A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies

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. As The New York Times has put it, "Thomson proves anew that he is irreplaceable."

Author: David Thomson
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 07/07/2026
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.30w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9781668205730


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2026
Publishers Weekly 05/04/2026
Booklist 06/01/2026

About the Author
David Thomson is the author of more than twenty books, including biographies of David O. Selznick and Orson Welles, and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. His writing and his books have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, Slate, and many more. He lives in San Francisco.