Critic David Thomson Asks: Have Movies Made Our Culture Worse?

Prolific author and erudite British import David Thomson has been writing about film for more than six decades. Most self-respecting cinephiles have his “Biographical Dictionary of Film” in its various editions on their shelves. Now, he has written yet another book about the history of cinema, “A Sudden Flicker of Light,” billed as “a revisionist history of movies.” If you know his writing, it’s not just entertaining to read but often surprising, idiosyncratic, snarky, and even poetic. To put it another way, he’s not playing it safe or looking over his shoulder.

His latest book proposes a provocative question while trying to answer it: Are the movies actually bad for us? Have they created a toxic culture, paving the way for a president such as Donald Trump to ascend? Thomson looks at movies like “The Godfather” and TV series like “The Sopranos” — as well as filmmakers like Erich von Stroheim and Charlie Chaplin amid cinema’s early days, and protagonists like Jack Nicholson’s forlorn gumshoe in “Chinatown” — to wonder whether rooting for the bad guys has led to a dangerous fantasy.

Thomson joined this week’s episode of IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast for a wide-ranging chat about his newfound philosophy of filmmaking, how the “antihero” archetype on screens reflects ourselves, hence its popularity, and how his viewing habits have reshaped in recent years. He tells us where he stands on “The Odyssey” (he hasn’t seen it, but provocatively, he argues it should work just as well on his phone as in IMAX 70mm), why he’s filled with anxiety about his life’s work, and much more.

Elsewhere on the podcast, co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio have much to dig into this week. First up, the news that the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood will reopen under Sony ownership and Alamo Drafthouse operations has delighted Los Angelinos — but there is still reason for ambivalence, as Ryan argues, if Alamo doesn’t get its act together after a very bad PR year.

We also have myriad fall festival lineups to unpack, with Venice and Toronto now in full view. What’s playing Venice or not will tell us what’s most likely to show up at Telluride, a list we parse in the episode. Overall, this year’s Venice lineup leans heavily on international titles and (very long) documentaries. In other words, while it’s exciting for arthouse cinephiles like ourselves, few films in the selection (including just one directed by a woman!) will travel outside the festival circuit.

Listen to the episode below or on your preferred podcast platform.