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I've recently been enjoying a few episodes from the now-defunct BBC series "Scene by Scene," hosted and directed by Mark Cousins, whose latest book The Story of Film got a DVD Beaver recommendation among other things.

The purpose of making this thread, aside from just putting the word out for others who might not've heard of it and how great it is, is to ask if anyone knows if there's any chance at all for it to make its way onto DVD. I suspect it might not be possible, as a result of one of the show's biggest strengths: generous excerpts from multiple films across a director's body of work. It seems like a rights-clearing nightmare, unfortunately (although if Gaumont can get Histoire(s) du Cinema out on DVD, I suppose anything is possible...)

The episodes I've seen so far are with David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, and Brian De Palma. There's one more I've acquired with Roman Polanski that I plan to watch right away. But the show was on for 5 years, so there's a LOT more, and I'd love to see all of it. Cousins is quite well-informed about cinema and film criticism in general as well as the work of the specific directors he interviews, and he always comes off as genuinely interested in finding out what the filmmakers have to say. He never uses the show as a forum for his own pontifications on all things cinematic, and even though the episodes last a generous 50 minutes or so, one gets the feeling things could go on for much longer.

He also has a way of being disarmingly honest, which even gets someone like Brian De Palma, who seems very cynical about the prospect of a TV show with a genuine interest in filmmaking, to open up by telling him flat-out "I think you've made some awful movies in your career," and De Palma seems to agree. Of course, the general tone is adulatory, and thankfully De Palma's latest at the time, Snake Eyes, is quite admired by Cousins. All in all, this series seems like essential viewing, if you can track it down (or you're lucky enough to catch airings of it on TV, if indeed that still happens).

Scene by Scene with...

Dennis Hopper
Martin Scorsese
Paul Schrader
Brian De Palma
Roman Polanski
Jonathan Demme
David Lynch
Woody Allen
Janet Leigh
Donald Sutherland
Kirk Douglas
Jeff Bridges
Steve Martin
Lauren Bacall

Were there more? I believe that this is the complete list of programmes. Each of them are the best TV interviews with each of those personalities you'll ever see, probably. It is a shame that this series didn't continue. The last one was with Polanski in 2002. I don't remember the Jonathan Demme piece - is it interesting?

A friend of mine has the Dennis Hopper and Martin Scorsese programmes on DVD-r and I have been meaning to ask for a rip of them. I'd love to see the Paul Schrader piece again, as I recall it as being superb, as is the De Palma, which must surely be the only such interview with the publicity shy director. Jeff Bridges was, as ever, in fine fettle in his interview and shared a lot of fine anecdotes.

Cousins' documentary on Criterion's, I Know Where I'm Going is also excellent. Do you have the disc, Oedipax? His Moviedrome introductions to cult movies on BBC2 were also interesting and opened me up me to the wider world of Cinema when I was a spotty teenager back in the 90s!

I seem to recall a Scene-by-Scene with Sean Connery at some stage, but perhaps it wasn't an 'official' one and more of an interview?

I do remember that it showed a few short clips of a film/documentary that Connery himself directed in the 60s/70s. The clip in question seemed to consist of him riding a bicycle around an empty factory.

I've just googled a list of the programmes: "Scene by Scene on TV ran for five years, screening career interviews with Sean Connery, Jack Lemmon, Steve Martin, Martin Scorsese, John Sayles, Jane Russell, Paul Schrader, Brian de Palma, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jonathan Demme, Terence Stamp, Woody Allen, Dennis Hopper, David Lynch, Donald Sutherland, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Roman Polanski, Tom Hanks, James Coburn, Jeanne Moreau and Rod Steiger."

The Polanski one was great. Quite confrontational, but in a good way (if that makes sense...)

George

A fun Adam and Joe toy clip spoofing the Scene by Scene series!

Hi, i ordered a DVD-R from this place www.raredvds4sale.co.uk which has four episodes from the series on one disc:

David Lynch
Woody Allen
Paul Schrader
Sean Connery

He also has the Scorsese episode on another DVD-R entitled "Scorsese Interviews".

Transfer quality is very good, hope that helps those of you looking for some episodes, at least until they are relased officially anyway, which would be great as am sure there is demand !

Cineman

Sorry I can't offer any info about a DVD, but I'd just like to agree that it was an excellent show, the kind of passionate, informed show about cinema that has now completely disappeared from British screens - and it even seemed a bit of a fluke and anomaly when it was actually on, in the late '90s.

What was great about some of the interviews, as you imply, was their edginess and genuine sense of debate - so different from the shallow, faux-adulatory tone of most film-related interviewing. The Polanski and De Palma interviews especially were a treat (though I still can't quite accept that Cousins considers Phantom of the Paradise a bad film - perhaps too camp for him?). Even the interviews with the actors are far more interesting than is usual, as when Cousins and Lauren Bacall argue over the merits of Douglas Sirk or when Rod Steiger says to Cousins, 'I'll kill you' after Cousins describes Run of the Arrow as Steiger's best film. At one point, Cousins even tries goading Kirk Douglas into criticising De Palma (as revenge for De Palma's prickly interview?).

I think Cousins still does the Scene by Scene interviews at the Edinburgh Film Festival, which is where they started - to my knowledge, that was where he did the first one (or one of the first), with Sean Connery.

I remember the Woody Allen one being quite funny.

Cousins kept trying to get him to look at the tv screen which was right next to them as it played back one of Allen's films. Allen kept refusing to look and seemed quite adamant in never viewing any of his films after he had finished editing them.

I have SCENE BY SCENEs of Allen, Schrader & Scorsese somewhere...

The BBC published a book of the series...



Available from amazon.co.uk etc...

These i/v's are good and he's a pleasant knowledgeable guy... However his recent docu for Channel Four, CINEMA IRAN (2005), on Iranian film started suspiciously similarly to the I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING REVISITED docu on the streets of NYC - pretty lazy... Then it claims ET (1982) and Kiarostami's WHERE IS THE FRIEND'S HOUSE (1987) were made in the same year!

I haven't read it but his ambitious book THE STORY OF FILM also apparently contains quite a few annoying errors of a similar nature...

Mark Cousins' 15 part 'The Story of Film: An Odyssey' is airing on the UK Digital TV Channel More4 starting next Saturday: Trailer, and more information on the series here.

Any thoughts on the first episode? I'm not really sure what he was getting at about the romanticism of Casablanca not fitting into the overall Story Of Film, other than the semantics of the word 'classical' and the idea of a "Hollywood Classic", which I thought was a bit clunky. He could have just said that he wants to be less "racist by omission' and "redraw the map of movie history that we have in our heads", as he mentioned later.

Otherwise, there were two mentions of my home town, Leeds, which I was happy to hear.

I think he's trying to shift the paradigm and baseline of film to outside the Hollywood model ('Casablanca' being the quintessential product of that system), to ground it in the pure 'classicism' of Ozu, Renoir et al. and their radical and rigorous explorations of cinematic grammar... But it's early days yet for the series, so we'll have to wait and see...

I have major issues with the passing over of any commerical considerations to the making of films. I know that he is trying to move things to a more artistic view but I really think the beauty of film comes from the interaction between practical and commerical considerations that have various impacts on filmmaking and make those moments of artistry or serendipity that are captured even more valuable. He does not seem to realise that people were building careers from this new medium or that 1890s street scenes were created for certain commercial exhbition purposes (a purpose that has changed from our modern, nostalgic perspective which has given these street scenes a newly commerical lease of life) and that these factors could have had as much of an effect on choice of material and manner of presentation as aesthetic considerations.

He doesn't seem to have gotten to that William Goldman "nobody knows anything" stage yet, applying it to the moneymen but not realising that it can just as much be applied to artists too (a clip Cousins uses later in the film that seems to be falteringly moving towards this is Gish knocking some pieces of ice from a passing iceberg on the rapids in Way Down East, which he states is a beautiful moment because Griffiths could never have set it up. To me, it is a thrilling moment that both the moneymen or the artist could have only planned to capture, but they were both responsible for it - the moneymen in providing the means and the artist to set up the circumstances in which it could possibly occur - ready to capitalise on such a powerful, fleeting moment if it did occur), and that the beauty of film is the back and forth flow between inspiration and imitation (or refining), or of working with unpromising commerical material and making something of it (the Val Lewton lesson, as repeated in that scene from The Bad and the Beautiful, a scene which also helps to reiterate the importance of the use of light in the movies).

I get the impression he is going to have problems with a lot of the famous cinematic producers who for better or worse stamped their mark on the films produced under their tenure as much as any of their 'artists' - from the Zanucks and Louis B. Mayers (it is only the introduction but the few moments of 'classical' Hollywood which appear seem very problematic) through to the Weinsteins or Bruckheimers of today. (If these figures can simply be dismissed as not being artisitic enough to merit enclusion, Cousins should at least be bumping up against this problem from the perspectives of a Val Lewton or Jeremy Thomas).

The above might suggest that I am simply arguing a different position - that producers play a role too - but this is an incredibly important point. Cousins talks of liking "new Hollywood cinema but the best cinema of the 70s was made in Dakar in Senegal". This is great in 'redefining' our view of cinema, and I'm sure when he gets to this point he will talk in glowing terms about the films of Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembene, but is he going to talk about the conflation of practical circumstances that come together in order to give someone like Mambéty the chance to make not just one, but a series of films, which receive distribution. (And which films or filmmakers receive that distribution. This is a kind of point that Nothing has been making many times over on this forum, and one which I sympathise with to a great extent, though I think it is a more complex and fascinating subject than a simple good/bad clashing of hegemonies that Nothing sometimes makes it out to be - the way that decisions made by commercial bodies (or National Film Boards; or Film Councils; or even French TV stations!) influence patronage of certain directors, or the way that certain trends or entire national cinemas come into and fall out of favour of an 'International Art House gaze', however that can be defined).

Another example: is Cousins going to get into the production processes in Japan in the era around the Second World War that were as intensive as anything in 'classical' Hollywood by which Ozu was able to refine his artistic vision? Or the Bollywood cinema, comparable to Hollywood in distribution scope and regularity of film production that enables Amitabh Bachhcan to develop his talent and become internationally recognised? Or the filmmaking community created by Moshen Makhmalbaf that worked to create a film culture in Iran, along with developing the talents of his daughters? Artistic elements may be incredibly important but cannot be considered outside of these more practical, just as fascinating in themselves, considerations. I noticed a shot of I Am Cuba in that sped up trailer - that is an example of a film where the production circumstances are in some ways much more important than the film's artistic merit. That doesn't mean I think it is a bad film because it does not fit a certain specific definition of cinema, it just means that I think it needs to be judged from a different perspective and that individual films all have these unique mixes of circumstances and artistry (and mores of different historical periods, as Cousins could be illustrating with The Birth of a Nation clip, which I would love to suspect - but sincerely doubt - is meant to be slyly ideologically bookended with the opening clip from Saving Private Ryan, which is performing a similar task of war fetishisation and simplification) coming together in fascinating ways.


I think Cousins is doing something admirable here in trying to draw our focus to some of the most poetic, fleeting moments of cinema, those small moments that stick with an audience member, perhaps even subconciously, as powerful. And I agree with ellipsis7 that these are still very early days for the series (even if I still have problems with the series I will be watching for the film clips and interviews anyway!) I also liked the way that Cousins was illustrating the development of film grammar through the silent films as something happening in small little jumps. Though I would argue with his 'classical', almost dogmatic, reiteration of the importance of the old 180° rule as being important, and pointing out the 'errors' made by early directors - this is a rule, like any others, that is made to be broken and often creates a more powerful effect by being broken, whether by conscious decision or accident. This I think could have been a great springboard into a discussion of cinema being bound by rules but also that the creation of any piece of work often comes down to what 'feels right', especially in the editing room (which itself could lead into discussions of audience perception - the way that huge jumps in continuity can be made if the audience is focused on a few key details or there is a throughline of movement, something which is leading into the more abstract editing techniques on display in many modern action movies).

(Perhaps he is saving the 'breaking the rules' part for the Godard and Lars von Trier episodes, where is it is 'safe' to talk about upending 'stuffy old modes of filmmaking'. But the history of cinema is about the history of these upheavals as artists feel their way through the medium, some of which work and become 'rules' themselves, some of which fail and become interesting footnotes.)


But that first episode did immediately bring back some of the frustrations that I had with Cousin's introductions for the BBC Moviedrome series (the insular feeling that Cousins is too in love with his, albeit lovingly presented, worldview to consider things from other perspectives), and his Scene by Scene series (the misinterpretation of some scenes - for example isn't there some interview with Scorsese about Taxi Driver that says that the camera going into the bubbles into the glass is an attempt to find a cinematic way of conveying schizophrenia? - and that annoying tendency to alternate between over- and under- analysing certain scenes)

And I'm sure that if Herr Shrek or david hare were still here (or if lubitsch had been able to watch the programme) they would have their own comments to make about the relatively conservative selection of silent cinema discussed here (the usual suspects of Griffiths, the Lumières, Cabiria, Porter etc)!

Phew, sorry that was a post and a half!

I too felt that Cousins' characterisation of Hollywood was over-simplistic, and not only from a commercial viewpoint. His commentary told us, "No one was supposed to be plain here, or sad, or old, or racially equal or sexually different." That's certainly true of the typical studio-era movie from Hollywood (and those from most other nations in that period) but there are plenty exceptions too, even - perhaps especially - in the silent era.

A small point perhaps, but I was rather appalled that he misidentified - both in the commentary and an on-screen caption - his clip from Georges Méliès' Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), perhaps the most famous of all early films, as La lune à un mètre (1898).

Jonathan S wrote:I too felt that Cousins' characterisation of Hollywood was over-simplistic, and not only from a commercial viewpoint. His commentary told us, "No one was supposed to be plain here, or sad, or old, or racially equal or sexually different." That's certainly true of the typical studio-era movie from Hollywood (and those from most other nations in that period) but there are plenty exceptions too, even - perhaps especially - in the silent era.

This is one of the reasons that a refusal to consider production circumstances worries me, since sweeping statements such as that one feel as if they might have grown out of a stubborn refusal to even try to understand the industry (looking at the Q&A on the More4 website, apparently this is a conscious choice of Cousins, with him even describing it unapologetically as a "blindness" in his approach to the making of the series, and bringing up a Lauren Bacall quote "the industry is shit, it is the medium that is great" to justify the focus being purely on the artistry of the films themselves in isolation), or to understand why certain elements might have been included by filmmakers. Or even what was going on in the wider world at the time in which the films were made - that the Second World War, for example, is not just a Starship Troopers-style sci-fi battle invented by filmmakers but was actually a real event, that took place during a real period of time which the filmmaking community, like the rest of the world, had to respond to, both at the time it was occurring and in the influence that event has had over the many, many decades since. The approaches in cinema to that specific period evolving as much in response to the passing of time and real world external changes (and not only affected by commercial or propaganda pressures) as to developments within any filmmaker's own artistic sensibility.

Similarly the tracking shot down the rails towards the gates of the derelict concentration camp in Shoah might be an interesting development of the 'camera mounted to the front of a train' shot created at the dawn of cinema, but it feels as if Cousins is too focused on technique and imagery rather than what that image actually means in a wider context (it doesn't help that I've always felt that those images from Shoah were just retreads of far more powerful tracking shots in Night and Fog), or the significance of that return to the camps decades later. Instead it is just appreciated as a more sombre form of the ghostly forward movement technique. (If we were just focused on the development of the 'ghostly forward movement' technique without any consideration of how the technique was used in context, Enter The Void would be the current ne plus ultra of cinema!)

Again however maybe this calculated lack of context might be addressed in future episodes, but I think this may well be a flaw worth keeping an eye on. To me it feels as if currently the series is made from a very contemporary '2011 perspective', ahistorical and acontextual. As if from the perspective of someone who has just been exposed to this imagery through their multimedia centre all at once but has no way of comprehending where it all fits beyond the screen and has therefore only been left with the option of explaining the effect that this imagery has on them as an individual. That process has some worth as a 'personal journey with Mark Cousins' - if seen as such that first episode is acceptable (and the flaws and mistakes become in some ways quite charming!), but if he is trying to redefine the wider boundaries of discussion on cinema beyond himself there is still a heck of a lot of work to be done.

I guess this comes down to my own feeling that I am not entirely sure that there is such a thing as a 'purely artistic' film, and the 'innovators' that Cousins says that he is focusing on (which itself sounds rather reductive to me, as if once you have seen the wellspring of an idea you do not need to look at the way that idea develops, is imitated or exploited, a process which itself may then evolve an entirely new idea) often have to deal with commercial or production demands in addition to artistic ones. I'm not entirely sure whether filmmakers would see this as such a problematic, black and white issue needing such a division that Cousins makes here.

Even Godard has to deal with this (throughout his career, not just pre-68) and what I feel is his greatest film, Contempt, is all about that tension between an almost illusory goal of pure artistry and the ability to create using the resources you have to hand and incorporating elements forced on you (and is part of a long tradition of films dealing with the subject of filmmaking). A fatally flawing compromise or a necessary trade-off in order to be able to create at all, and which battles provide the raw inspiration to enable the creation of new works?

(Interesting to note in those Q&A snippets that Cousins mentions that one of the filmmakers to turn Cousins down for an interview was Kira Muratova, although he laughs off her reasons for refusing. By the way here is the schedule of films that will be on Film4 to coincide with the series. I'm particularly excited about Xala getting a screening).

Jonathan and Colin, for fuck sake, get a life. This is the first halfways adult series about cinema I have seen in the last 20 years and at least it makes an effort to open people's eyes to the beauty of cinema. And you're whingeing about details???

Felix wrote:Jonathan and Colin, for fuck sake, get a life. This is the first halfways adult series about cinema I have seen in the last 20 years and at least it makes an effort to open people's eyes to the beauty of cinema. And you're whingeing about details???

No series is beyond criticism and there is (or was) only intelligent debate here, not "whingeing". As for details, it's my belief that a major film history series should identify its clips correctly - particularly when the film is important enough to have recently received a restoration costing over $500,000 (for one reel). If the series goes on to identify a clip from, say, The Magnificent Ambersons as Citizen Kane, will that not matter either?

Although i agree with a lot of the points made by colin and jonathan especially the fact that the misnaming of film clips is pretty sloppy, Felix is right that it is an absolute treat that a serious series about films is actually being shown on British television. The only real disappointment is the relatively paltry selection of films being shown alongside it on Film4 (i was hoping for more than the few listed on their website). I think that even if we are going to be watching a very subjective 'Story of Film' (how could it not be), we're still going to be watching a fifteen fucking hour, serious minded film series- something I didn't think would happen again on UK TV.

A man stayed-put wrote:The only real disappointment is the relatively paltry selection of films being shown alongside it on Film4 (i was hoping for more than the few listed on their website).

I think it's quite disappointing that Cousins' monotonous, droning voice renders the programme next to unwatchable. I think the content is alright for now, although I agree whole-heartedly with the critiques put forth by more thoughtful members than me above, but the verbal delivery by Cousins is irritating beyond belief. It doesn't help that the narration is hardly spare.

Oh I agree (but of course the devil is in the detail!) Whatever issues I may have with the series (and hopefully just with the first episode) this is still a valuable series if just for the interviews that will be in there and the accompanying film season. I would never have gotten a chance to see Orphans of the Storm without this series, so I'll be grateful to it for giving me that opportunity at the very least!

To maybe refute the idea that this is the first halfway decent series on cinema in the last twenty years on British television (though they are extremely few and far between) I actually rewatched Tom Sutcliffe's excellent six part series called Watching made for the BBC in 2000, perhaps out of a desire to see something more substantial on the subject without having to wait a week and cross my fingers. This doesn't have the high ambition of redefining cinema of the Story of Film documentary but it doesn't shy away from talking about Hollywood cinema and mixing it together with silents and international cinema in what feels like a healthier combination (In the words of the introduction: "This is a series about cinema. But it is not about directors or actors, or movie genres. It is about some of the impulses and urges that unite all films, whether they are arthouse movies or Hollywood blockbusters").

In just those six half hour episodes it feels as if it gets to the heart of many of the techniques and philosophies of cinema that I felt Cousins was struggling with in that first episode, though of course there is still a lot of time left for Cousins to build a thesis. (Watching also has its own flaws of being a bit too beholden to discussing current British cinema hits of the time such as Trainspotting and The Full Monty, though that has a side benefit of illustrating some of the techniques discussed and showing that they were still in current practice)

Those six episodes were:

1. Beginnings - "the beginning is the point at which the film comes to terms with its viewers, drawing up the rules of engagement. A good beginning must make the audience feel that it does not know nearly enough yet, and at the same time make sure that they do not know too little"

The importance of the opening minutes of a film from title sequences, 'pedal-to-the-metal' openings compared to more subdued openings, the fact that "we are almost never virgins when we enter the cinema these days" due to the advertising and promotions that surround films (which I think could make a damning point of comparison with Cousins trip to Iraq for his last project, The First Movie, which felt a lot like an attempt to create a film community without having to deal with the fact that most of the rest of the world beyond Cousins's isolated film Shangri-la can never be a blank slate in their approach to the cinema screen), and the way that the way that the possibilities of those first minutes are magical (the moment when we may be about to see the best film in the world, perhaps) and that it is perhaps the most dangerous part of a film for a filmmaker as they have to try to build that audience anticipation of those first minutes into guiding the audience into the world and tone of a film.

Some of the films discussed include the masterful trailer for Psycho, the shock openings of Persona and Naked Kiss along with the way that Ridicule overturns some of the conventional notions of a period historical drama in its opening scene. Citizen Kane is talked about, of course, along with Janet Leigh talking about the opening of Touch of Evil. Bogdanovich does a mini-commentary over the first scenes of The Last Picture Show. The problematic explosive opening of Scorsese's Casino. The eerily menacing openings of The Shining and Don't Look Now.

2. Big "Hardly anything can strike the mind with its greatness that does not make some approach towards infinity" Edmund Burke

The use of size in cinema - i.e. blowing something tiny up to huge proportions or making something huge seem small. The opening of Star Wars is discussed (along with the problem that the impressiveness of the spaceship moving over and past the audience has to inevitably diminish once we can see the whole ship in the frame) and the first appearance of the alien ships in Independence Day (contrasting it nicely with the way Spielberg uses the ripples in the glass of water to introduce the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park) but these clips are also contrasted with the opening of The Crowd (move a camera towards an object and the sense of scale is reduced but that also leads to idea of focusing in and approaching a deeper truth of some kind - the logic of discovery) and Blow Up (which then explodes that idea of the logic of discovery by getting closer and closer to an image until all meaning is lost).

The idea of a close up bringing us closer into the inner life of a character itself gets somewhat dashed when Bogdanovich talks of the way that it is much easier to talk a non-professional actor through a scene in a close up to express the idea of profound emotion even when they might not be aware of having that impact by just looking down and then up again thoughtfully (he talks of directing Cher this way in Mask). Though then the programme shows Falconetti in Passion of Joan of Arc, a film all about the power of the close up.

The idea of the coffee cup is brought up, just as it was in Cousins' film, though Bogdanovich describes it as similar to an Ozu shot. He is also the person who describes the Taxi Driver scene as a profound way of conveying the feeling of schizophrenia, isolating details. Then the programme talks about the development from sub-contracting out inserts towards incorporating them and using them for conveying more than just basic plot details.

There is also a nice discussion of the huge sets of Intolerance which gets to the heart of this problem of size in cinema, in a profound statement: "Unfortunately artifice was sometimes exactly what it looked like. If you got close enough to see human faces then the sets effectively disappeared and if you pulled back far enough to see the sets then the people disappeared, and all secure sense of scale with it. Is this a real or just a model? The title cards for Intolerance boasting about the films dimensions betray a temor of nerves that the moviegoers will not be as impressed as they should...The paradox seemed intractable - give the audience the biggest thing they had ever seen and everything they truly cared about shrank until it was almost invisible. Griffith found one of the best solutions to the conundrum, using the camera itself to pace out the enormity of his set, from panorama to individual figures. Time measures out the distance that has to be travelled from the epic to the personal, and every second of this slow advance makes the scene swell in grandeur. And the technique works just as well in contemporary films [cuts to opening of Blade Runner]".

Lord of the Rings (but really any epic in scope film) was still struggling with these issues nine decades later.

3. Screens - the nervy relationship that cinema has had with television through analysis of the scene from All That Heaven Allows where Jane Wyman's children buy her a television as a substitute for her giving up the relationship with Rock Hudson's gardener. Of course Videodrome turns up. The way that the television can be seductive but blinding - the boy in Halloween has to turn away from the monster movie marathon on the television in order to see a glimpse of the true horror occurring across the street. The family gawking at the test card on their new television in Barry Levinson's Avalon. The way that Cinema Paradiso is mostly a (self comforting in the age of television) love letter to how the softer, warmer light of cinema can bring people together rather than isolate them in front of individual screens.

But Terry Gilliam also talks of the way that a screen is a great way of bringing a world inside a room, of inundating a character with information, and the way that it can create fascinating juxtapositions within a scene.

And then the move into the post-television age of user generated content from the home movie opening of Mean Streets to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer through to a discussion of Atom Egoyan's films.

4. Punch - the use of the fist fight in film. From the moral fables of Rocky to the male bonding of Red River (where a slap at the beginning turns into a punch in the final scene to show the boy has become a man and can be treated as such) taken to queasy extremes with The Quiet Man. The falling out of favour of the punch with the escalating violence of the 1960s.

5. Unseen - the episode about what lies beyond the bounaries of the frame and how to create tension. From the train arriving at the station at Ciotat, the Méliès trick films, through Val Lewton and his 'bus' and Murnau. The power of the use of implication (the gunning down of Boris Karloff in Scarface; the murder at the beginning of M; the sketching in of sets in a stylised manner in Citizen Kane to suggest a bank vault or an opera house; the camera at water level in Jaws; the final chase sequence in Eyes of Laura Mars; the honking of the horn in Postman Always Rings Twice; the refusal to show Anna Karina at the opening of Vivre Sa Vie; the 'embarrassed' pan away from Travis Bickle making the telephone call in Taxi Driver).

6. Freeze "It is surprising how often the flash of a bulb in film marks the moment that a lie has been told" [cut to clip from North By Northwest of Cary Grant photographed standing over a body]

The episode tackles the still image and the way it has more power than the moving one. Documentary footage set against a still photograph of a scene - which medium tells the 'best truth'? Do the staged family photographs created in Timothy Spall's photography studio in Secrets and Lies tell a profound inner truth, or are they attempts at creating a fictitionalised moment of harmony, hampered by commercial demands of his clients? Is a photograph revealing a captured moment of reality in People on Sunday or in the still frames of Jules and Jim? The fakeness of a still, perfect moment, but also the yearning for it illustrated by clips from Jocelyn Moorhouse's Proof. But when cinema uses a photograph it is as a signifier of 'reality' - as in the crime scene photographs at the opening of Silence of the Lambs.

Does a slow shot, rather than a true freeze frame give us the chance for contemplation, if only of the beauty of Greta Garbo at the end of Queen Christina? Can it be used in a problematic manner, such as the 'triumphant' ending of Thelma & Louise?

The use of stills as punctuation and emphasis of a particular moment by a the filmmaker - or as in La Jetee reversed so the barely perceptible flicker of movement becomes the most impactful moment. Like the close up it can be used as a way of wresting back control and guiding the audience's gaze to what is considered the most important element but it can also raise questions as well - most famously what lies ahead of Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows?

colinr0380 wrote:Oh I agree (but of course the devil is in the detail!) Whatever issues I may have with the series (and hopefully just with the first episode) this is still a valuable series if just for the interviews that will be in there and the accompanying film season. I would never have gotten a chance to see Orphans of the Storm without this series, so I'll be grateful to it for giving me that opportunity at the very least!

To maybe refute the idea that this is the first halfway decent series on cinema in the last twenty years on British television (though they are extremely few and far between) I actually rewatched Tom Sutcliffe's excellent six part series called Watching made for the BBC in 2000, perhaps out of a desire to see something more substantial on the subject without having to wait a week and cross my fingers.

I never doubted you actually did feel that way Colin (re the value of the series), and to answer Jonathan's point, sorry but it is whingeing, however constructive. Mistaking a Melies is unfortunate but of little importance in the grand scheme of things, and not the same as mistaking kane and Ambersosn, however unfair you may feel that is. The choice of Silent clips may be conservative for the readers of CF but let's remind ourselves, we are not the general viewing public and the beauty of this series is that it offers intelligent film making for the general viewing public.

I didn't actually say it was it was the first halfway decent series in 20 years, just the first I had seen... \:D/ I missed Watching. not sure how, thanks for the heads up, I'll have a look on the grey market for that one. There was also a wonderful little series called The Architecture of The Imagination from the mid-90s which looked at the use of various bits of architecture like stairways, the only one I taped (damn). And there was the short series about European intellectuals in pre-war Hollywood. But they remain few and far between. Did you watch Rich Hall's How The West Was Won, also on recently? That's what we usually get and it was a right old heap of shit (and it didn't need to be).

I did not think it was perfect either, and I think I will probably agree about Cousins' voice once we are a couple of episodes in, but it is still a major 15 part series of one hour programmes, taking the ads into account, and you will wait a very long time for something like that to come again.

Incidentally, I tried recording Orphans Of The Storm in case it was a different version from my two, but though the box recorded there was nothing there, anyone else try this and succeed? (Presumably you did, Colin?)

The choice of Silent clips may be conservative for the readers of CF but let's remind ourselves, we are not the general viewing public and the beauty of this series is that it offers intelligent film making for the general viewing public.

The problem is that the aim of this series appears to be to open up an audience's eyes to the wider range of filmmaking than just the standard canon, which makes sticking with the established canon in the silent era (at least up to the early 20s) feel more a failure of the filmmaker's own knowledge of that particular era than an attempt to not confuse/pander to a mainstream audience.

I do have to say though that a starving man's appreciation of finally there being more arthouse film references and clips on a UK television channel (I do agree that since Watching the last ten or eleven years have been a wasteland with only a few one off BBC4 programmes such as the Western one or "Dive! Dive! Dive!" on the history of submarine movies. Though I seem to remember that Matthew Sweet did an excellent one-off programme on film noir a couple of years back. The move from series to one-offs seems more of a development of the media landscape as anything else, with very few but major reality TV series getting weeks of the schedule regularly blocked off these days) is still not going to prevent me from giving a 'could do better' mark to the series if it continues in the vein of the first episode. Especially when other more focused series could perhaps have fit much more into half the time. But hopefully Cousins is aware of and will use this extremely rare opportunity well to show and talk about films hardly screened and interview people who have not been given that opportunity on UK television before, and not decimate the landscape for future programmes about film in the wake of this series if it does have problems.

Felix wrote:Incidentally, I tried recording Orphans Of The Storm in case it was a different version from my two, but though the box recorded there was nothing there, anyone else try this and succeed? (Presumably you did, Colin?)

Jonathan S in Upcoming Films on TV thread wrote:It looks like there will be an accompanying series of films on Film4, starting with Orphans of the Storm on Tuesday 6 Sept at 12.50am, repeated Thursday 8 Sept at 11am. This will almost certainly be the Photoplay version (commercially unavailable) which they commissioned and broadcast some years ago.

I can confirm Jonathan's comments that it was the Photoplay version of the film, presumably a repeat from that early 90s Griffith season that Channel 4 did (Does Channel 4 still commission a silent film restoration each year? I have not noticed many being screened on either of their channels for quite a while now, but I may have missed something)

I was a little disappointed to note that the associated film on Film4 this week is Dreyer's Ordet. It seems that the Story of Film episode tonight is focused more on Dreyer's 20s period (the Radio Times describing him as "almost a one-man Reformation" during that period), so it feels as if this could have been a missed opportunity to show something like Passion of Joan of Arc or Master of the House that would have been more relevant. I suppose it would depend though on which films Film4 has the rights to show. Although the way that the series has been jumping around through time so far, there is still the possibility that it may be taking in Dreyer's career as a whole.

colinr0380 wrote:I was a little disappointed to note that the associated film on Film4 this week is Dreyer's Ordet. It seems that the Story of Film episode tonight is focused more on Dreyer's 20s period (the Radio Times describing him as "almost a one-man Reformation" during that period), so it feels as if this could have been a missed opportunity to show something like Passion of Joan of Arc or Master of the House that would have been more relevant. I suppose it would depend though on which films Film4 has the rights to show.

I strongly suspect you've answered your own question. One of the things that always drove me up the wall in my rep cinema days was when a regular would stop me in the foyer and berate me for leaving out an "obvious" title from some season or other - as though I hadn't spent weeks trying to track down a showable print before giving up.

colinr0380 wrote: I can confirm Jonathan's comments that it was the Photoplay version of the film, presumably a repeat from that early 90s Griffith season that Channel 4 did (Does Channel 4 still commission a silent film restoration each year? I have not noticed many being screened on either of their channels for quite a while now, but I may have missed something)

Fuck, fuck, fuck and double and treble fuck. Fuck. Don't know why they didn't broadcast it in Scotland.

I don't think they ever screened Orphans at that time Colin, Broken Blossoms, Birth Of A Nation, and Intolerance were the ones I remembered but I have an awful sense of deja vu here, and wonder if we had this discussion once before.

I don't believe they do commission a Silent, they certainly never show it on TV though there may have been an interface between them not showing it on TV and still screening it at the LIFF, and then not doing anything at all. We used to get it on Boxing Day if memory serves me correctly. Last ones I remember were Phantom Of The Opera and Sunrise but that was a LONG time ago.

Felix wrote:The choice of Silent clips may be conservative for the readers of CF but let's remind ourselves, we are not the general viewing public and the beauty of this series is that it offers intelligent film making for the general viewing public.

I really wish it did, but More4 is a minority channel and Mark Cousins' voice and narrating style will alienate most of the "general viewing public" (and judging by what I've read on other forums it already has). Sadly, I think only us film buffs will stick with it.

I should say that (after a few annoying off hand comments in the first section of the episode) I thought the second episode was much better, since in this one Cousins is talking though film clips themselves rather than giving a worryingly blinkered view of the interaction between art and commerce. In fact it even laid my mind to rest on a few issues - Cousins does actually talk here about the studio system as well (in the Nanook of the North/Sans Soleil section) of the documentary film "being in partnership with real life". So he is acknowledging the issues that I was extremely worried that he was going to sidestep altogether - he is just refusing to acknowledge that they have any worth in and of themselves except for how they impact on an artist's work.

On the whole I was much happier with that second episode, though it shows up even more just how problematic that introductory one was.

MichaelB wrote: I strongly suspect you've answered your own question. One of the things that always drove me up the wall in my rep cinema days was when a regular would stop me in the foyer and berate me for leaving out an "obvious" title from some season or other - as though I hadn't spent weeks trying to track down a showable print before giving up.

Yes, I did (I still have bad memories of that Moviedrome introduction Cousins did where he spent five minutes talking about the director's cut of Luc Besson's Leon and then the film which followed was not only the theatrical version but also was pan and scanned! So I have always been rather wary of TV schedulers since that point! There comes a point where it surely wouldn't have been worth screening it in that state, especially in a Moviedrome season previously defined by showing directors cuts of The Wicker Man and screenings of films in their original aspect ratios. But I digress!) The epsiode tackled all of Dreyer's career so, while still a little achronological, the Film4 screening is in keeping with the way the series is flitting about in its thematic links over time (I particularly liked the connections between moments in Chaplin films and from Some Like It Hot/Bad Timing!), and focusing more on overviews of a director's career in one go.