Flicker

Flicker is a novel by Theodore Roszak published in 1991. The novel covers approximately 15–20 years of the life of film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the shadowy world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of fictional B-movie director Max Castle. Director Darren Aronofsky's name has long been associated with a possible film adaptation. Plot summary Jonathan Gates is a student at UCLA in the early 1960s, where he begins his love affair with film at The Classic, a rundown independent movie theatre. He begins a romance with the theatre's owner Clarissa "Clare" Swann, who tutors him extensively in the study of film history over the course of their relationship. It is through Clare's pursuit of classic films to show at the theater that Gates stumbles upon the work of Max Castle, a German film director whose work uses subliminal imagery and unorthodox symbolism to achieve a powerful effect over the viewer. Gradually, Gates rises through the academic ranks to achieve a professorial chair, becoming most respected as the rediscoverer and champion of Castle's work. Through Gates' extensive research and travels through Europe, the reader learns of Castle's considerable influence over the great films of his time culminating in an uncredited collaboration with Orson Welles to make the acclaimed movie Citizen Kane, followed by a failed attempt to adapt Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness to the silver screen. Also revealed, however, are Castle's shadowy connections with a religious group known as the Orphans of the Storm, as well as his disappearance in 1941 after being lost at sea and presumed dead in a Nazi U-boat attack during a trip to Europe.