“For all the paperwork of democracy — government by and for the people — we have become a citizenry of spectators who simply want to be entertained.” — David Thomson
Has the prolific film critic David Thomson fallen out of love with the movies? That’s the question I began my conversation with Thomson, arguably the greatest living writer on film. My question was triggered by his revisionist movie history (out today), A Sudden Flicker of Light, which, while still glorifying film, nonetheless recognizes the damage that the medium has done to us.
No, he hasn’t fallen out of love with the movies, Thomson responded. But he did acknowledge a new kind of wariness about his beloved medium — a suspicion of auteur worship, that tradition which concentrates on the great artistry of individual directors like Welles, Hitchcock, and Scorsese while ignoring what the motion picture medium as a whole has done to society.
“What has God wrought?” Samuel Morse asked about the telegraph. David Thomson is asking the same question about the consequence of movies.
Cinema, particularly Hollywood, Thomson argues, has spent a century disempowering audiences. Sitting in the dark, gazing at the screen, people have lost their agency. This passivity, Thomson argues, has invaded our political life, transforming us from citizens into spectators. No, Mr Smith hasn’t gone to Washington. Instead, America has become a theater of gawkers addicted to screen entertainment, unable to discriminate between a sudden flicker of light and reality.
Thus the degeneration of America into a violent Coppola movie. Thus The Joker who has crawled out of primeval darkness and now monopolizes all our screens. You could make a movie about it. Call it “Being There” or “Network.” Or perhaps “The Truman Show.”
Five Takeaways
• Cinema Has Trained Us to Be Spectators. Sitting in the dark watching a bright light, audiences learned that what happens on the screen is not their responsibility. Extrapolate that out: for all the paperwork of democracy, we have become a citizenry of spectators who simply want to be entertained. America, Thomson believes, is in that state.
• Every Cut Is Violent — and Every Cut Is a Marriage. A cut is a separation, but also a marriage. It says: join them up. Every cut is violent because you are seeing one thing and bang, you’re watching something quite different. We have never taught our children what a cut is, even though they spend far more of their lives watching moving imagery than reading.
• The Culture of Manhood and the Neglect of Women. Every film until at least the 1980s: tacit advertising for how the world should be — male authority, female passivity. That neglect, Thomson believes, has had political consequences. The war in Iran would not have been as likely with enough women running the country.
• Cinema Is Deeply Educational — and We Have Ignored That. You cannot have a mass medium without the mass being affected. The movies are deeply educational — they give us examples of how to live that have been intensely persuasive. We have let the technology take control. Catastrophic.
• Citizen Kane Is the Definitive American Film. Not The Godfather — which cannot overcome its attraction to authority. In Citizen Kane, there is all through the film a terrible ruefulness about what happens to people who seek power. Welles understood it and was afraid of it. Thomson has been known to doze off watching it. On July 4, he plans to watch The Odyssey instead.
About the Guest
David Thomson is the author of more than twenty books on film, including A Sudden Flicker of Light (Simon & Schuster, July 7, 2026) and The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Michael Ondaatje has called him the best writer on film in our time. He lives in San Francisco.
References
A Sudden Flicker of Light by David Thomson (Simon & Schuster, July 7, 2026): simonandschuster.com/books/A-Sudden-Flicker-of-Light/David-Thomson/9781668205730
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:01:38 Not fallen out of love — but more wary
00:07:50 The personal element: films I adored, I now have trouble with
00:08:30 The culture of manhood and the neglect of women
00:11:37 What does any of this have to do with cinema?
00:14:00 Sitting in the dark: you are being shaped
00:16:29 Talk more about cuts
00:17:00 A cut is a separation, but a marriage
00:52:32 The definitive movie about America
00:53:06 Citizen Kane: Welles was afraid of the need for power
00:54:08 Jazz on Fillmore Street, and then a movie