THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY – The DVD Review

I love the movies, really, truly I do, I love the movies. Cinema, motion pictures, movies, film, whatever you want to label this peculiar art form that we all cherish here at We Are Movie Geeks, I have loved it ever since the first time I saw a movie on television, in a theater or at a drive-in. I wish I could recall the first movie I ever saw and what the medium was in which I saw it.

One of my earliest memories was the yearly showing of Wizard of Oz on television and my delight at seeing Judy Garland in a different movie, Pigskin Parade, and realizing that actors made a living by appearing in more than one movie or television series.

I can recall seeing Battle Beyond the Stars at the Pine Hill Drive-in in Piedmont, Missouri, one of the Russian space movies bought and re-edited by Roger Corman. I stood in the playground in front of that huge screen in awe of the space adventure unfolding against a night sky that blended seamlessly with those images of silver rockets and asteroids and weird looking monsters.

I can recall my family going to an indoor theater, probably in Greenville, Missouri, to see a western, in color, and feeling lost in the wide open spaces captured in that (probably) B-movie landscape.

I came to love every genre of film and from every country that makes them. Italian peplum, Russian fantasy films, Japanese historical and giant monster epics, English historical romances, American westerns, comedies, monster movies, musicals, everything, just everything.

And among my favorite films are movies about the movies, documentaries giving the history of the medium or narrow casting down to the history of a single studio or director or actor and using numerous clips to illustrate the story. In my collection are excellent documentaries on the history of Warner Brothers, Universal, RKO and MGM studios. Biographies of John Huston, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Roger Corman. Profiles of Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, James Dean, John Wayne, Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Stewart. I particularly love a series called 100 Years of Horror hosted by Christopher Lee and featuring clips from every monster and horror and science fiction picture imaginable.

I say all this as an introduction to an incredible piece of work, a 15 episode history of innovation in the movies, The Story of Film, sub titled An Odyssey by Mark Cousins. This project should be subtitled a Personal Odyssey and I’ll get to that in a minute.  I found this box set at one of St. Petersburg’s libraries and brought it home, knowing nothing about the project. Of course I became hooked and watched it all, usually one episode a day, then watched the whole series again and have dipped into certain episodes ever since.

A “Personal” Odyssey would be a more accurate subtitle as Mr. Cousins, (who first wrote a book covering this same ground and then spent six years shooting the documentary) lets us know up front this is his personal and highly opinionated story of film. He takes us step by step through every technical innovation from the invention of the camera to the recent changeover to all digital shooting and projection. He accurately informs us that it was not the camera that made the movies, it was the editing table. The first time two or more pieces of film were spliced together to create a narrative, cinema was made.  Then came color tinting, sound, wide screen systems, stereo sound, 3 Dimensions.

If you have ever taken a course in film history or read any of the many books on the subject you’ll recognize a lot of the names here. Among the usual suspects are the Lumiere Brothers, Georges Melies, DW Griffith, Murnau, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, John Huston. And covering so much ground in only 15 one hour episodes of course a lot gets left out. David Lynch is well represented and I was delighted to see David Cronenberg also discussed at some length. If Woody Allen or Mel Brooks were mentioned I missed it.

Cousins narrates his project with his soft Irish brogue and takes a global view of film. Which makes it all the more curious that he does not mention Irish film at all, since there is such a thing. Angela’s Ashes qualifies as Irish and so does The Crying Game. Europe is will represented but there is no mention of the astonishing work of Harry Kumel of Belgium.

Among the countries discussed at length: Germany, Russia, the French New Wave and the Italian neo-realist school. Ozu gets quite a lot of coverage, and rightfully so. But we also get quite a lot on Takeshi Miike (that most horrifying shot from Audition, if you’ve seen it you know what I mean.) and Shinya Tsukamoto.

But I was glad to learn so much about film makers I had never heard of, from countries I had no idea made world class films, or that I had very limited knowledge of. Egypt, Israel, Iran, and Brazil are discussed at some length. Although there is no mention of Jose Mohica Marins (Coffin Joe,) probably the most well known Brazilian film maker, to me anyway.

If Cousins work has a failing it is an open prejudice about main stream Hollywood product. From the beginning he shows us a Christmas tree ornament hanging in space near the Hollywood sign (really!) and labeling Hollywood “the Bauble”. From many comments throughout the series we are asked to consider most of that body of work useless and without merit. I have to be fair and admit that a lot of disposable fluff came off the Hollywood assembly line in the 30s through the 50s. But many smart, personal, well thought out films were made by several directors, most of which have stood the test of time.

Our narrator also makes some truly outrageous statements, and some glaring omissions. While covering Orson Welles we are told that in his entire career Welles “never worked for any of the four major studios!” FOUR major studios? I thought there were about 6 or 8 major studios, RKO was never major? Or Universal? What about Columbia? Also when we get to the French New Wave we are not told that Truffaut, Godard and most of the rest of that crew had been film critics. Their back ground is critical in understanding where, how and why the French New Wave came about. For that matter we never hear the name Cahiers du Cinema, easily one of the most important film magazines ever published.

One very curious statement, Cousins spends some time on Performance, the outrageous psychotropic English gangster mind melding, cross dressing enigma and proclaims it THE film that any aspiring film maker should watch, to see how a movie should be made! Please don’t get me wrong, I love Performance, have watched it numerous times, abused a variety of substances in order to do so. But that is a very strange statement to make. Just as an aside, any time I see James Fox in anything I cannot help but think of Chas and that outrageous Memo From Turner! “Does that sound equitable?”

But when Mark Cousins is on top of his game this series hums. Cousins really gets warmed up when he gets to the 70s and the Decade under the Influence, when the styles of the neo-realists and French New Wave were absorbed by Hollywood film makers like John Cassavetes and Robert Altman. In fact I got the impression that covering the 70s was the point of the whole series.

Many Directors are interviewed and more than a few actors, but even here there are some odd choices. We get interview footage with Gus Van Sant, for instance. But then we get a side by side comparison of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Van Sant’s ill advised remake and what amounts to an apology for the color remake being made in the first place. Van Sant (who I do like by the way, I thought My Own Private Idaho was brilliant) explains that he made the remake basically for the paycheck. Fine, he has that right, just as I have the right never to watch the thing. The main point seems to be that Van Sant could show much more of Ann Heche’s naked body and bloody open wounds than Hitchcock could have ever gotten away with in 1960. Thankfully that is about the only time spent on useless remakes.

The real danger in watching a series like Story of Film is the urge to get out copies of the complete films and watching them all, all over again. If I see clips from Intolerance, Vampyr, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Passion of Joan of Arc, The Searchers, Blue Velvet, The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in the West or any number of other titles, I want to see the whole movie again.

And the real value in a series that attempts to be this comprehensive is in learning about so many new film makers and their projects. I kept a notebook and a pencil handy to write down Directors and titles while watching Story of Film, and so should you.

There is only one special feature to this set and it is on all five discs, a 90 second ad which covers the whole series in a machine gun edit of clips from every major film and director interview. Maybe I have spent too much time watching movies; I could name just about every clip as it flashed by.

With any faults this is a very valuable and enjoyable series for any movie geek, I learned quite a lot, and I have been accused of knowing everything about movies. The more I learn, about anything, the more I realize how much more I have to learn.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to watch Gallipoli, Kansas City Bomber and West of Zanzibar again. Oh dear, not enough hours in the day……