The Story of Film: An Odyssey

I understand that Cousins Northern Irish accent takes some getting used to. However, trashing his work because of the narration is too harsh a judgment. I actually watched the whole thing. Twice. I was fascinated by a documentary that tries the impossible: a history of world cinema. The first two episodes alone deal with the era of silent movies. Try to find something else that goes so much into detail! It requires concentration and attention but I kept watching because I learnt something.

The Story of Film is a very personal take on the subject. Cousins often uses phrases such as "perhaps the greatest film ever made" or "perhaps the most innovative film..." And often such phrases refer to a Japanese or Iranian movie that I have never heard of. I am sure a lot of people would disagree. I don't have a problem with it. In the opening sequence of every episode, he says that he follows the Odyssey of film makers who are not driven by box office success. If you want to see the history of Hollywood Blockbusters, "The Story of Film" is the wrong program. If you want to know what kind of films were made in the 1980s behind the iron curtain in Eastern Europe, now you are in the right theatre.

Leaving all criticism on Cousins narration, possible inaccuracies or highly subjective opinions aside, here is a man talking who has probably more forgotten about movies than most people ever knew about the subject.

This may be the most brilliant documentary on film ever, but I don't care. After sitting through 10 minutes of this guy's "uptalking", I could not stand to watch any longer, (and I spent the 1980's living in the San Fernando Valley when the whole "Valley Girl" thing started.) I swear to God, he up-talks not only at the END of every sentence, but DURING.

EXAMPLE: "Thomas Edison? invented film? in New Jersey? And he soon found that light? was of utmost importance?" I'm not exaggerating even slightly, that's how this guy talks 100% of the time. Hire a new narrator, then re-release it. Geez....

If you have an interest in the history of international cinema and don't expect to be spoon-fed then "The Story of Film:An Odyssey" is excellent. Sure, it is Mark Cousins' personal view and he does jump around quite a bit but that doesn't detract from either the entertainment value or the interesting and valuable information in the series.

Of course, if you have no knowledge of the films / directors he is talking about then it no doubt will be rather difficult to follow. The four episodes I have seen have contained a lot of interesting information on the history of world cinema, including the production / finance side, and you can learn about some old classics which I can vaguely remember seeing at film festivals in the 60's and 70's. Highly recommended. Update : I have now watched the complete series of "The Story of Film" and it is a classic, a great resource for those interested in world cinema and thoroughly entertaining to boot.

Even though I'm a longtime IMDb user, I've never written a review here. However, I felt compelled to write one after watching the 15 episodes of Mark Cousins' odyssey through film. Most of the reviews here seemed to focus only on his narration, or the reviewers didn't seem to have endured the 900 minutes of Cousins' work (which is completely understandable). My opinion on the series changed as the episodes went by.

First, the narration. Cousins' voice didn't annoy me that much. Maybe because I'm not a native English speaker (even though I was following what he was saying, cause I watched it with German subtitles - and my English is much better than my German!). But he's definitely not the best narrator around. Its not about the accent. He lacks emotion in his voice. He basically says everything with the same tone of voice. But that's far from being my main problem with his approach.

One thing can't be denied: Cousins has a tremendous knowledge of cinema. Maybe the best thing about The Story of Film is how it encompasses basically the whole globe. I'm basically ignorant about African cinema, for example; Cousins showed me a lot of stuff I didn't know (not only about African cinema). It's refreshing to see such a global approach. And the movie clips are mostly superb - they're the main reason of the six stars out of ten.

The biggest problem, however, is called Mark Cousins. Be warned, this is not "The Story of Cinema". This is "The Story of Cinema according to Mark Cousins' point of view". Fair enough, the man wrote and directed the whole thing. But his choices became more and more puzzling to me, as the episodes went by and the story entered the 1970s. I was curious about how he'd treat the classic period of horror movies, for example; how the genre produced some of the most daring (and influential) films of the past 50 years. Surprise! He only mentions "The Exorcist". No "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", no "Carrie" (hey, De Palma is only mentioned by name), not a single mention of the Italian giallos. Another example: animated films. There's one "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" here, one "Toy Story" there - and that's it. Again, not a single mention of Hayao Miyazaki, for example; or Pixar ("Toy Story" is only mentioned because it's the first completely digital animated film). I know it'd be practically impossible to cover everything movie-related, but to almost ignore two genres is, in my opinion, baffling.

And as the series came to a close, another thing got on my nerves: Cousins' love of superlatives. The man LOVES superlatives. On the last two or three episodes, basically every film he puts on screen is "one of the best this", "one of the most that". I ended up laughing whenever he said it - and I even laughed at things that shouldn't be laughed, like the beauty of the final shots of "Breaking the Waves".

In the end, Cousins left me exhausted. I didn't watch The Story of Film, I watched Movies Mark Cousins Thinks That Matter. It felt like talking to someone who has obviously a great knowledge, but should learn one or two things about persuasion. As a viewer, Mark should leave me salivating for these amazing films I didn't know. Instead, he just sounded repetitive, without arguments. Several movie clips spoke for themselves; I'll definitely be checking some of the stuff he showed. But I doubt I'll be checking any more stuff Mark Cousins produces.

It was first presented on BBC, as were a lot of superb series. The episode covering the 1910s is as good as anything similar and much better than most.

Someone complained about the narration, spoken and written by the Irish Mark Cousins. I found it utterly charming and extremely perceptive.

Cousins has spoken close to the microphone so his voice doesn't sound loud as he casually reels off his observations. And it's true. The terminal contours of every utterance curl upward, as they do in parts of the American South, so that they sound like a series of questions. "The source light is on the screen? A gap opens in the curtains like a Vermeer painting?" I was enthralled. The writing is dispassionate but full of insights and is sometimes quite funny. Harold Lloyd was turned from a Chaplin imitator into a nerd with black-rimmed glasses, but "a ballsy nerd." The emphasis is on directors that most Americans haven't paid much attention to, although film critics have. I'd seen Carl Theodore Dreyer's "Joan of Arc" before, two times, but Cousins was able to point out one or two of the reasons I found it so impressive.

The clips he's chosen to show from the silent movies of the era are longer than we usually see them, and they're picked to illustrate a specific point that Cousins is trying to make.

It's different from any other "film histories" that I've seen -- different in the sense of more involving, more informative, less repetitive, more original in its editing and narration.

At least in this episode, he hasn't much to say about modern Hollywood products. I understand why.