{"id":1022,"date":"2026-07-02T15:12:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1022"},"modified":"2026-07-02T15:12:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:12:42","slug":"the-film-historian-whos-sick-of-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1022","title":{"rendered":"The Film Historian Who\u2019s Sick of Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are movies bad for us? Do they waste our time, dumb down the culture, even harm society? On-screen, stars depict unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty. More subtly, movies make bad choices look appealing; viewers might watch The Godfather<\/i> and think not merely I want Michael Corleone\u2019s suit<\/i>, but I want to smoke like he smokes\u2014and maybe run my business like him too<\/i>. Perhaps that last claim feels overblown, but movies indisputably falsify reality, presenting a world that seems hypervivid for a few hours but vanishes when the lights come up. Mundane life can hardly compete with the glamorous charisma of Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo <\/i>or the epic vistas in Lawrence of Arabia<\/i>.<\/p>

Read more Pete Buttigieg\u2019s Ordeal Is a Frightening New Form of Political Harassment<\/a><\/p>

An eminent film critic has written a new analysis of cinema that is propelled by exactly such misgivings. In A Sudden Flicker of Light<\/i>, the prolific and controversial historian David Thomson describes film as \u201can engine of fantasy,\u201d a \u201cparasite to reality\u201d that \u201chas begun to diminish our nature\u201d and \u201cturned us into watchers, half aware that we cannot have what we see.\u201d Thomson, who has a quirky palate and has dismissed some canonical films, writes that he \u201cfeels more than regret\u201d over the decades of attention he has given to cinema\u2014\u201cas if it honored society and history.\u201d He even appears to blame the movies for the rise of Donald Trump, the consummate camera-ready salesman. I can\u2019t recall such a bleak appraisal of an art form since Tipper Gore went after Twisted Sister in the 1980s.<\/p>

This is the right moment to take the medium\u2019s pulse. I believe we owe the rise of Trump largely to baser human instincts rather than to any cultural product, but the president could not have built the MAGA brand without learning a trick or two from the image industry. More broadly, movies themselves are in trouble. Theaters are dying; superhero blockbusters are struggling; screens have gotten smaller; clips have gotten shorter; and AI threatens to supplant it all. Thomson\u2019s about-face over the movies might be a surprise, but that a critic of his stature would wrestle with cinema\u2019s enduring value is not. Whether in the spirit of saving or eulogizing the industry, the question of its influence deserves serious thought.<\/p>

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A Sudden Flicker of Light: A Revisionist History of Movies<\/div>
By Thomson, David<\/div><\/div>