The Story of Film: An Odyssey | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary |
Based on | The Story of Film by Mark Cousins |
Written by | Mark Cousins |
Directed by | Mark Cousins |
Narrated by | Mark Cousins |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of episodes | 15 |
Production | |
Producer | John Archer |
Editor | Timo Langer |
Running time | 915 minutes |
Production company | Hopscotch Films |
Original release | |
Network | More4 |
Release | 3 September – 10 December 2011 |
The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a 2011 British documentary film about the history of film, presented on television in 15 one-hour chapters with a total length of over 900 minutes. It was directed and narrated by Mark Cousins, a film critic from Northern Ireland, based on his 2004 book The Story of Film. [1] [2]
The series was broadcast in September 2011 on More4, the digital television service of UK broadcaster Channel 4. The Story of Film was featured in its entirety at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, [3] and at the 2012 Istanbul International Film Festival. [4] It was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in February 2012. [1] It was broadcast in the United States on Turner Classic Movies, beginning in September 2013. [5]
The Telegraph headlined the series' initial broadcast in September 2011 as the "cinematic event of the year", describing it as "visually ensnaring and intellectually lithe, it’s at once a love letter to cinema, an unmissable masterclass, and a radical rewriting of movie history." [6] An Irish Times writer called the programme a "landmark" (albeit a "bizarrely underpromoted" one). [7] The programme won a Peabody Award in 2013 "for its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history." [8]
In February 2012, A. O. Scott of The New York Times described Cousins' film as "a semester-long film studies survey course compressed into 15 brisk, sometimes contentious hours" that "stands as an invigorated compendium of conventional wisdom." Contrasting the project with its "important precursor (and also, perhaps, an implicit interlocutor)", Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma , Scott commended Cousins' film as "the place from which all future revisionism must start". [1]
Each episode section below lists the film clips that are featured in that episode. [1] [3] [9] [10]
Introduction
1895–1918: The World Discovers a New Art Form or Birth of the Cinema
1903–1918: The Thrill Becomes Story or The Hollywood Dream
1918–1928: The Triumph of American Film...
...And the First of its Rebels
1918–1932: The Great Rebel Filmmakers Around the World
The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres...
...And the Brilliance of European Film
1939–1952: The Devastation of War...and a New Movie Language
1953–1957: The Swollen Story: World Cinema Bursting at the Seams
1957–1964: The Shock of the New: Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.
1965–1969: New Waves: Sweep Around the World.
1967–1979: New American Cinema.
1969–1979: Radical Directors in the 70s: Make State of the Nation Movies.
1970s and Onwards: Innovation in Popular Culture: Around the World.
The 1980s: Moviemaking and Protest: Around the World.
1990–1998: The Last Days of Celluloid: Before the Coming of Digital.
The 1990s: The First Days of Digital: Reality Losing Its Realness in America and Australia.
2000 Onwards: Film Moves Full Circle—and the Future of Movies.
Epilogue the Year 2046
The film earned critical praise. [11] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 86% of 7 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.1/10. [12] Shawn Levy, writing for The Oregonian , compared it to "a tour through a museum with a deeply passionate and engaging guide." [12] Mark Feeny, in The Boston Globe , described it as "wildly ambitious, often extremely good, occasionally maddening, and always stimulating." [13]
Some critics took issue with Cousins' speaking style, and with portions of his analysis. [14] Village Voice critic Nick Pinkerton argued Cousins took an inconsistent and iconoclastic stance against Hollywood in favour of realist or innovative cinema, [15] stating "for all its claims of rewriting, [The Story of Film] is too reliant on received film buff wisdom". [16] Writing for Film Comment , Jonathan Rosenbaum was specifically critical of Cousins' view of experimental film, stating "Cousins has a weakness for overwrought yard sales, as his unswerving devotion to Baz Luhrmann, Christopher Nolan, and Lars von Trier repeatedly demonstrates — as well as an obvious lack of ease and fluency when it comes to experimental filmmaking in general, a discomfort that someone like (Matthew) Barney banks on by providing a “digestible” mainstream alternative, rather as Nolan’s Memento provides an unthreatening crossword-puzzle version of the early features of Alain Resnais." [17]
A 2-hour-and-20-minute follow-up covering films from 2010 to 2021, titled The Story of Film: A New Generation, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in July 2021. [20] [21] It was released in UK cinemas and on streaming platforms in December 2021. [22]
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American actor, comedian and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent films during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts. He frequently maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
Andrew Sarris was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Claude Henri Jean Chabrol was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most prominent themes of Ozu's work are family and marriage, and especially the relationships between generations. His most widely beloved films include Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Story (1953) and An Autumn Afternoon (1962).
Kinuyo Tanaka was a Japanese actress and film director. She had a career lasting over 50 years with more than 250 acting credits, but was best known for her 15 films with director Kenji Mizoguchi, such as The Life of Oharu (1952) and Ugetsu (1953). With her 1953 directorial debut, Love Letter, Tanaka became the second Japanese woman to direct a film, after Tazuko Sakane.
Sight and Sound is a monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). Since 1952, it has conducted the well-known decennial Sight and Sound Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time.
In filmmaking, a long take is shot with a duration much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general. Significant camera movement and elaborate blocking are often elements in long takes, but not necessarily so. The term "long take" should not be confused with the term "long shot", which refers to the use of a wide-angle lens and not to the duration of the take. The length of a long take was originally limited to how much film the magazine of a motion picture camera could hold, but the advent of digital video has considerably lengthened the maximum potential length of a take.
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies is a 1995 British documentary film of 225 minutes in length, presented by Martin Scorsese and produced by the British Film Institute.
Douglas Pipes is an American film score composer whose feature films include the Academy Award-nominated Monster House, the horror film Trick 'r Treat, and the Christmas comedy-horror film Krampus. His brassy instrumentations have drawn comparisons to action-music composer guru Alan Silvestri and his other orchestral-music composer counterparts Michael Giacchino, J.A.C. Redford and Joel McNeely. His chance encounter with Gil Kenan at UCLA California made him the perfect composer for this soundtrack and composed the music on his short film The Lark.
All-TIME 100 Movies is a list compiled by TIME magazine of the 100 "greatest" films that were released between March 3, 1923—when the first issue of TIME was published—and early 2005, when the list was compiled. Compiled by critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss, the list generated significant attention, receiving 7.8 million hits in its first week alone.
This Is Orson Welles is a 1992 book by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich that comprises conversations between the two filmmakers recorded over several years, beginning in 1969. The wide-ranging volume encompasses Welles's life and his own stage, radio, and film work as well as his insights on the work of others. The book was edited after Welles's death, at the request of Welles's longtime companion and professional collaborator, Oja Kodar. Jonathan Rosenbaum drew from several incomplete drafts of the manuscript and many reel-to-reel tapes, most of which had already been transcribed. Much of the dialogue, however, had been rewritten by Welles, often in several drafts.
Le Giornate del cinema muto is an annual festival of silent film held in October in Pordenone, northern Italy. It is the first, largest and most important international festival dedicated to silent film and also is present in the list of the top 50 unmissable film festivals in the world according to Variety. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a non-profit association, whose president is Livio Jacob. The director from 1997 until 2015 was David Robinson. In 2016, Jay Weissberg became director. Other members of the festival board are Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Luciano De Giusti, Carlo Montanaro, Piera Patat.
David Sterritt is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics.
Six in Paris is a 1965 French comedy-drama anthology film.
Minimalist cinema is related to the art and philosophy of minimalism.
Modernist film is related to the art and philosophy of modernism.
The "Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time" is a list published every ten years by Sight and Sound according to worldwide opinion polls they conduct. They published the critics' list, based on 1,639 participating critics, programmers, curators, archivists and academics, and the directors' list, based on 480 directors and filmmakers. Sight and Sound, published by the British Film Institute, has conducted a poll of the greatest films every 10 years since 1952.
Filmlovers! is a 2024 docufiction drama film written and directed by Arnaud Desplechin. It stars Milo Machado-Graner, Mathieu Amalric and Françoise Lebrun. It features the character of Paul Dédalus, who appeared in Desplechin's earlier films My Sex Life... or How I Got into an Argument (1996) and My Golden Days (2015). Acoording to Desplechin the film is meant to "celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic".
Karzan Kardozi ; born 2 May 1983) is a Kurdish American film director, writer and producer.