THE BIG SCREEN  David Thomson  Will you agree with this review of David Thomson’s new book? My own favourite critics are those with whom one disagrees with quite as much as one agrees – and stimulating criticism must open the reader’s eyes to virtues of a given medium (such as cinema), as well as stimulating dissent. And that is precisely what the doyen of film critics, David Thomson, does in this exhilarating, argumentative and erudite book, celebrating the entire history of the form – and upsetting several apple carts in the process. The Big Screen is quite the equal of anything else that the author has written (which is no mean praise), even though the reader who shares Thomson’s love of film will spend quite as much time muttering in disagreement as noting how unerringly he is able to distil the very essence of cinema — and analyse how it works on us. The subtitle, The Story of the Movies and What They Did To Us, suggests the ambitious reach of the book – from history to psychology — and there is no film writer more qualified to tackle this daunting remit. His publishers modestly claim David Thomson ‘has a fair claim to be one of the greatest living writers on film.’ Surely, with the death of Raymond Durgnat — and the move into more eccentric, politically correct realms by some of his contemporaries — Penguin can now amend that encomium to ‘the greatest living writer on film.’   The Big Screen by David Thomson is published by Penguin