makes this book an awesome read. I read it and I get voracious. I want to see every film ever made.