Big thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for allowing
me to preview David Thomson’s provocative and expansive A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies. I wasn’t sure exactly what to
expect with this book. While I wasn’t familiar with Thomson’s writing, I’ve
learned that he is one of the foremost film critics, authoring over 40 books in
a career spanning nearly 60 years. He knows his stuff, and this book is touted
as the culmination of all of his knowledge and thoughts about film, both
celebrating and critiquing not just the artistry and magic of filmmaking, but
also the commerce and industry of Hollywood and the silver screen. However,
what I found most interesting was not just examining the trends and history of film,
but rather examining how film has influenced individuals and society, and how
the kind of imaginary pretense of stories on the screen has ended up influencing
people’s expectations and understandings of the world around us. A Sudden Flicker
of Light ends up being a fascinating study of the role of popular media on
our own ideas and expectations about the world, which challenged my own
thinking about my relationship to films, media, and others. I ended up enjoying
this book, not only for Thomson’s unique, digressive style that seems to transition
from one idea or film to another like a jump cut, establishing an implicit
relationship, but also because Thomson’s ideas and critiques about the influence
of film and popular media had me questioning and thinking more and more about
why we watch films and what impact this has on us. It’s a fascinating look at
the history of film, which as the book’s subtitled proclaims, challenges
popular notions of films by frequently looking at influential factors, context,
trends, and historical events that have influenced not just movie scripts and
productions but also viewership and ticket sales.
Although Thomson’s book follows a somewhat historical
progression of films, he starts the book focusing on cinematographer and
director Haskell Wexler, who is often cited as one of the best
cinematographers, but who was also fired from two award winning films in the
70s (The Conversation and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). I
wasn’t exactly sure what this brief biography had to do with the rest of the
book, but after finishing I can see a few themes emerge from Wexler’s career,
especially as he was working with some of the directors who helped shift the
Hollywood machine from entertainment to art, revising the ways that we consumed
films and movies. As Thomson explains, Wexler was asking a lot of questions,
sometimes pulling the actors from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest aside
to question the tone of the film, asking whether Milos Foreman was trying to
elicit more comedy from a film that could possibly serve as a serious critique of
society. This kind of conflict or dichotomy between artistry and themes in
films and the need for commerce and audience approval is one of the oppositions
that Thomson pursues and analyzes throughout the book. It’s fascinating to
think about how Cuckoo’s Nest, an Oscar winner and beloved classic, may
have turned out differently if it had sought to lessen the humor and been more
serious or morose. Thomson raises some other examples, most notably the ending
of Chinatown, which was rewritten to be dourer, which ended up
subverting the audiences’ expectations for a happy ending. He also acknowledges
the kind of ambiguous ending of Adolescence as another way that
audiences are left with questions about the motivation, yet still can remain riveted
to the screen based on the artistry of the acting, direction, and relevance of
the plot. The discussion of Adolescence and Netflix’s influence on our
viewing is also compelling to think about how the approach to home viewing and
engaging longer form television has shaped our own consumption of films and
movies.
I loved learning more about the history of cinema, and Thomson’s
own reflections about how cinema has evolved over time. There’s a lot to learn
about, and in particular, the chapter “Like Lightning” that deals with The
Birth of a Nation, the first film to be screened at the White House, is
fascinating, especially in its demonstration of how film has the power to alter
the popular understanding of history and shape or reinforce personal beliefs,
biases, and stereotypes. I found this chapter particularly relevant based on the
ways that images, video, and other forms of media are often presented to win
hearts and minds and challenge perceptions about the nature of the world.
Rather than documenting a kind of truth or reflecting historical accuracy,
Thomson explores the ways in which film manipulates and alters our emotions and
ideas, much the same way that say videos shared of boat attacks or bombings are
now shared on social media to drum up support for violent, illegal policies and
unpopular attacks on other nations. In fact, Thomson’s last chapter, titled “Quiet,
Piggy” raises some important observations and questions about the ways in which
President Trump, a big fan of Sunset Boulevard and Gone With the Wind,
two other films Thomson analyzes and critiques, has more or less become an
actor in his own film, playing a kind of trope and using other motifs like
violence, sex, and villainy to sell his film. It’s a fascinating deconstruction
that questions how our viewership and voyeurism has shifted from watching what
plays out on the screen as a kind of escapism and fantasy to actually enacting
the fantasy in real life.
Thomson’s viewership and scholarship is nearly unlimited,
but he seems to know a lot about film noir, as one of the chapters significantly
focuses on noir. Other chapters focus on other film trends, but sometimes the
chapters aren’t completely historical or thematic, and his style moves around a
bit. At first, I found these transitions a little hard to follow, but as the
book progressed, I appreciated his thinking and linking more and more. At
times, Thomson has a kind of conversational style where it’s almost as if he’s
sitting in a room sharing all of his ideas and observations that have built up
over years of viewership with the reader. At other times, he makes humorous
asides and suggestions about films, actors, directors, and themes. I
appreciated how critical he was of the need to sustain a commercial audience,
and how popular tastes and the Hays Code influenced the earlier film industry.
Other chapters on Orson Welles’ brilliance are also fascinating to read to
really understand how Citizen Kane both established and in some ways
limited Welles’ career. Thomson goes on to examine certain trends in films that
emerged in the 1930s throughout the 1970s, noting how world events like the
Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War influenced film themes and
tropes, including villains, heroes, the roles of women, and the need for sex
and violence in films, even if these ideas are implied more than explicitly
stated or displayed. Again, through his insight, Thomson explores how films are
more of a window facing inwards, in our own psyches and human nature, rather
than a mirror reflecting reality, and often giving us what we may desire or
want rather than showing us an objective truth.
A Sudden Flicker of Light is a fascinating read; one
that will challenge readers’ understandings and thoughts about film and popular
media and how it shapes our own understanding to the world. It’s a book I will
need to revisit since there are so many different ideas, but it’s also an
important book to consider due to how Thomson raises important questions about
our own viewership (or voyeurism) and how the trends and themes films explore
have not only altered us on an individual level, but also how they have shifted
ideas, attitudes, and beliefs in society. I loved this book and highly
recommend it!
