Acme11 Acme11 This is likely the most comprehensive "story of film" ever produced and the content is utterly brilliant. However, Mark Cousin's rather high- pitched, totally monotonous voice which lacks any tonal or volume variation whatsoever, combined with an accent which renders EVERY sentence a question, makes this a nearly unwatchable (or rather unlistenable) program. Ultimately, I wound up watching with the sound off and the subtitles on (no doubt missing much), as his voice became an aural ice pick to my hearing. EXTREMELY unfortunate. I would do ANYTHING for him to have hired an actual voice-over narrator to carry these duties. If the content had not been so extraordinary (and amazingly produced), I'd have given this far fewer than 6 stars based on the narration alone. One of the best remakes that could ever be produced would be this series with ZERO changes other than Peter Coyote (for instance) narrating it.

George Roots (GeorgeRoots) Note: This isn't really a review, more of a shout out to a series I would recommend to any film lover.This Documentary is the work of Irish film critic Mark Cousins, and is based on his extremely thorough 2004 novel "The Story of Film". Though it has only recently been released, it is a production that really deserve to be looked at as it examines some of the very best and more obscure choices of world cinema rarely mentioned in the history books (Most pointed out are wrote by rich white men and can be considered "racist by omission").There are obviously many Documentaries that exist on making a movie, but few tend to explore a series of movies and take an "essay" approach to dissection and interpretation. Jean-Luc Godard's "Histoire(s) du cinema", featured a short but diverse list that has interesting points to make, though it remains a somewhat small production I feel is limited in what it has and could say. "The Story of Film" spends its first few hours covering the origins of technique, the recurring images film makers pay homage to and the start of the Hollywood business. As the series progresses, we see how countless innovations have been tooled with across the world as Mark either narrates or comments over many relevant clips. The running commentary also offers a short and sweet sentence on the state of the world at the time, and any other interesting notes behind the camera.I can really only see this series becoming tedious if you have no desire to eventually see these movies. At the moment I can somewhat agree that the series falters somewhere in the middle, only because I've yet to really explore Indian and Iranian Cinema in depth. I have no idea how long this production took to make, but many people are interviewed including directors ranging from Stanley Donen to Lars Von Trier, and even seeing actress Kyoko Kagawa was very pleasant as I've been watching her movies only recently.Final Verdict: I suppose this series isn't for everyone, but for those who are really passionate about cinema will definitely learn a thing or two. In 2011 I was 19 the first time I saw it, and I found it to be this wonderful 15 hour film course. Now I'm 23, and having seen a larger majority of these movies I come back to this series yearly and would recommend it to just about everyone. It will possibly start a new trend of how film history is remembered, but for now it stands as the great reminder of what the medium can be, and just how it continues to grow with us emotionally as well as technologically. 10/10.

monkeytownhq Why do the IMDb robots (currently) feature a 2-star review for a series that's rated 8-stars? A shame. Hire better robots...or humans!The complaints about Mark Cousins' accent are specious at best, moronic in practice. If you're looking for a PBS documentary style, please steer clear. Nothing against PBS, but this series has a voice and it's not just the accented narration. It's also the interstitial video work that provides a very personal take on the history of cinema. Yes, the rising inflection is not your normal, bland American voice-over. It's distinct and nuanced and, to my ears, warm. OK, enough with the narration non-issue.For anyone who's wanted a sweeping Film 101 course on the mechanics and effects of this infant art form, this is, to my knowledge the best you will get. Scorsese has attempted this in recent years and has had some ad hoc success (his PBS biography on Elia Kazan was a high point). What Cousins accomplishes is a poetic exposition on the grammars of the medium in a highly selective, yet globally inclusive trajectory of its history. The most telling and powerful tool in his belt is the way he's able to jump from the 1920s to the 1970s or 2000s, when he's explaining the inventions of technique and the matrix of influence from progenitors to the next generation. For example, to hear one of Ozu's actresses talk about his manner of direction is invaluable. His simple, somewhat comic video-quality recreations of the "180 degree" rule (as well as those who love to break it), makes all YouTube studies obsolete, and somehow doesn't disrupt the unworried, well-paced narrative.Good work, Mr. Cousins. Love your other films as well. p.s. Calling him just a film critic and historian does a disservice to this series as well as his other film work. He's a director. And that's why this film doesn't feel academic. Thankfully.

evening1 Kaleidoscopic series documenting film from the late 1800's.Irish critic Michael Cousins has an idiosyncratic means of presentation but I found him a congenial, sensitive, and intelligent guide in a journey that truly does feel like an odyssey in its wonder, variety, and complexity.Films I'd like to see or re-view based on Cousins' introduction/interpretation: 1) Stagecoach. Ford: "It's the little guy that does the courageous things." 2) Citizen Kane. Welles' attraction to powerful people is like Shakespeare's. Kane's world is massive but empty. 3) Best Years of Our Lives. Frederick March. "Just as in real life we cannot see everything we would like to." 4) Code Unknown. Binoche. Wife getting away from husband on subway.5) How to Marry a Millionaire.6) Un Homme et une Femme.7) Rome -- Open City (1945). City's struggle to resist fascism. Magnani pregnant, unmarried, unglamorous, older. Italian neo-realism: bald light bulbs.8) Bicycle Thieves. Kid almost hit by car twice. No time for, interest in, hugs.9) Double Indemnity. Noir. Hollywood. "Hardly anyone walks so those that do can hear their own footsteps." "America's most curious filmmakers went abroad." Billy Wilder fled Nazis for sun-drenched Ca. "Loved the unpretentiousness of America, hated its worship of money." 10) Chinatown. Robert Type, writer. "Flaw draws them to fate as they try to avoid it." 11) Out of the Past. Robert Mitchum "wants a decent girl but can't stay out of the way.' "Crackled with snappy dialog." 12) Rio Bravo. Angie Dickinson "got all the best lines." 13) Out of the Past. Jean Greer knows the man is weak.14) The Hitchhiker. Ida Lupino "mastered the noir form." 15) Quai des Brumes.16) La Chienne. Man in love with hard-hearted woman.17) Two for the Road. Donen: "Such a hard, tough look at marriage." 18) Singin' in the Rain. "He's not worried about getting wet. He's so joyful that rain doesn't bother him. He's thrilled with being in love." 19) A Matter of Life and Death. Doomed Niven: "I'll be a ghost and come visit you." 20) Listen to Britain. Mozart piano concerto. "Things that get people through trauma together...It might be the last summer when they're free." 21) The Third Man. "One of the most daring of endings."22) Gun Crazy. B-movie director Lewis. Bank robbery in LA suburb of Montrose. Presaged Bonnie and Clyde.CHAPTER 6: "Non-Western world decolonized, got confidence...Western world: Sex and power on the mind. 23) Rebel Without a Cause. Emotion bursting at the seams.24) Cairo Station. Egypt: "Even more to kick out against...First great Arab, first great African film. Chahine (born boundary-pusher) alone with his sweaty erotic imagination. Crippled newspaper seller listens as she has sex with another man. Where did he get the balls to be so innovative? Spat on face opening night.25) Satyajit Ray...Junibelle Devi "living in a brothel when Ray found her, needed a dose of morphine each day to keep her going."26) Devi. "She becomes a victim of this regressive mindset." 27) Ikiru. Bureaucrat gets cancer. Most movies of Kurasawa about the energy of the individual...distinguishing themselves from others. Kurasawa hero notable for staying power...Kurasawa's stylebook for cinema. A one-man style school.28) Throne of Blood. Connect with The Godfather climax." 29) Dona Barbara. Mexico. Companion shot, raped by sailors.30) The Pearl. "Becomes a cancer in their lives."31) All that Heaven Allows. Jane Wyman, gardener Rock Hudson. "Viciousness of American conformity."32) Marty. "Access the serious emotions."33) On the Waterfront. Brando. "Your guts is all in your wallet and your trigger finger." "As Freud had taught, the surface is a lie, a mask." 34) And God Created Woman. "Brigette Bardot refused to dress like a posh Parisian woman."CHAPTER 10:More to film in 70s than Coppola and Scorsese! "We tend to think of films as Hollywood but there's so much else going on in the world." 35) Ali, Fear Eats the Soul, Fassbinder. Inspired by "All that Heaven Allows." Fassbinder plays one of the lead character's prejudiced relatives. 36) Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Bette Davis in "All About Eve." "Fassbinder takes the American movie much further...has his actors move slowly, inexpressively, as if haunted or exhausted...Wigs and makeup conjure artifice." With amazingly visaged Irm Hermann, Fassbinder's erstwhile secretary and lover: "He treated her appallingly." 37) Fox and his Friends. Full frontal nudity of the director himself, lazily getting out of bed.38) Alice in the Cities. Iconic Boardwalk, Empire State. 39) Gods of the Plague. Non-tense bank robbery. Hertzog: "Wild man of German cinema...its explorer"40) Burden of Dreams. Hertzog speaking Spanish. "Only difference between you and me...I can articulate them...What poetry is all about."41) "Arabian Nights," Pasolini. Shocking image of sexually submission boy. Ken Russell. Air Force to ballet dancer, "rare career move...Movie gangsters are often about display." 42) Performance. "Last act before he's taken away is to shoot Turner -- maybe because he's shown too much of himself...Most imaginative shooting in series...mandatory viewing for film directors." 41) Walkabout. "A life less ordinary...She meets a more vital human being...What sort of person you are -- one who swims in a chlorinated pool or the open sea."