Mark Cousins' The History of film: An Odyssey

i really heart that durgnat book, errors or no: have to check which edition i have though

I have the second edition, tho' as far as i can tell the text has not been changed from the first - ie the errors that Christie points out are still there. Never mind, I bought it for the new introduction anyway :-)

heheh

im not sure it was IC who reviewed it and pointed out all the errors -- charles barr definitely did

they're doing, yet more excitingly, a new edition of 'a mirror for england' like next week

it's absolutely riddled with factual errors in a way you couldn't correct: his conclusions follow from false memories of films he hadn't seen for years

it's brilliant

yeah, i think you're right, it was charles barr duh

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/book-reviews/psycho_durgnat_barr/

thanks for that, i'd had problems finding, will read/add to precarious pile of unread articles

posting this apropos de rien rly, but here is rachael low, one of the major historians of british cinema, criticizing another, georges sadoul, in 1950:

‘Personally, I feel this places too much stress on the creative share of the individual, and tends to obscure the fact that there was a logic of development quite apart from the personalities involved.’

not really rien -- it's this 'everything you already think is wrong' bollocks again. what low says became a new orthodoxy, made a big deal of, in the 80s (i think) as 'the new historicism.' ok so it's probably not cousins's fault that we have to act as if people in the olden days was a knave or a fool but well there it is.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/first_person_mark_cousins_on_his_epic_story_of_film/

now screening as 5x3h films at toronto

Episode 3

Thief Of Bagdad
The Passion of Joan Of Arc
Robert and Bertram (1915)
The Oyster Princess (1919)
The Mountain Cat (1921)
The Marriage Circle (1924)
La Roue (1923)
Napoleon (1927)
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919)
Tell Tale Heart (1928)
Lodger (1927)
A Page Of Madness (1926)
Metropolis (1927)
The Crowd (1928)
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927)
Opus #1 (1921)
Entr'act (1924)
Rien que les heurs (1930)
Spellbound (1946)
Un Chien Andalou (1929)
Blue Velvet (1986)
L'Age D'or (1930)
Kino Pravda #19 (1924)
Glumov's Diary (1923)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Untouchables (1987)
Arsenal (1929)
Earth (1930)
I Was Born But... (1932)
Tokyo Story (1953)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai Du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)
Record Of A Tenement Gentleman (1947)
Osaka Elegy (1936)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
Romance Of The West Chamber (1927)
Scenes Of City Life (1935)
The Goddess (1934)
Centre Stage (1992)
New Women (1935)

Episode 4

Her Dilemma (1931)
Love Me Tonight (1932)
Der Golem (1920)
Frankenstein (1931)
Eyes Without A Face (1960)
Audition (1999)
The Public Enemy (1932)
Scarface: The Shame Of The Nation (1932)
Scarface (1983)
-
Seven Samurai (1954)
Once Upon A Time In America (1984)
The Iron Horse (1924)
My Darling Clementine (1946)
Twentieth Century (1934)
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
The Man Who Made The Movies: Howard Hawks (1973)
-
Gold Diggers Of 1933 (1933)
Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)
The Adventures Of Prince Achmad (1926)
Plane Crazy (1928)
Snow White And The Seven Dwarves (1937)
101 Dalmations (1961)
Blood Of A Poet (9130)
Inception (2010)
Zero De Conduit (1933)
If.... (1968)
L'Atalante (1934)
Le Quai Des Brumes (1938)
-
Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945)
La Regle Du Jeu (1939)
La Grande Illusion (1937)
Limite (1931)
Adventures Of A Good Citizen (1937)
Two Men And A Wardrobe (1958)
-
Bas Blaue Licht (1932)
Triumph Of The Will (1935)
Behind The Scenes Of The Filming Of The Olympic Games (1936)
Olympia Part Two: Festival Of Beauty (1936)
Tiefland (1954)
The Wonderful, Horrible Life Of Leni Riefenstahl (1993)
Vertigo (1958)
Saboteur (1942)
Sabotage (1936)
The 39 Steps (1935)
Marnie (1964)
Ninotchka (1939)
The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
Gone With The Wind (1939)

things from that that i should look up: Golem, Quai Des Brumes, Eyes without a Face.

La Regle Du Jeu is the film they are showing on film4. (something i've never seen the appeal of...)

Enjoying reading this thread (sorta) but I have to say I could not muster much enthusiasm for watching this programme. I can't stand Mark Cousins' voice, also, though he seems sincere which is nice

Much more interested in micro/local histories at this point than the endless repetition of grand surveys

<3 Charles Barr though

Reckon it wd be tough to get anything more local than a history of French new Wave or Italian neo-realism, even then it wd need Martin Scorcese-like backing.

So watchable but now its getting to the stage of having have watched and knowing more beforehand => I am old now, i.e. the whole 'Zero d'Conduite' to 'If...' (but Ozu to Akermann not so much). Disappointing on Renoir as I wanted more on some of his other films just bcz (like Koogs) La Regle... didn't knock me out - I like it a lot, but maybe not as much as Casablanca. See more of the humanism bag and how that gives weight to filmic accomplishment in someone like Ghatak.

Loved the bits on Ozu and Japanese film in last week's ep and that Japanese actress is probably my fave interviewee so far => how many actresses or actors talk w/any degree of insight about acting and learning on set. Bu even then he spent all the time on tech and not much on the narrative of Ozu's films.

i am really behind w/this, 4od is super irritating, to me, & i can't find a download anywhere.
related: i just saw 'visions of light', which is obviously kinda similar, which was v enjoyable & en~~LIGHT~~ening.

i am really behind w/this, 4od is super irritating, to me, & i can't find a download anywhere.

www dot uknova dot com

http://gb.fotolibra.com/images/thumbnails/538146-red-bauble.jpeg

"do they smash the bauble of hollywood romantic cinema?"

^^^this specific tic/shtick is really annoying me: i don't need him to be radically supersmart or challopsy about romanticism versus classicism and/or romanticism versus realism, but i wish he wasn't dumb in one mode (his imagic shorthands for grand-sweep aesthetic history) when he's so interesting in others (his treatment of studios and the market as a machinery that produces effects, just like focus or types of colour stock). And -- as with von sternberg -- how the fuck is orson welles NOT romantic, in biography as much as film-style and film-content? MC's helped himself to a really unhelpful obfuscatory dichotomy which he can only complicate in terms of the one-off anomaly of genius... i don't mind when stanley donen says "it wasn't the camera that signalled the uplift of joy, it was the cameraman", but cousins is at his best when he's fighting to make the technical process the agent (this is where he ought to be taking his argument about "classicism" IMO)

it's still full of excellent and interesting jump-cuts: i don't like the word influence but i do like the lines of connection and memory and commentary MC points out sometimes

the section where he demonstrated different types of focus and camera-style using the church door from "rome; open city" was an excellent idea quite clumsily executed -- when he contrasted hitchcock's "real life without the boring bits" with italian neo-realism's "realism IS the boring bits" he should have added what he meant i think: "realism IS the boring bits -- EXCEPT THEY'RE NOT BORING"

nothing will persuade me that bog bogdanovich isn't an idiot: certainly no clips from that john ford interview

only seen the first and todays one of this but i love it. the romanticism of his vision of cinema is what makes him/the series so completely immersive. and yeah some of the non western names he mentions might be familiar but the context he places them in here is what makes this so refreshing, its all just film, and he ties it all together, rather than making it seem like hollywood/the west.... and then film from other countries. the overall effect of the series is quite wonderful to me. this isnt meant to be definitive as such, even if its focus is so grand/broad/sweeping, its a docu done in the way you used to see more tv docus on tv, more personal, less schematic, a complete break - thank god - from the standardised way a lot of docus get made, and i dont know if ive been missing a ton of great film docus in recent years, but ive not seen anything like this, or with such ambition in a long time.

and i dont understand the complaints about his voice. its hardly that intrusive. and its a hell of a lot better than someone like mark kermode who would be incredibly irritating. if nothing else you have to give cousins some credit, afaik he did this off his own back, with no funding, or little funding etc so make sure no one could dictate how it was made, or who he interviewed (ie no pressure to have big names).

von sternberg s/b von stroheim btw

also, last time i checked, jonathan ross or claudia winkleman werent interviewing Mani Kaul, Kyoko Kagawa or Abbas Kiarostami. so yeah film snobs can say 'whats REALLY new here' but this is still pretty brave and cool.

there was a pretty elegant documentary arc to this one, i thought, even if the "one on hand betty grable on the other hand dachau" was a bit of a tosser's trick (esp. as he isn't actually anti-romanticism, just pretending to be for not-very-good structuring of ah-but! type reasons)

(belatedly: thx so much alba, going looking, that's really helpful) x

lol i did wonder if bogdanovich was deliberately being a tool in order to provoke grumpy papa bear ford

i am SHOCKED that mark s is being so lenient with cousins' VERY carefree use of the word 'influence' throughout - especially gratuitious in the latest episode, when he airily claimed that Gun Crazy was an influence on Bonnie and Clyde (well MAYBE, but not anywhere near as decisive an influence as the French New Wave on B&C - and you could easily say that the historic fact of B&C was more of an influence on Gun Crazy!) i think the way that he transitions between clips is far more effective in communicating his idea of this grand interlinked chain of 'innovation' and commerce and romantic genius. in general, cousins is a much better filmaker/director than he is a scriptwriter or theorist - he seems to have a good eye, and can communicate technical workings v effectively - all the deep focus stuff was v good and in its way more 'groundbreaking' for a tv film doc than interviews with the latest art house auteurs, claudia winkleman notwithstanding.

he seems, on the whole, a v v poor historian of genre movies - the noir section was p weak, imho

Mark - I ws wondering last night whether you were annoyed by his use of the word influence -- good to know you weren't as I thought he showed connections well, good use of jump cuts. Then again seems easier to show this in a doc on the history of film.

The lense/focus args were excellent, learning so much here.

Given his tratement of Triumph of the Will last week it wd have been interesting to talk about that in relation to other propaganda films (like Casablanca :-)). After all, as the boring/non-boring args in relation to italian neo-realism show this is as much about evolution of plot forms alongside pure filmic technique (and how one shapes the other). xp

Ward what do you think was missing from the Noir section? I've seen a few and I think he did as much as he could in the time allowed. I think this was the section that he left the most to contributors (Towne and Schrader back-to-back)

thing is, when cousins says "influence" and then straight away shows what he means, i mind the word much less: because the usual titanic problem of "what influence means" is subsumed under the particular (apparent) consonance of technique -- and the actual similarity, of the gun crazy duo hopped up on adrenaline and B&C all squirmy with nervous anticipation, was right there, after all <-- it's true i think "influence" is a rotten, confusing word for this kind of link, but i don't feel cousins is actually handwaving any bigger allegiance out of it (let alone quality-inheritance)*; our attention is taken by the specific point and whenever he's talking about specific points he's interesting

(less maybe when he moralises a link to social-political generalities: i don't think the tipped camera in "the third man" represents "moral imbalance", it indicates the actual PHYSICAL imbalance of scrambling round a city which is half pounded into hills of rubble, and the disorientating effect this has on decent idealistic naive silly hometown boy holly)

have to say that -- for all his leaning so much on the west-o-centric button -- i haven't seen him exploring the social-political backdrop eg in japan that fashions eg mizoguchi's sensibility and/or content: yes yes the blacklist story retold at easy length for the millionth time, and ppl not clapping kazan-the-squealer's oscar - but the actual political turbulence behind italian neo-realism was dabbed at much more sketchily (i wanted to know more about the films made under mussolini, since eg cinnecita was started under mussolini); frustrating considering his argument that italian neo-realism was a world-changing new-thing-under-the-sun

*ie i find the phrase " as decisive an influence as the French New Wave on B&C" much MUCH harder to parse than what cousins seems to be claiming: which is at once much less ambitious -- a technique has been adopted by the successor, to replicate or improve upon or otherwise comment on the precursor's scene and idea and feel -- and much much more profound: this grand handover of a shapeless bundle of generalities from one grab-bag of foax to another always leaves me gasping for the concrete)

robert towne is a tool as well >:(

i haven't seen him exploring the social-political backdrop eg in japan that fashions eg mizoguchi's sensibility

I thought he did mention this in relation to Japan's imperialist past/wanting to knock 'samurai'/honour as a mask for something more sordid. He also talked about this in relation to his impoverished background and his sister working as a Geisha.

But yes he didn't explore the cinnecita (he only said it ws started in '31) under the fascists, then again he could have spent a lot more time on any of this. All the talk on Noir and not a mention of Obsession, which is a point of intersection.

Ward I doubt whether he'll go over any history of hammer/Italian horror :-)

a technique has been adopted by the successor, to replicate or improve upon or otherwise comment on the precursor's scene and idea and feel

This is v good BUT sometimes...there was one bit where Bad Timing was mentioned as a comment on how character interact with objects as a jump off from another film (trying to remeber specific details), and I couldn't see whether Roeg was really doing this (unless he of course specifically mentioned this to MC).

x-post

hiya xyzzzz, re noir: well yeah, i'm always conscious of "in the time allowed" with these things (it's the same as posting to ILX!) - but i don't think cousins made it clear that - unlike say the musical or the horror film - noir was a retrospective genre, a critical idea rather than an industry-led style. it also irritated me that billy wilder (again!) seemed to be given undue prominence, at the expense of equally influential figures like the writer cornell woolrich, or the cinematographer john alton. and yeah, it's nice that leigh brackett worked on the big sleep (which isn't REALLY a noir, imho), and rio bravo, and the empire strikes back - but i don't think cousins justified the link, this time round. and yes, robert towne was v boring!

mark s - i'm sure you know all this just as much as i do but - benton and newman, who wrote bonnie and clyde, were huge fans of the French new wave, deliberately set out to write a 'new wave' gangster movie, and tried to get both Truffaut and Godard to direct it, before settling on Arthur Penn. The way that B&C treats its romantic outlaw characters seems to have more in common with Breathless than Gun Crazy, and all nervous adrenaline aside, the jittery jump-cut style of B&C obviously takes its cues from the new wave rather more than from that long, interrupted shot of the bank raid in Gun Crazy.

tbf i've only watched the two eps i've commented on -- i was mildly saddened that he was pulling all the same pseudo-descriptive stunts with the terms "romanticism" and "classical" and "realism" in this one as he was in the 20s ep; these are words which need to be fleshed out and pulled apart and turned inside out and swapped around and actually EXAMINED, since (even more than words like modernist or post-modern) no two commentators use them quite the same way, and yet they're self-evidently badges of declared allegiance that many people reach for, to ground and justify their passions

the opening spiel that's repeated every week is poorly written given how much it has to do, as has been much noted: but (contra eg henry's complaints above) what he actually says is that passion and innovation DRIVE cinema, rather than money -- if "drive" had been offset against another verb (let's say "shape"), then he'd have a potently arguable proposition to explore i think -- viz that "while box office SHAPES the leisure industry, passion and innovation DRIVE it" <-- again, true or not, this is not a startlingly avant-garde proposition, but i think it fits better with the shape of his exploration than what he actually says, and establishes a basis of structured tension rather than the static dichotomy he claims to be elucidating (and actually doesn't believe in)

basically i massively approve of observing and indicating how specific shots work, and how unexpected items are like each other (again shots really, though he uses individual shots as a metonymy for an entire film; which is not MY line on creative works operate, but was e.g. aristotle's and is nearly everyone's since, and is a forgiveable shorthand i SUPPOSE) (in mine the camera lens and eg the microphone have different agendas and the result is the consequence of CONFLICT AND STRUGGLE*) -- it's a kind of masterclass in how eg DPs or sound recordists think of and frame scenes, and this is a filmic dimension of film that VERY RARELY gets onto TV ever

*to understand what auteur ACTUALLY means, think of the film as a firefly-class vessel, the director as mal reynolds, and the team he's gathered as serenity's crew: mal's job is to corral their skills towards the specific task and pasyload he's hired himself out to deliver; the story that unfolds is the product of the rival interests perspectives strengths and errors of the squabbling crew...

he uses individual shots as a metonymy for an entire film

yes! have also been bothered by this, and how - not unexpectedly, or unfairly - he almost always picks the most spectacular/stirring moments of a film, which drives home his point about innovation etc but actually ignores the boring and stupid and ill-judged shots/moments, which are also part of the story.

ok sure, re bonnie and clyde, writers be bein upfront about who they'd LIKE to be associated with in terms of artistic vanguadism (=respectability, for intellectuals), and this is one of the many meanings of influence: a declaration of allegiance that hopes it's a conduit for approval BUT benton and newman weren't the only people working on B&C, they got PENN not godard or truffaut (two quite unlike directors incidentall)y and what they hoped is not NECESSARILY what actually shaped the film. The New Wave were of course avid viewers of and borrowers from noir (it's a french word for a reason) and also westerns -- seems to me Cousins (or more likely someone with better dialectical chops) could easily demonstrate that what the "Hollywood New Wavers" took to be French perspectives, concepts techniques and attitudes had in fact largely passed THROUGH France from the US; from the non-arty "auteur" (again, a french term for a not-yet-named US phenom) world of production-line thrillers and cowboy flicks... and that since Penn's larger team would have been drawn from Hollywood's employment ranks, these "team-based" aspects would emerge in B&C more de-frenchified than the up-itself critical aspiration of the film's conceivers and makers were able to see themselves.

Influence! It's a problem not an explanation...

to be fair, though, MC did pick out the neo-realist dissent from commentary's habitual metonymy jonesing: and with a nice example, where the daddy (= the "auteur") doesn't at the time spot the peril and the lively humour of his son nearly being run over by two cars (= other elements on the film-making process!) (the mise-en-scenery fell on my head), or even care to be looking out for it -- as in "realism is stuff we don't expect or control or tailor or plan for or grasp"

(ps i'm being supersnide abt B&C's makers there, not because the film isn't great, inc. their contribution, but because declaration of influence by writers and artists should ALWAYS be treated as an opaque and highly agenda'd sleight-of-hand; these guys are ALL professional bullshitters or they'd never get any movies made ever, good or terrible)

how many actresses or actors talk w/any degree of insight about acting and learning on set <-- this, incidentally = i suspect a fair proportion would have plenty to say but they are very few of them ASKED this kind of question, from stars down to character actors or even extras

also: TRACY HAND TO THREAD d00d

(haha i went past a stall in the little market that's just started in st john at hackney's garden, and it was selling CHUTNEY, CHILDREN'S COLOURING BOOKS, and about forty theoretical studies of all aspects of Stanislavski!)

Well, the way the interview ws going at first it seemed she was being asked to say how great Mizoguchi and Ozu were and offered her own learning curve on set as an addition. Good on MC for keeping that.

cow-irker (super-smart and informed about fine arts but a newbie wrt to film) really liked the kazan/blacklist stuff, as she had no idea about this entire story, so fair enough it being in, i guess

Episode 05 1939-1952

Rome Open City (1945)
Stagecoach (1939)
Directed By John Ford (1971)
Osaka Elegy (1936)
Flesh And The Devil (1926)
Follow The Boys (1944)
Citizen Kane (1941)
Me And Orson Wells (2008)
Chimes At Midnight (1965)
Cabiria (1914)
Intolerance (1916)
The General (1936)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)
Code Unknown (2000)
Satantango (1994)
How To Marry A Millionaire (1953)
Un Homme Et Une Femme (1966)
Heat (1995)

Rome Open City (1945)
Raging Bull (1980)
Bicycle Thieves (1948)
Pin Up Girl (1944)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Portrait Of A '60% Perfect Man': Billy Wilder (1982)
Testament Of Dr Mabuse (1933)
Big Sleep (1946)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Star Wars: Episode V - Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Out Of The Past (1947)
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
Little Caesar (1931)
Le Quai Des Brumes (1938)
La Chienne (1931)
Scarlet Street (1945)
American Cinema: Film Noir (1995)
Gun Crazy (1950)
Bonnie And Clyde (1967)
L. A. Confidential (1997)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Shiva (2006)

Titanic (1997)
71st Annual Academy Awards (1999)
An American In Paris (1951)
The Red Shoes (1948)
Sing In The Rain (1952)
Flying Down To Rio (1933)
Gold Diggers Of 1933 (1933)
Indiscreet (1958)
Two For The Road (1967)

A Matter Of Life And Death (1946)
Post Haste (1933)
Listen To Britain (1942)
The Third Man (1949)
The True Glory (1945)
Taxi Driver (1976)

only just watched this. less of interest to me in this one. and a lot of things with <5 second clips (most of which, tbf, he'd mentioned before)

been watching on 4OD. the clips are great, the look of it is great, the juxtapositions are often lovely, if he misuses the word "classical" one more time i'm gonna hunt him down and punch him in the neck, his general argument is pretty effing weak imo, enjoying finding out that hollywood is the only capitalist film industry in the world tho

srsly kudos for doing this but in large picture terms the dude is a bit of an idiot

Tonight he is tackling the melodrama - shd be a riot.

oh god, a whole hour of "this is not realism therefore it has no connection to Leavis-esque Life"

One of the bits I liked from last week's was Stanley Donen being all punk rock saying "At the time, Busby Berkeley was the ENEMY, we DESPISED HIM, Singing In The Rain was totally relevant to the kidz maaan. Except I was watching Busby Berkeley recently, it's kind of amazing isn't it, that stuff? In fact it's AWESUMZ"

Maybe Mark Cousins will do the same thing w/Casablanca

Have a copy of Durgnat on Film. Avoided it for ages because I haven't seen many of the films and context but after watching a few eps I could certainly give it a shot.

http://www.worldbookmarket.com/images/books/00001/18875.jpg

Great start on Cairo Station. But also a bit weird: just two hours ago I was reading an intro to Mahfousz's Cairo Trilogy, checked this out of the library earlier.

very bold start! "the REAL james dean is this man, YOUSSEF CHAHINE!"

hi julio!!!