Mark Cousins' The History of film: An Odyssey

Random comments after skimming:
Really wanted to like Häxan but it didn't do it for me.
Was present at the NYFF once when Youssef Chahine harangued the audience- well, our national viewing public, really- for our ignorance.

actually my cousin once-removed AND my second cousin both make films and documentaries, and i'd REALLY like to see their respective history of films -- i should talk to them about it

I just youtubed Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy from '36. The austere style is harder on me than someone like Ozu but the anger seeps through in this story of a woman who tried to do the right thing and got caught.

haha i like the way MC keeps saying "his mum" instead of "his mother"

YEELEN! This film is amazing.

segue from Yeelen to the Buggles!

Sequence: Spike Lee --> Sayles --> Besson --> Carax --> Almodóvar

MC means to affirm Sayles as the eminence grise of US indie integrity, but this juxtaposition makes him see much more worthily wearisome than he actually is. (The 80s are hard to write about...)

haha i saw greenaway's "Zed and Two Noughts" *with* my cousin! He hated it...

this idea of "film as provocation to the establishment" is self-regarding toss: on the whole the establishment ignored these films, quite unbothered by them, allowed and even encouraged them

But was that the case in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe? Were there any other good brit films durng the 80s? I only really liked Greogry's Girl and Still Voices.. out of that lot.

Mark Cousins did point in an interview that he wanted to introduce people to more African cinema than they knew, and he's delivering on that w/sequences like the one for Yeelen - one of the best in the entire series. The Muratova was also brill. And when you see that cinema could really be this good you wonder why he's given so much space to the mundanity of Sayles. That interview didn't help.

Didn't know anything about Chinese cinema (apart from Hong Kong), so another plus. But again to praise well made tosh like House of Flying Daggers and then go on about denigrate films that come from a pop video background doesn't scan to me.

Wsn't able to see ths out due to ilx packing up in Dec, so a few points to conclude (didn't physically take notes so here we go w/my faulty mem):

- The ep with the MC waving hobbits as a sign of everything wrong w/cinema didn't convince. He does sound like a Bazin disciple - the pleas for realism got really tedious - but the problem is cinema surely is montage and realism and 'looks like our dreams' (as his intro used to say) so he needs to do better.

- His repping for Iranian doc/fiction (Makhmalbaf, some of Kiarostami's really strong early works) is another excellent discovery but they are gd films because of (among other things) the strng interplay w/notions of reality w/room for the 'poetic' and dreamlike, anchored to a mangled narrative that seems lived. This shd be distinguised from Von Trier, say, whose realism is derived from 'Homicide life on the Street'. Not that this is terrible - and hilarious when VT dropped this instead of confirming he was following on the footsteps of Godard - but 'Homicide...' has more going on in it than most VT films (cinematic TV was kinda missing here).

- Loved Clare Denis talking about Beau Travail. That ending is really great. Much more likely to buy her 'cinema is universal' than the Hollywood vs. rest of the world set-up that wsn't wrkng in the last few eps.

Since the thing finished I've been hunting down those African films on youtube: Yeelen and Hyenes are great. The stuff on non-martial arts Chinese cinema ws also pure gold, enjoyed Yellow Earth a lot.

Don't think he ever resolved that conflict he had between this notion of realism and fantasy. I mean he loves Baz Luhrmann, so it just seems that he likes them as long as it gives the whiff of auterism at work, just calls into the whole auteur enterprise into question really.

- He didn't cover enough Japanses cinema: Kinju Yoshida (Eros Plus Madness is one of the great '68 films), Masahiro Shinoda (Double Suicide has that reduced theatrical spatial staging that SHAMES Von Trier's attempts at doing so in Dogville) or Toshio Matsumoto ought to have been featured instead of Tetsuo. Not that I've anything against that but another weakness were his attempts to cover genre films - they had to be Japanese or from Hollywood in the 30s and 40s.

But but overall I did watch all the eps and found it all really worthwhile even if increasingly weak towards the end. Learned quite a bit and the concluding remarks were gd: we shd all talk about some of these films.

I left feeling in love w/films and cinema more than ever...

He does sound like a Bazin disciple - the pleas for realism got really tedious - but the problem is cinema surely is montage and realism and 'looks like our dreams' (as his intro used to say) so he needs to do better.

sorry what i was getting at is that cinema can be everything: montage or realism or a mix, etc.

gave up on this when i realised my irritation with the content was far outweighing any pleasure/insight i was getting. also came round to the idea that the subject is just too big for one person to properly tackle (and the fact that it's one person's 'personal' vision of film implies a unity and coherence that cinema, or any long-established artform, never actually has - ie it's a story of fragments, repetition, changes, diversions, false starts etc etc.) wld rather have seen different ppl tackling different genres/national cinemas and so on.

Yeah, agree, but then again it wouldn't be an auteur's auteur vision. Which I'm not sure TV companies would buy into. Collaboration wd still need an overall 'editor' of the histories into a streamlined style.

Hope there is another attempt at this. Doubt we'll see anything soon, its amazing MC got it off the ground...you can tell there is a bundle of energy there, even if scattered over the screen.

Keep checking this once a month to see what more I've seen:

- Daisies was another discovery.

- Badou Boy's, for its use of sound and rough imagination.

- Started making my way through the Japanese documentaries of the 70s - Minimata et al.

- Battle for Chile

- I am Curious (yellow)

otoh, the more I've watched (and I've watched more than ever these last 3-4 months) the more I see how little directors matter...I know they do, but it feels somehow oppressive to think about auteurs and artists blah. Much better to cover what it ws being said, not by whom, as there was a lot of common ground with the range of topics.

I know what I'm saying is rough and too general. All stuff I'm thinking about at the mo.

Embarking on this tonight--it'll be playing, two episodes at a time, for the next couple of months at the local documentary theatre. Hope I like it enough not to bail.

make sure you've seen all the movies made up until now before you watch because it spoils the fuck outta like most of them

Whenever they excerpt from the ones I haven't seen, I'll close my eyes.

First impressions after two hours: the narration's going to wear me down, and the construction is quite scattershot. Sometimes allusions across time are noted (most of them valid, a couple rather tenuous--Chaplin into Bad Timing struck me as a reach), sometimes not. I'd like to see that Iranian documentary from the early '60s that popped up.

oh is that the house is black yeah i need to see that

That's the one--I was scrolling back, and someone said the same thing upthread. The friend I saw it with tonight says it's only 30 minutes long and available on DVD.

It is on YouTube, if you don't mind watching it that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WL4w5ceO7w

Being so short, that might work until I can see it properly--thanks.

Parts 3 and 4 tonight. I like the obscure stuff the guy digs up (obscure to me, anyway): the Japanese film influenced by Caligari (A Page of Madness), the Brazilian film from the early '30s (Limite), the films of Ruan Lingyu. And I liked Blood of a Poet into Inception.

Realizing that you can't encompass everything, there are omissions that jar: Ford without Stagecoach, Disney without Fantasia, the '30s episode without Von Sternberg. (He made a brief appearance earlier.) The Hitchcock segment seemed quite scattershot. "Here are seven reasons why Hitchcock's so important"--a couple of times, I wasn't even clear what the reason was.

The two hours go by easily, though. I'm glad I'm not seeing it in three or four sittings.

I watched this when it was broadcast on UK tv this time last year, and the hour-a-week format worked really well for me; I tended to PVR it and probably had a couple of 2hr sessions as well catching during the run, but as you say it just slips by. The mid 20th century episodes were my favourites, esp. the wonderful interview with Kyōko Kagawa.

In honesty, despite the omissions and things one could take issue with, it kind of amazes me that a series like this could get made *at all* these days, so kudos to Cousins for getting funding and making it happen. A fair bit of the location footage seems to be him on solo travels with a camera, but the sometimes ramshackle feel of this was pretty beguiling too. Like a lot of people on this thread it certainly opened my eyes to a mass of films that I've never seen (or even heard of) as well.

Good point. Every time I complain about something, I feel a little petulant; he managed to get a serious 15-hour history-of-film made, and no one's going to see things exactly the same. I've already found out about a number of films I didn't know. (Which doesn't mean I won't have more petulant complaints for the next few Sundays...)

Part 5: A little sketchy on film noir, but he does give Stagecoach its due here. I don't think Capra was mentioned, but you could argue he belongs more to the '30s...except I'm not sure if he was mentioned in that episode, either.

Part 6: Film I most want to see from tonight: Cairo Station, in part for Hind Rostom. I liked the way he ended with The Searchers, Vertigo, Touch of Evil, and Rio Bravo as a group--those four films have always belonged together for me (as different as they are in many ways). The Apu films are among my favourites, but I thought there was a little too much time spent on Ray; Marilyn Monroe was barely mentioned. I partly associate the '50s with Biblical epics--not important, but maybe some acknowledgement of DeMille.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rmPgyCUMW8E/TkFEdGQMnlI/AAAAAAAABgI/wxAKUQIMV8I/s1600/%25D9%2587%25D9%2586%25D8%25AF+%25D8%25B1%25D8%25B3%25D8%25AA%25D9%2585.jpg

Lots of films I've got to see from parts 7 and 8. He's got a knack for choosing the right sequences, and the quality of the clips is fantastic--he'll show stuff I've seen and forgotten, and I'll think, "How did I not think that looked amazing at the time?" High on the to-see list: Trinka's The Hand and Chytilová's Daisies.

Things I puzzled over...I don't think of Tati as being on a plane with Bergman, Bresson, and Fellini (independent of my own feelings about each--just in terms of importance). Substituting Kurosawa or Dreyer for the pre-New Wave '50s would make more sense to me. Not mentioning L'Avventura is bizarre, especially as he often argues that this or that changed film grammar. Something schlump warned about upthread: his habit of excerpting endings. Black Girl, Nostalghia, one or two others--did no one tell him I haven't yet seen these films? The final segment on American film in the '60s was quite arbitrary, but I assume some of that will be smoothed over in the next episode on the '70s.

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. I'm enjoying this quite a bit.

Catching up on your posts now Clemenza. Wish they put this on TV for a repeat, would watch. Makes me nostalgic for the time some of the initial participants sat down and watched this together.

I loved Davies. One of my 10 - 20 or so discoveries from watching this.

Daisies I mean -- spelling fails again :-(

Back at it after a week off. Once again, whatever carping I do does not mean I'm not enjoying this.

I knew I'd be extra nitpicky about the America-in-the-'70s episode. The following omissions wouldn't bother everyone, but to me they should be there: Hal Ashby, Paul Mazursky, Alan J. Pakula, Michael Ritchie, Bob Rafelson (Five Easy Pieces, at least). (I'm assuming Spielberg and Lucas will be used as bridges to the blockbuster era--a bit unfair to Spielberg, I think.) Starting off with Catch-22, and devoting a good five minutes to it, was perverse. Somewhat surprised there was no mention of Elaine May, Joan Micklin Silver, or Claudia Weill, just because they would have fit into Cousins' goal of an alternate history.

Much more inexplicable: no Nashville or Bonnie and Clyde. When the latter didn't show up in the '60s episode, I thought that made sense--it would lead the '70s episode. But nothing. Those two are non-negotiable.

The film I'd most want to see from episode 10 is that Japanese documentary about the negligent chemical company.

Minamata: The Victims and Their World is really awesome, yes! Opened me up to a few other Japanese documentaries from that time.

Not as much American film in parts 11 and 12, so fewer complaints from me. Lynch and Lee are obvious benchmarks for the '80s; I would have maybe added Jonathan Demme, too. (And still no mention of De Palma.) I didn't think Sayles was a great choice for the turn towards indie films (implied, anyway)--would have gone with Jarmusch and/or Soderbergh instead. I could sense my friend squirming through the France-in-the-'80s segment, but he seemed to get Britain right. We were laughing about Canada turning up in the 12th hour: Cronenberg, skip back 40 years to Norman McLaren, forward to Jesus of Montreal, see you later.

Film I'd most want to see: I guess the B&W Scottish one from the early '70s about the old woman and her grandson (can't remember the name...xyzzzz?).

My Childhood--Wikipedia has a list of all the film clips.

All done. Good stuff from the last three parts:

--a few minutes on the ascension of documentaries starting in the late '90s; didn't expect that
--the segment on Japanese horror
--American coverage in the '90s was pretty good
--the segment on Sokurov

Carping:

--lots on the Coens, no mention of Fargo
--as always, lots of endings revealed
--calling Van Sant's Elephant one of the key films to come out of the '90s, two seconds before the actual date (2003) is flashed on screen
--so much time given to Baz Luhrmann...I've never seen a Luhrmann film; based on what I saw last night, I don't think I'd last five minutes

Anyway, on the whole, well worth the 15 hours.

his voice is kinda making me want to kill myself, along with a lot of his ideas, but i've been just sick enough in the last week (i.e. unable to do anything but stare blankly when i get home at night) that i keep watching.

so is this any good

nah

I don't know about watching a bunch at a time, but once a week (assuming you can get used to his voice and his style), I think it's enjoyable.

So this is on Netflix now, right? What's wrong with his voice? Is he Irish? Is that bad?

He's Irish. He just has a way of speaking.

An Irish way?

Have a listen to a little bit of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx3HAEq0gJs

Sounds Irish, with requisite voiceover portent.

Did you know that when they broadcast "Planet Earth" in the US, they replaced David Attenborough's narration with Sigourney Weaver's?

It's not that he is Irish. His voice his famously infuriating. But I got over it, for this.

the shot selection and the connections are almost all brilliant, his theorising about art and commerce considerably less so

also, spoilers a-go-go

Did you know that when they broadcast "Planet Earth" in the US, they replaced David Attenborough's narration with Sigourney Weaver's?

And for the subsequent Life, the voiceover script was rewritten for Oprah Winfrey.

"Critics in the nineteen sixties said..." is a big catchphrase in my house as a result of this show

I watched the first two episodes of this last night. Really great stuff. Some of the comparisons he makes are a little odd, but sometimes they seem inspired (his comparison of Ozu to Jeanne Dielman, for example).