The Whole Equation: a history of Hollywood David Thomson Little, Brown, 433pp, £22.50 ISBN 0316848603

David Thomson is an infuriating writer - and I mean that, broadly, as a compliment. Many is the time I have hurled his wilfully erratic Biographical Dictionary of Film to the floor, aghast at his airy dismissals of such geniuses as Ken Russell ("oblivious of his own vulgarity") and Terry Gilliam ("art direction run amok"), appalled by his indulgence of overrated bores such as John Boorman ("a unique, visionary film-maker"). Yet the passion of Thomson's writing and his dogged commitment to opinions that can be woefully wide of the mark have established him as an authoritatively argumentative voice. At a time when Peter Biskind's bloodless muckraking is typical of film writing, Thomson's empathy for the magic potential of cinema is something to celebrate.

In The Whole Equation, which takes its title from F Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, Thomson notes that "the film bookshelf has become so specialised. No one thinks to try the history of the whole thing in a way that could accommodate the artistic careers, the lives of the pirates, the ebb and flow of the business, the sociological impact." No one other than Thomson, that is, who envisages "a one-volume account, a history, of magicians, conmen, hacks and scoundrels" and proceeds to deliver just that. From Louis B Mayer, who "felt he was serving the inner beings of his people - their souls, say - as if his business was akin to a new form of religion", to Harvey Weinstein, who is apparently "exactly what the picture business in America now deserves" (heaven help us!), Thomson doggedly follows the art, the money and the politics of the film business. In the process, he nails the relationship between movies and gangsterism, charts the rise and fall of studio monopolies, and convincingly argues that Hollywood still owes a collective apology for the "misjudgement, cowardice and raw economic fear" that led to the infamous blacklists of the 1940s and 1950s.

Yet The Whole Equation is not simply an attack on the craven practices of an industry which proved that entertainment was hardly "a worthwhile business" until the 19th century. At its centre is a creative conundrum, typified by the way the writer Robert Towne lost control of Chinatown and its sequels, stemming from a situation in which "writers have a union that has always pursued better money deals and never tried to regain copyright". For Thomson, who appears to hold literature in higher artistic esteem than movie-making (which foregrounds the "fetishisation of appearance" while literature deals with "the meaning behind events"), screenwriters are "technicians as opposed to authors", while scripts have long been little more than "a production tool, a built-in part of the schedule/budget process, a lever of control - and a way of claiming money". This state of affairs has been "a disaster for spirit and risk in American films", and perhaps explains the "gap between Chinatown and umpteen possible future Mission Impossibles".

None of which is to suggest that The Whole Equation is exclusively negative. Despite deriding film's lack of art, Thomson depicts cinema-going as a heavenly experience, and waxes at length about the audience's passionate love affair with screen sirens, including his own "too candid" responses as a "fan" of Nicole Kidman. Having rudely dismissed Charlie Chaplin in his Biographical Dictionary ("delirious egotism . . . His later films are dreadful"), Thomson here redresses the balance, correctly identifying him as D W Griffith's equal, and restating his epochal significance as "maybe the first human to be recognised or felt for all over the world". The book is packed with thrillingly pithy and scurrilous insights, such as the assertion that the Academy was invented "to blur the equation enough so that profit and fame could be called art". And there is terrific fun to be had in Thomson's des-criptions of Will Hays as "an ugly weasel . . . an idiot and a humbug" and Harry Cohn as "a man of infinite vulgarity, incipient brutishness, and thug-like ego". Ha!

But there are faults. Some of the writing is unnecessarily portentous, with paragraphs ending in floridly rhetorical questions. And there are touches of Gore Vidal's smug flamboyance, as in Thomson's description of the paranoia of In a Lonely Place, which you can apparently cut "as easily as you can the seared tuna at any of the great restaurants in LA". Thomson also misquotes Fitzgerald, turning Gatsby's "orgastic future" into an "orgiastic future" - a common mis- correction, but surprising for a writer who makes such play of the legacy of The Last Tycoon.

I would also take issue with Thomson's claim that the brothers Weinstein allow their directors to work "in relative freedom", an assessment contradicted by the anecdotal testimonies of several film-makers I know to have been trampled on by Miramax. But as with his Biographical Dictionary, the joys of Thomson's The Whole Equation are of a piece with its flaws. The end result is a volume that is as essential as it is exasperating.

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