From Eadweard Muybridge’s equine chronophotography experiments of the 1870s to Donald Trump’s preternatural ability to frame himself perfectly with a raised fist and blood on his cheek in Butler, Pennsylvania, film historian David Thomson’s latest book, A Sudden Flicker of Light, crams roughly 150 years of moving images into one rapidly paced volume: This is what we saw, how we came to see it, and why it matters. It is a detailed, funny, and insightful speedrun through history that uses movies—mostly classics you’ve seen or at least heard of—as a touchpoint for issues of wider social importance, with a dash of critical opinion thrown in, too. The only real problem with the thing is fighting off the urge to watch clips of Marlene Dietrich, Marlon Brando, or Mikey Madison on YouTube immediately after he’s described them.
For the 85-year-old Thomson, the English author of the pivotal 1975 reference work A Biographical Dictionary of Cinema, now in its sixth edition, the movie screen is no mere rectangle. It is a window to an imagined reality, but also a mirror back to the audience, which is then molded (and even seduced) by what it sees. “A film does not really exist without us—and we never get a credit,” is just one clever witticism in his new book which is rife with them. Thomson’s writing style seems effortless, but is clearly born from a lot of rigorous work. His is a mind that’s been in dialogue with film and filmmaking for decades, and this summation—which has the subtitle A Revisionist History of Movies—reads like something he had to get off his chest.
