A Sudden Flicker of LightA Sudden Flicker of Light

"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 The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. In tracing the progress of cinema, from the Lumière 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."--