Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

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Jonathan S
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#76 Post by Jonathan S » Wed Dec 14, 2011 3:25 pm

Thanks, Roger. I thought I'd come across the "wild man" before but it must be over 30 years since I saw Nickelodeon. Maybe there's a reference in Bogdanovich's interview book Who the Devil Made It? Of course, by the time he was talking to them, some of the old-timers were pretty good at bizarre invention, or exaggeration, themselves! I can certainly believe it in the earlier silent era (less likely on Cousins' example, a 1938 feature) but I'm not sure in what way the "wild man" was different from the usual team of gag men who also improvised and kicked around gags. Perhaps he was just the drunkest of the lot, or a washed-up hanger-on whose booze bills were paid as long as he came up with some good ideas.

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colinr0380
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Re: The Story of Film: An Odyssey (Mark Cousins, 2011)

#77 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Dec 14, 2011 4:14 pm

It did seem ironic that just as Cousins seemed to be on safer ground with his episodes from the 70s on that with the final programme he jumped back to the 30s and silent era for a replay of a couple of the most problematic moments of the whole series! (And I still think the antipathy towards 'classic Hollywood' aka 'the Bauble' was totally unfounded, especially when Cousins seemed to pick and choose which elements of classic Hollywood to elevate or ignore seemingly on a whim, which would seem to undermine the argument somewhat - and especially contrasting against all of the Hollywood material on display in the later episodes, such as Inception, The Matrix, Star Wars (without mention of THX-1138) and The Exorcist)

Though I'm not as upset by the series overall as I was with the first couple of episodes, I'm still coming out in cold sweats whenever I think of the possibility of this being used as a study aid in Film Studies classes!

richard_t
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#78 Post by richard_t » Sat Jan 21, 2012 8:38 pm

This has now been given a release date on DVD of 23rd April.

Up for pre-order on Amazon at £37.49

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bringmesomechemicals
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#79 Post by bringmesomechemicals » Wed Dec 12, 2012 4:14 pm

I just noticed that this entire series is now streaming instantly on Netflix.

edit: that is to say, The Story of Film: An Odyssey

stroszeck
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#80 Post by stroszeck » Wed Dec 12, 2012 9:16 pm

Wow, I tried to get past the very first hour but the combination of his strange, dead sounding voice and some of his random off-the cuff remarks seemed strangely...er...not objective. There's a very strange almost gossipy vibe running through the thing and it just irked me and another friend who tried to watch it.

SheriffAmbrose
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#81 Post by SheriffAmbrose » Sat Dec 29, 2012 1:46 am

bringmesomechemicals wrote:I just noticed that this entire series is now streaming instantly on Netflix.

edit: that is to say, The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Has anyone had any luck watching episode 13 on netflix instant? I just tried and instead of playing the correct episode, it just replays episode 10.

L. Braun
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#82 Post by L. Braun » Sat Dec 29, 2012 9:58 pm

SheriffAmbrose wrote:Has anyone had any luck watching episode 13 on netflix instant? I just tried and instead of playing the correct episode, it just replays episode 10.
Yeah, it's been that way since the series first came to streaming. I've reported it multiple times to no avail.

SheriffAmbrose
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Re: Scene by Scene (Mark Cousins, 1996-1999)

#83 Post by SheriffAmbrose » Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:20 pm

L. Braun wrote:
SheriffAmbrose wrote:Has anyone had any luck watching episode 13 on netflix instant? I just tried and instead of playing the correct episode, it just replays episode 10.
Yeah, it's been that way since the series first came to streaming. I've reported it multiple times to no avail.
Thanks. I was going to report it myself but I figured that netflix couldn't be bothered to set it straight.

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Timec
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#84 Post by Timec » Thu Jun 27, 2013 1:51 pm

It's a few months away, but starting in September TCM will be screening Mark Cousins' The Story of Film along with more than a hundred films featured in Cousins' series. A lot of the selected films are pretty standard programming for TCM, but they'll also be showing The Wind, Cairo Station, The Goddess, Osaka Elegy, Oshima's Boy, and a few other harder-to-find titles.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM), now in its 20th year as a leading authority in classic film, will present the U.S. television premiere of the acclaimed documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey this fall. The series, which tells the history of cinema through a worldwide lens, will be the centerpiece of TCM's most ambitious and far-reaching programming event ever. Over the span of 15 weeks, beginning Monday, Sept. 2, TCM will present The Story of Film: An Odyssey curated with a slate of 119 films and dozens of short subjects representing 29 countries across six continents.

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movielocke
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#85 Post by movielocke » Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:21 pm

Timec wrote:It's a few months away, but starting in September TCM will be screening Mark Cousins' The Story of Film along with more than a hundred films featured in Cousins' series. A lot of the selected films are pretty standard programming for TCM, but they'll also be showing The Wind, Cairo Station, The Goddess, Osaka Elegy, Oshima's Boy, and a few other harder-to-find titles.
Turner Classic Movies (TCM), now in its 20th year as a leading authority in classic film, will present the U.S. television premiere of the acclaimed documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey this fall. The series, which tells the history of cinema through a worldwide lens, will be the centerpiece of TCM's most ambitious and far-reaching programming event ever. Over the span of 15 weeks, beginning Monday, Sept. 2, TCM will present The Story of Film: An Odyssey curated with a slate of 119 films and dozens of short subjects representing 29 countries across six continents.
I watched the first part, he has a wonderfully mellifluous voice. and it's a fucking great overview of film history and reminded me of the gaping blind spot in film history I have regarding Swedish silent film (other than Phantom Carriage) I also recorded the Alice Guy Blache films--when I was in film school, our professor didn't even have any Alice Guy Blache films to show us, so those were well worth watching (the three american films TCM showed were solid but not outstanding, Falling Leaves was the best of the lot).

I was Born But is playing in a few weeks, although it's listed under the japanese title, Umarete wa mita karedo.

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swo17
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#86 Post by swo17 » Fri Sep 06, 2013 6:25 pm

Note that Kino released a whole DVD of Alice Guy films, and Falling Leaves is available on the More Treasures from American Film Archives set (which is essential even if only for the Charley Bowers short).

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Matt
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#87 Post by Matt » Mon Sep 16, 2013 3:54 pm

movielocke wrote:
Turner Classic Movies (TCM), now in its 20th year as a leading authority in classic film, will present the U.S. television premiere of the acclaimed documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey this fall. The series, which tells the history of cinema through a worldwide lens, will be the centerpiece of TCM's most ambitious and far-reaching programming event ever. Over the span of 15 weeks, beginning Monday, Sept. 2, TCM will present The Story of Film: An Odyssey curated with a slate of 119 films and dozens of short subjects representing 29 countries across six continents.
I watched the first part, he has a wonderfully mellifluous voice.
I watched the first segment/episode and cannot watch anymore: Cousins' Belfast upspeak (the way the pitch of his voice rises at the end of every sentence, which I guess I've never encountered before), drives me absolutely insane.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#88 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Sep 17, 2013 7:49 am

Matt wrote:
movielocke wrote:
Turner Classic Movies (TCM), now in its 20th year as a leading authority in classic film, will present the U.S. television premiere of the acclaimed documentary series The Story of Film: An Odyssey this fall. The series, which tells the history of cinema through a worldwide lens, will be the centerpiece of TCM's most ambitious and far-reaching programming event ever. Over the span of 15 weeks, beginning Monday, Sept. 2, TCM will present The Story of Film: An Odyssey curated with a slate of 119 films and dozens of short subjects representing 29 countries across six continents.
I watched the first part, he has a wonderfully mellifluous voice.
I watched the first segment/episode and cannot watch anymore: Cousins' Belfast upspeak (the way the pitch of his voice rises at the end of every sentence, which I guess I've never encountered before), drives me absolutely insane.
I've gotten used to the accent now (it sounded like a hybrid between Scottish and Irish to me - thanks for the "upspeak" definition). The third episode seemed like the best one so far and the first one to have a logical flow to the narrative. I was troubled with how much time the second episode spent discussing films from the 40s and 50s when the subject at hand was supposed to be 20s cinema.

Whether you like Cousins' work or not, THE STORY OF FILM series has given TCM the opportunity to show a lot of great films that may not have been scheduled without the tie-in to the series.

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colinr0380
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#89 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Sep 17, 2013 3:07 pm

How are you all finding the 'bauble' metaphor?

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#90 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Sep 18, 2013 7:43 am

colinr0380 wrote:How are you all finding the 'bauble' metaphor?
Ah, that's the other reason I was not as keen on the second episode!

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movielocke
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#91 Post by movielocke » Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:45 pm

The first episode was very solid for an overview of pre 1920s cinema. The second episode was a complete mess, nominally about Hollywood, really it was briefly about each of the big three comics plus a random smattering of other stuff. The third episode was inspired.

And the bauble metaphor drove me nuts. I'm not even sure about the underlying thesis, I do not think that all of world cinema of the 1920s was in direct response to the Hollywood cinema of the 1920s, as Cousins asserts over and over and over again. I don't think that all of world cinema universally decided to be the opposite of Hollywood because I don't think much of world cinema of the 1920s shared our modern disdain for Hollywood in the 1920s. Hollywood became a thing in the 20s and 30s, but I would argue it became much more globally influential post WW2 and that it had much less global influence pre-depression. I would argue that the UFA system was more globally influential on the cinema of the 20s, not Hollywood.

I would also be curious to know how many of the countries around the world--and remember, Cousins asserts that all of these global cinemas only made artistic masterpieces and only made those masterpieces because they directly wanted to refute the evils of the anti-art Hollywood of the 20s--had their own, now thoroughly lost, populist cinemas that were probably extremely similar to the boilerplate films of Hollywood's 20s.

In a sense, I feel, Hollywood often gets the worst of it, because so much of the output has survived--it seems, in comparison to the rest of the world--so you get a lot of dreck alongside the masterpieces, but when the other countries of the world have only the heralded masterpieces of the 20s and 30s and 40s survive they come across much more favorably, the batting average is way higher when you're only fielding the best of the best heavy hitters.

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colinr0380
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#92 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Sep 20, 2013 5:05 pm

I seem to remember being most annoyed that Cousins uses the bauble metaphor very disdainfully against the idea of Hollywood and then often ends up choosing mostly rather safe Hollywood choices, especially once we get to the 70s and 80s (Top Gun, Star Wars etc). I've looked back through the thread that I wrote up on the series when it was screened in the UK and came across this comment about the fourth episode that encapsulates the frustration I kept finding with the series:
I do find it ironic though that, for all the complaints about Hollywood's 'magical bauble' being too insular, Cousins ends this episode with three films about women that he feels defines the 30s: Ninotchka, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind. Cousins does suggest that these are subverting the insularity of their leads but to me all feel as if they are reaffirming the status quo (The Wizard of Oz most literally with "there's no place like home"!) - and I find it especially ironic that Cousins lauds the pricking of Scarlett O'Hara's bubble in GWTW, illustrated by showing the famous long pull back losing Scarlett among the bodies in the train yard, yet never seems to place that moment in context - that all of this is like water off a duck's back to Scarlett, who is single-mindedly searching for her man - she won't "step from a fantasy world into reality", she'll continue on in a fresh fantasy bubble forever, striding through the bodies of the fallen and believing that she can construct her own destiny and manipulate others as long as she wills it to happen hard enough.
I would only add to the above that this is the big reason why "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" remains such a fantastically powerful, bombshell dropping final line! It does what Cousins is suggesting, yet the sudden abruptness of that ending allows Rhett and the film to have a kind of 'manufactured victory' to arbitrarily climax the film, preventing the audience from seeing how Scarlett will more than likely be able to immediately pick herself up, dust herself down and push onward after that minor setback!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Fri Sep 27, 2013 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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movielocke
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#93 Post by movielocke » Wed Sep 25, 2013 3:52 pm

Just watched episode four, that ending comparison of Ninotchka, Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind was tortured and inane. Wow.

extraordinarily poor approach to the Hollywood studios of the 30s, as well.

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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#94 Post by MongooseCmr » Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:45 pm

A lot of his Hollywood coverage gave me the feeling that it was an obligation to him, and not anything heartfelt. The episode on New Hollywood really straddles the line between avoiding the big films of the era and outright ignoring them

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colinr0380
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Re: Upcoming Movies on TV (US)

#95 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Sep 28, 2013 8:24 am

movielocke wrote:I would also be curious to know how many of the countries around the world--and remember, Cousins asserts that all of these global cinemas only made artistic masterpieces and only made those masterpieces because they directly wanted to refute the evils of the anti-art Hollywood of the 20s--had their own, now thoroughly lost, populist cinemas that were probably extremely similar to the boilerplate films of Hollywood's 20s.

In a sense, I feel, Hollywood often gets the worst of it, because so much of the output has survived--it seems, in comparison to the rest of the world--so you get a lot of dreck alongside the masterpieces, but when the other countries of the world have only the heralded masterpieces of the 20s and 30s and 40s survive they come across much more favorably, the batting average is way higher when you're only fielding the best of the best heavy hitters.
I would agree with this, and I wonder if Cousins' approach to Hollywood's 'bauble' is influenced by ignoring the popular cinemas of different countries in his search for the purely artistic moments and therefore the more 'dream factory' approach of Hollywood gets rather unfairly used as the ultimate representation of fantasy, whilst other countries are only considered through their most artistic directors (so we don't get Bollywood to contrast Satyajit Ray, or Nollywood to balance out the celebration of the more artistic African directors such as Haile Gerima, or Carry On films to balance out Ken Loach, and so on). I find that a real problem as it suggests that the 'best' directors stand apart somewhat from their companions and their culture, whereas a more inclusive thesis would perhaps suggest that the 'best' directors are those that emerge from a context and provide some entirely new element in their work that drives the whole cinematic culture forward in response.

I remember doing a write up of the Pete Tombs book Mondo Macabro during the horror list project, which I think is appropriate to quote here and which shows up one of the blindnesses of Cousins' documentary:
This is the slimmer but more jaw-dropping and eye-opening companion to Immoral Tales that takes in horror cinema around the rest of the world. Comprises chapters on the Phillippines, Indonesia, three chapters on Hong Kong, two chapters on India, Turkey, Brazil (Jose Mojica Marins aka Coffin Joe), Argentina, Mexico and finally three chapters on Japan. I think this is one of the most important books on horror cinema, though it might be because I was introduced to many of these films through my copy of this book and its in depth synopses and the lurid imagery contained within! I remember Herr Schreck once talking about the film where a girl is possessed and by night becomes a flying vampire head trailing organs underneath it, which I was introduced to by the write up in this book (it is under the self-explanatory title Witch With Flying Head!). If you have ever wondered what Star of David: Beauty Hunting contains, the importance of the Ramsey brothers to Indian horror or what the Category III Hong Kong films were all about, this is a handy primer.

It also territory after territory underlines that loss experienced all over the world in the mid to late 70s as Hollywood blockbuster cinema and television almost wiped out many indiginous local industries specialising in 'entertainment' films, as they simply could not compete to the same extent (much as in the European book there is a constant theme of filmmakers moving from the horror film to films with more of an emphasis on sex, because that was where the funding was, then to hardcore and eventually a similar kind of dissolution/independently financed/almost private works as the industry collapsed).
Cousins doesn't really have anything to say about the mid-to-late 70s in the rest of the 'entertainment' (as opposed to 'arthouse') world when he gets to that point, simply because it does not appear that he considered or was aware of that loss, ironically in the face of resurgent Hollywood dominance in the form of the blockbuster film.

It necessarily leads to a partial view that unfairly demonises the classical studio system (and later on ironically is in thrall to 'modern', business led but not codified into a system, Hollywood after the 60s) for stifling creativity, when a more thoughtful approach would perhaps show that creativity can be found anywhere, not just in the arthouse or the blockbuster, and I didn't see anything in the entire series that made me question my assumptions about Cousins that he only knows about the currently most celebrated film on the arthouse scene on the one hand and the most popular blockbuster Hollywood entertainment on the other.

Though having said all of that I do think it that the series is extremely valuable, for all of its flaws, in introducing many arthouse filmmakers to a wider audience and helping to foster interest in them (not to mention the rare interviews with the key figures). It is wonderful that, say, Shinya Tsukamoto gets namechecked during the course of the series! Though don't go expecting more than that namechecking, and to see the wider context from which a film like Tetsuo: The Iron Man came out of - the filmmakers throughout the series are often elevated to unique acontextual individuals working in isolation to create perfect works of art.

If nothing else though, it sounds as if that TCM season of films is really going to build and expand upon the core series in a wonderful manner. I'm incredibly jealous! :D

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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#96 Post by YnEoS » Sun Sep 29, 2013 9:50 pm

I don't remember precisely but Cousins does touch on bollywood and popular HK cinema a bit, I think. But if memory serves he mostly talks about the really popular filmmakers. And in the HK cinema section only those who made names for themselves in the US like Bruce Lee and Yuen Wo Ping, and there's not much sense of the actual industries they're a part of. Though I think in his interview, Stanley Kwan does lightly touch on some of the other trends going on in the industry.

I'd really love to see a thorough analysis of the various popular cinemas worldwide, as I always find reading about these various industries gives a really unique and fresh perspective on world cinema. Like when talking to people who have mostly a background in hollwood and arthouse film markets you'd think that HK and Bollywood are lesser industries that occasionally produce interesting films worth studying. But when reading about filmmakers working in countries with even smaller industries, these other popular film industries are these giant monoliths that they're constantly working in the shadow of and trying to compete with. Like Taiwanese films in relation to Hong Kong films, Pakistani films to Bollywood (not to mention the non-hindi Indian industries), or Turkey to Italy and many many more I'm sure.

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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#97 Post by movielocke » Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:01 pm

I'm so torn, the series gets worse by the week. however occasionally you get amazing stuff, like everything Stanley Donen spoke about.

And Cousins' myopia about the art of cinema, and ignoring the practicalities of film production. Deep focus didn't become a thing in 1939 in Hollywood because of a new mystical presence of artistic pretension in John Ford. It happened because the pencil, as Donen would say, became more diverse. New fine grain film stocks became available in 38-39 that were much more light sensitive. Better lens, with greater depth of field were manufactured, new lighting technology became available. A lot of this technological innovation was driven by the successful introduction of three strip technicolor in the mid 1930s. One of the limitations that people forget about is that technicolor needed more light, the existing slow stocks weren't adequete. and new stock, new lights and new lens were needed to make color production more available. iirc, Gone with the Wind was the first three strip film to use the new film stocks.

So the artistic uses of the tool of the camera, such as the deep focus of stagecoach, were ennabled by technological progress driven by the commercial considerations of production.

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movielocke
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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#98 Post by movielocke » Sat Oct 12, 2013 3:57 am

Yikes, it does get worse, Cousins somehow manages to say that all of hollywood cinema of the fifties has no achievements outside of singular flicks from established auteurs, the tortured maleness quartet of Welles, Ford, Hitchcock and Hawks laid out as they are, manages to exceed the as flabbergasting and off-point trifecta of tortured femaleness he laid out at the end of Hollywood thirties cinema.

I do find it ironic that Cousins approach of reducing world cinema history down to a classic binary of bad guys (Hollywood) vs good guys (everyone else) is a very Hollywood approach of heroes and villains. So even in attacking Hollywood, he is paying them a backhanded compliment. (Not really saying the binary is exclusively hollywood, I'm just trying to be clever and not doing a very good job of it)

I appreciate the breadth of the approach, and he does manage to sweep the globe, but I'm starting to get a vaguely orientalist whif from the whole thing, the rest of the globe's cinematic output is acceptable to Cousins and 'worthy' when it is the "right sort" of otherness. Delightful how he avoided Bollywood for the 'right sort' of art (to a westerner) of Ray and Dutt. or Mexico briskly skimmed over to linger on the 'right sort' of art (to a westerner) of Bunuel.

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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#99 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Oct 12, 2013 7:09 am

If it is any consolation, in the next episode it seems that Cousins turns out to not be much of a fan of the French New Wave!

EDIT: (But does find room for another Bunuel!)
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Mark Cousins' Scene by Scene & The Story of Film

#100 Post by Roger Ryan » Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:22 am

I'm still trying to figure out how Youssef Chahine's performance in CAIRO STATION (1958) somehow anticipated James Dean's persona in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE! For all of Cousins' talk of the film drawing on Italian neo-realism, he misses a pretty obvious connection (to me, anyway) that Chahine's intriguing tone-shifting work strongly anticipates TAXI DRIVER while the directorial style is straight from the Welles/Hitchcock playbook. Even Robert Osbourne noted in his introduction to CAIRO STATION that Chahine's character appears to be modeled on the roles Lon Chaney played throughout the 20s, a more apt comparison than the Dean one (or was this something Cousins' suggested as well in his intro with Osbourne? I didn't see it).

Again, I'm grateful that the series gives TCM a reason to show films like CAIRO STATION and PATHER PANCHALI. But the increasingly bizarre contextual analysis provided by Cousins feels more like that "bauble"-thing he keeps complaining about as the weeks go on.

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