A Light in the Dark

In little more than a century of cinema - Birth of a Nation was one hundred years old in 2015 - our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. In a nutshell, the change takes the form of a question: Who directed The Sopranos or Homeland? Hardly anyone knows, because we don't tend to read TV credits and the director has returned to a more subservient and anonymous role. Directors now try to be efficient, the deliverers of profitable films, and are often involved as producers, like Steven Spielberg.

David Thomson's brilliant A Light in the Dark personalises each chapter through an individual: Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Jane Campion, Stephen Frears and Quentin Tarantino. Through these characters (and other directors not mentioned here), David Thomson relates an imaginative new history of a medium that has changed the world.

“It took over my life for two days. It is a summary of cinema and a requiem. Love and sadness. A prodigious masterwork.”

It took over my life for two days. It is a summary of cinema and a requiem. Love and sadness. A prodigious masterwork. John Boorman, director of DELIVERANCE and HOPE AND GLORY
Compulsive reading: thoughtful and thought-provoking in equal measure. David Thomson's knowledge is comprehensive and his response to all films humane and entirely uncorrupted by the conventional hagiography of so much writing about film. He's engagingly unafraid of challenging received opinion Richard Eyre
David Thomson has spent his life thinking hard and deep about cinema, and so he's uniquely placed to write this lovely, brutal book about the glory of being a film-maker and vainglory of being an auteur David Hare
Fizzing . . . It has that sense of live debate that's so inimical to social media's village green . . . Invaluable Sight & Sound
With this dynamic book, Thomson is big enough to follow the cry of "action!" wherever it leads Sunday Times
Forensic and stimulating . . . There is much new thinking, taking into account changes in both film criticism and society -- Barry Forshaw The i, A Book of the Year

Born and raised in London, David Thomson taught Film Studies at Dartmouth College. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times and Independent. He is the acclaimed author of one of the greatest books on cinema, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, plus Rosebud - The Story of Orson Welles; The Whole Equation - A History of Hollywood; and Sleeping with Strangers - How the Movies Shaped Desire. He lives in San Francisco.

In little more than a century of cinema - Birth of a Nation was one hundred years old in 2015 - our sense of what a film director is, or should be, has shifted in fascinating ways. A director was once a functionary; then an important but not decisive part of an industrial process; then accepted as the person who was and should be in charge, because he was an artist and a hero. But the world has changed. In a nutshell, the change takes the form of a question: Who directed The Sopranos or Homeland ? Hardly anyone knows, because we don't tend to read TV credits and the director has returned to a more subservient and anonymous role. Directors now try to be efficient, the deliverers of profitable films, and are often involved as producers, like Steven Spielberg.David Thomson's brilliant A Light in the Dark personalises each chapter through an individual: Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Jane Campion, Stephen Frears and Quentin Tarantino. Through these characters (and other directors not mentioned here), David Thomson relates an imaginative new history of a medium that has changed the world.

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