A Sudden Flicker of Light by David Thomson review – a brilliantly eccentric history of the movies

From the golden age of Hollywood to harder times today, this is a rapturous account of more than a century of cinema Film critic, historian and author of more than 40 books, David Thomson is back with another three-hour free jazz solo on the subject of the movies, though it’s a performance delivered with the magnificent elan of a 1940s big band leader. He’s as brilliant, eccentric, exasperating and absorbing as ever. By “the movies”, incidentally, he means Hollywood, with a side order of esta...

By Peter Bradshaw