The Story of Film

772 Pages·2013·16.83 MB·English

by  Mark Cousins

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FOREWORD TO THE NEW EDITION
When I wrote this book eight years ago, I had to pay $75, plus shipping,
for a videotape of an Ethiopian film called Harvest 3000 Years to be sent
to me from America. It took two weeks to arrive, and my anticipation
built. When I finally watched it, I could see that it was a masterwork,
and part of The Story of Film.
A moment ago I looked on YouTube, and there it is in all its glory. Also
on YouTube, is a film I wrote about in this book but hadn’t managed to
see, Teinosuke Kingugasa’s manic, amazing A Page of Madness. Just eight
years ago, film history was elusive, a detective story and pricey. Now it’s
a click away.
This means that we don’t need to long for great movies as we used to.
They’re just there. Hooray to that, but let’s not get blasé. Now that
cinema is at our fingertips, cultural signposts, things that point me in the
direction of magnificent films like Harvest 3000 Years, are more needed
than ever. I hope this book is such a thing.
Although the form of film watching is changing, the content, the story,
remains compelling. When I walked away from my keyboard in 2004,
the digitisation of the film process was ongoing, non-Hollywood
aesthetics were re-emerging in movies from Thailand, Russia, Denmark
and Austria and, because 9/11 had out-Hollywooded Hollywood, there
was what you could call “the return of the real” in movies. Steven
Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight and
others were casting new shadows over mainstream cinema, and film
style was getting grittier.
Since then, James Cameron’s Avatar re-created 3D and made cinema
more tactile, South American movies continued to excel, Terrence
Malick made another numinous film The New World, Laurent Cantet’s
Entre les Murs/The Class seemed even bigger than cinema, and Steve
McQueen’s Hunger, Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia! and Mike Leigh’s
Another Year showed what an exciting bag of ferrets British film is at the
moment. And if one country somehow pulled all this together, marrying
innovation with realism, quietude with millennial unease, it was …
Romania.
And as a footnote to all this, here’s a surprise: In the last few years I’ve
been travelling around the world, my camera on my back, making a film
version of this book, which is called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. I’ve
visited the Bengali village where Pather Panchali was shot, and the New
York locations of Taxi Driver; I’ve interviewed Stanley Donen who co-
directed Singin’ in the Rain, and Kyoko Kagawa who was in some of the
best Japanese films ever made, including Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. The
process of adapting the book for the screen has been much bigger than
writing it – more crew, more technology, more costs – but also more
intimate, in that as we edit, say, a sequence on Harvest 3000 Years or The
Dark Knight, the films feel really close. They’re right in front of me. I can
see every pan, every cut.
Maybe you’ll see The Story of Film: An Odyssey in a cinema somewhere,
or on TV. Maybe you’ll
INTRODUCTION
SILENT
1 TECHNICAL THRILL (1895–1903)
The sensations of the first movies
How the first filmmakers devised shots, cuts, close-ups and camera
moves.
2 THE EARLY POWER OF STORY (1903–18)
How thrill became narrative
The emergence of Hollywood, the star system and the first great
directors.
3 THE WORLD EXPANSION OF STYLE (1918–28)
Movie factories and personal vision
Mainstream filmmaking and its dissidents in Germany, France, America
and the Soviet Union SOUND
4 JAPANESE CLASSICISM AND HOLLYWOOD ROMANCE (1928–45)
Cinema enters a golden age
Movie genres, Japanese masters and depth staging.
5 THE DEVASTATION OF WAR AND A NEW MOVIE LANGUAGE (1945–52)
The spread of realism in world cinema
Italy leads the way, world cinema follows and Hollywood’s vision
darkens.
6 THE SWOLLEN STORY (1952–58)
Rage and symbolism in 1950s filmmaking
Widescreen, international melodrama and new, early-modernist
directors.
7 THE EXPLODED STORY (1958–69)
The breakdown of romantic cinema and the coming of modernism
A series of new waves transform innovative filmmaking on every
continent.
8 FREEDOM AND WANT SEE (1969–79)
Political cinema around the globe and the rise of the blockbuster in
America
Revivals in German and Australian cinema and the emergence of Middle
Eastern and African cinema; Jaws and Star Wars.
9 MEGA-ENTERTAINMENTS AND PHILOSOPHY (1979–90)
The extremes of world cinema
The influence of video and MTV; challenging films made in non-Western
countries.
DIGITAL
10 CAN SEE (1990–PRESENT)
Computerization takes cinema beyond photography
A global art form discovers new possibilities.
CONCLUSION
THE LANGUAGE OF FILM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX