A Sudden Flicker of Light
First published 2026 · debut
Reception
Mostly positive. 12 of 14 critics were positive or better.
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“While the movies have declined, Thomson argues that so too has life ‘become a movie.’ We are so enclosed by screens that we struggle to think beyond them”
2 more quotes
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“A book-length renunciation of his career would be quite the ave, but Thomson can’t commit to that. He pleads his case like a brilliant drunk representing himself at night court”
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“I can’t recall such a bleak appraisal of an art form since Tipper Gore went after Twisted Sister in the 1980s”
- 2026
- 2026
Read the 2 reviews
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A Sudden Flicker of Light by David Thomson review – a brilliantly eccentric history of the movies
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A Sudden Flicker of Light
“I can’t recall such a bleak appraisal of an art form since Tipper Gore went after Twisted Sister in the 1980s ... Thomson’s book, coming late in his career, is more successful as a provocation than as a persuasive indictment of cinema ... Thomson sprinkles critique throughout his book like seasoning unevenly applied to a gamey piece of meat. He concedes that his argument jumps around confusingly, ”
By Michael O'Donnell
About the book
Read the full description
From one of cinema’s wisest and most penetrating observers, an arresting new perspective on the sweep of film history. David Thomson has been called “the greatest living writer on the movies.” Here is a career capstone of sorts—a one-volume history of film and screens as illuminating and provocative as his classic Biographical Dictionary of Film. In tracing the progress, from the Lumiere Brothers to the Coens, Thomson glories in the great movies, but admits to increasing unease over what the medium has done to us—promoting fantasy, misleading models of sexual identity, the cult of authority, power, and happy endings.
This revisionist history is as alert to technology and business as it is to art and fun in tracing our pursuit of the lifelike instead of life. By turns trenchant, lyrical, and comic, Thomson uncovers our addiction to voyeurism and villainy, and a habit of passivity that has betrayed our political and cultural identity. In a survey that reaches from Metropolis to Rear Window to Anora, this will redirect ideas about film everywhere.