Despite its title, the latest book by the film critic David Thomson is not a manual. In fact, the only real practical piece of advice he offers is that we should aim to watch a movie more than once: only then can we begin to appreciate all the nuances. What he advocates above all is being more attentive — to the way a director frames a shot, or how a hero is portrayed, and so on. “Film,” he writes, “is an adventure in which you are meant to see more than the things before your eyes.”
His examples of different aspects that make up a film are drawn from all ages, from the silent era to 12 Years a Slave (2013), but he certainly has his favourite directors and movies. He returns again and again to Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), and to Alfred Hitchcock. The book includes a fascinating extended discussion of the way that cuts, music and character come together to make the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho so powerful.
Thomson also continually refers to his childhood experiences at the cinema (“I wanted to hug Lassie”). He has, it seems, never lost his childlike sense of awe at the pictures and sounds that envelop the viewer as the house lights go down.
Chatty and authoritative, his book is both wonderfully informative and a beautifully written paean to the movies and their continuing ability to inspire and enthral.
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Profile £14.99/ebook £7.59 pp252