Another delving into the long-ago purchased and neglected virtual Kindle pile. If anybody could bring off a one volumes history it is David Thomson and many of his other books have given me pleasure, but here he seems too aware of both some notional restriction on length and a desire to be comprehensive. In practice this means the book is short on the insight, eye for detail and originality that characterise much of Thomsons’ work and just feels pretty dutiful. But it will nevertheless give you a reasonably clear chronological picture.

Is it fair to take Taruskin’s 'Oxford History of Western Music' as the benchmark for single author history in the arts? OUP obviously gave Taruskin carte blanche but if you compare his volume on the first part of the 20th Century (fearless in opinion, unmatched in authority, not afraid to deep dive to a very technical level and ruthless in its narrative omission) it does expose the faultiness in a book like Thomson’s. ( )

You are not watching life. You are watching a movie. And if, maybe, the movie feels better than life, then that is a vast, revolutionary possibility, and no one knows yet whether it is for good or ill, because the insinuation of dreams does so much to alter or threaten our respect for life. Dissatisfaction and doubt grew in step with film's projection of happiness.

My emotional detachment to this book remained constant, even as bliss gave way to my own doubtful dissatisfaction. This isn't a history of cinema. Thomson instead gives us a primer on looking and the effect on our reality. There are two paragraphs devoted to Ozu. Two. Pages upon pages flow on I Love Lucy and The Sopranos. Apparently there is no room for Asian cinema in a 600 page book. We do have space and time to ruminate on Thomson watching porn. Thomson watching Chelsea FC on TV. Thomson on YouTube. Thomson does herald Godard and that was the only reason I didn't throw the book out into the rainy streets last night.

So what did I learn about our proclivity to watch others in the dark? Not sure, I did learn that in the 1970s Orson Welles liked to demonstrate his commitment to returning to peak form by eating steamed fish in trendy restaurants and then having steak and baked potatoes delivered to his office. I also learned that William Holden died when during a bender he fell and cut his head and bled out.

I am now on holiday and I had hoped Thomson would inspire. He failed there as he does in other areas. I was fortunate to record Strike the other day on TCM and that will begin my mainlining of hard art. ( )

The subtitle of this book is ‘The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us’. And that sums up what the book is about. Rather than a history of Hollywood (which is what so many people think of when they think about cinema and film), this book discusses the first time that moving pictures were created, right up to the current day when we are all watching very different types of screens, films can be watched on phones, and people play video games for hours on end.

The basic structure of the book is that each chapter covers one – or a small number – of significant film makers, primarily directors, although Thomson also talks about writers, actors and producers. It’s less a chronological series of events, but more a picture of various people who helped create the movies as we know them today. Thomson covers a lot of French cinema for which he has an obvious passion, as well as American, and also touches on film-makers from other countries, as well as other entertainment mediums that we view on screen (video games, and of course television for example).

Did I enjoy it? Well, sad to say, not particularly. Getting through the book felt like a bit of a slog, although I did enjoy the last quarter considerably more than what came before it. But there’s no denying that it was extremely well researched and written with obvious passion for the subject and I truly feel that the reason I didn’t enjoy it is more down to me than down to the writing. The information given was very dense and there seemed to be so much to take in that I only felt like reading a little bit at a time.

If you are at all interested in the history of movies, I recommend this book, but if you are looking for a bit of light reading, be warned – it’s verbose and throws a lot of information at you! ( )

Terrific book. Full of wisdom, full of insight, both into the history of cinema and the history of the humans who watched it (and what it did to them.)Plus a great resource for populating my Netflix queue. ( )

"the history of cinema, from its origins to the present, with hardly a female in sight" - bookslut