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J**I
"flippant" (author's word) is an understatement.
After reading both volumes of these books about all of Jean Gabin’s films, I commend Charles Zigman for his years of dedication in researching his material and globetrotting to see many of the actor’s films not readily available at the time. Many have since been released on discs and there will be more to come. However, I have to agree with the negative review of the first one, especially the one by Dan Oliver, and I added to them in my review you can read there. As for this second volume, I’ll first repeat my general comments.First off, the author’s style is too chatty as if he loves to hear himself babble on, making what he thinks are witty and clever comments and asides in describing scenes from films. We were warned in his introduction that his book will be “light-hearted” (hyphen not necessary) and if readers think he’s “too flippant, write your own book “about Gabin. Yes, it is too flippant and challenging readers to write their own book is a childish taunt; it's as if he expected negative reactions. If that's the case, then why bother to write that kind of book? He loves to cuss and make vulgar comparisons such as how “an incredible scene would make Quentin Tarantino cream in his Wranglers.” I’m no prude, but this kind of writing is crude and unnecessary. And if you don’t get his so-called witticisms, with which he constantly likes to pat himself on his back thinking he’s Oscar Wilde or somebody, he will remind you: “… because Archimede busted his brand new, and very expensive, espresso machine.(ESPRESSO JOKE; Or should I say, “He ‘steamed’ that Archimede has busted his espresso machine! [Get it?!])” Yeah, we got it. Yuck Yuck. Or should I say: Yuckkk! Yuckkk! And we don’t need baby talk like “din-din” to describe a meal.And both volumes have an incredible overabundance of the use of exclamation marks! When he thanked his “stellar” copy editor for reducing the amount of them, my first thought was: If that’s her final edit, I’d hate to see the original manuscript. In addition to the misuse of punctuation, she also let a few instances of not knowing the difference between “its” and “it’s” slip by (“and it’s relationship to popular culture”) including one that’s a misquotation from a Variety article; I know because I checked the source because I doubted their editors would have let it gone through. There are other misuses of punctuation, but what irks me more are the factual errors that I’ll go through them chronologically as I pointed out in my review of Volume One.Volume Two has more grammatical mistakes (it’s not “since it’s initial release”), factual errors, and unnecessary sexual vulgarities such as “to get Marie-Louise ‘Betty Crocker-moist’ for ’Big Nappy” as in Napoleon (Zigman calls her “Marie-Christine” on the same page and another one.), and typos such as”awareded” instead of “awarded.” How about “Kevin Spacey’s bizarre James Darren mish-mosh ‘Beyond the Sea”??; it’s about Bobby Darin, not the other singer-actor! It’s Daniele Delorme, not “Daniel” unless she had a sex change. Peter Lorre’s first starring role in an American film wasn’t CRIME AND PUNISHMENT; it was MAD LOVE’ that premiered six months before. Simone Signoret did not win an Oscar for MADAME ROSA but won one for ROOM AT THE TOP; she won the French equivalent for MADAME ROSA. Here’s an example of bad writing: “… the name of Vacher (‘vache’ means ‘cow’ in French, and this is a great name for a wealthy capitalist-pig!)” Huh? Uh, how is Vacher “a great name for a wealthy capitalist-pig” since a cow is not the same thing as a pig? And let’s not get into the unneeded hyphen and the ubiquitous exclamation mark.The book’s plot summaries are mostly too long and tiring, but maybe Zigman went that way because many of the films aren’t available for viewing. That would be OK if they weren’t overloaded with his smart-alecky comments, especially in his chapter on 1935’s GOLGOTHA, a religious film that I like as one of the better Christ stories. Another unneeded sacrilegious bit where he thinks he’s funny is when he refers to Joan of Arc, a French saint and national heroine, who became a “crispy-critter” (another unneeded hyphen) at Rouen. I’m guessing the “Honorable Christine Albanel, [the French] Minister of Culture and Communications” missed that disrespectful remark and the one about Napoleon when she called his book, which I doubt she read, “a high-quality memory of a great star of French cinema." The tone of these books comes across most of the time as if he’s trashing Gabin’s films he dismisses as lesser or failures and makes you NOT to want to see them, which defeats the book’s purpose and hampers the release of the hard-to-find films and others on video. I wonder if Brigitte Bardot and Michele Morgan saw the galley proofs before they wrote their forewards for both volumes and didn’t like the tone of the books because they don’t mention Zigman and or his books in them. It’s as if they committed themselves to contribute their thoughts about Gabin and honored their agreement but that’s as far as they wanted to go. The same goes for a quote about the actor from David Mamet, on the back of the second volume, with no mention of the author or his book.If anything, these books do a disservice to a French icon. It’s as if they come across as a contest between “The World’s Coolest Movie Star” and the world’s coolest film critic or so he thinks he is, the impression any reader should get from reading them. As for this “revised/expanded” second edition, there shouldn’t be the mistakes I mentioned. I’d hate to have read the first edition. As for the awards it earned, was there no competition that year? If I edited these books (It appears they were never proofread and fact-checked, a common problem I find in film books if you read my other reviews), I would have cut them down into one volume by mostly removing his needless comments from plot summaries. It’s one thing not to write in a stuffy manner; it’s another thing to write without self-control and I’ll take stuffy over these books. It’s one thing for a writer to love his subject; it’s another to treat it with respect. I’m glad I bought them used instead of at full price. They’re useful reference guides for plot summaries, but the rest of the self-absorbed writing was a turn off for me.
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