Odyssey of Images: a complete guide to The Story of Film

This is a visual directory to every film featured in Mark Cousins' 2011 documentary miniseries The Story of Film. I have screen-capped a frame featuring the title of each clip used, so let this serve as a resource both for those who've seen the doc (and want to revisit some of the titles), and those who haven't yet, and need some inspiration.

If you like this sort of thing, I've done it twice before, for Allan Fish's decades countdown and for my own video clip series. You also check out my previous posts on Cousins' opus (and the book it's based on). Beneath the proceeding pictures I've also included links to my own pieces on the films featured by Cousins. Incidentally, if you are a fan you can follow him on Twitter.

The Pebble and the String: an allegory for art

excerpted from an interview with writer Javed Akhtar in Mark Cousins' documentary "The Story of Film" (2011)

"You must have seen children playing with a string and a pebble. They're tying a string to a pebble and they start spinning it over their head. And slowly they keep leaving [makes motion of lowering grip] the string, and it makes bigger and bigger circle. Now, this pebble is the revolt from the tradition. It wants to move away. But the string is the tradition, the continuity of the tradition. It is holding it. But if you break the string, the pebble will fall. If you remove the pebble, the string cannot go that far. This tension of tradition and revolt against the tradition are in a way contradictory but as a matter of fact it is a synthesis: you will always find the synthesis of tradition and revolt against the tradition together in any good art."

Souvenirs from The Story of Film

These screen-caps originally appeared as tweets, highlighting favorite moments from each episode.

Movies I watched in 2012

Capsule reviews of 15 films viewed since January 2012

(This post originally went up on Monday morning, but was quickly bumped. I fear it's been overlooked since, so I'm re-posting it now; I'd really like to hear back from readers on what they thought of these particular films; also I'd like to highlight "Who's Killing Cinema - and Who Cares", my response to the fascinating David Denby article; it went up middle of Saturday night because I couldn't wait, but deserves a bump now too...)

Histoire(s) du Cinema • The Long Day Closes • Madchen in Uniform • Me and My Gal • Melancholia • North Shore • Road to Morocco • Savages • Shoah • The Story of Film • Super 8 •  Tangled • Tanner '88 • Ways of Seeing • The Wind in the Willows

Reading the Movies

A list of the movie books which had the greatest impact on me.


Not so long ago, I moved into a new neighborhood. Before even attempting to settle in, I paid a visit to the local library which, despite its grand exterior, was fairly nondescript within. This was particularly true of the nonfiction section, located downstairs. Endless shelves of books stretched across a close-quartered white-walled basement, completely unadorned and giving off the aura of an abandoned filing room located deep in the bowels of some God-forsaken bureaucracy. There were no labels, cards, or indicators on any of these shelves so I had to scan the stacks by eye to find the movie section.

When I tracked it down (it was one of the first stacks, mid-row, between the circus and television) I was in for a thrilling surprise. Hidden away in this library was a treasury of great seventies film-book classics, many out of print. Consequently, over the past few months, I have read I Lost It at the Movies by Pauline Kael, The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book by Arlene Croce, Godard by Richard Roud, Confessions of a Cultist by Andrew Sarris, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema by Peter Wollen, The Primal Screen by Sarris, and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Kael; at present, I have delved into three more film texts: Politics and Cinema by Sarris, Going Steady by Kael, and The Japanese Film by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie.

I mention this not only to illustrate my passion for reading about the movies, but also to demonstrate that I am only just discovering many seminal texts of the cinema, and that the list which follows is not to be mistaken for a primer on essential reading. I make no claims for the greatness of the following ten books. Nor are they necessarily my favorites; indeed, some have outlived their purpose and I haven't looked at them in years. Many titles are obscure, so fame is not a criterion either. What all these books do have in common is their influence...on me. These are the books that informed me, excited me, provoked me, the ones that introduced me to The Wolf Man and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Taxi Driver and Celine and Julie Go Boating and Le Vent d'Est.

Beyond these ten, I will deliver honorable mention to another fifteen books which were not quite as crucial to my development. Nonetheless, they are highly noteworthy and in some cases, may have been even more constant companions than those titles in the top ten. I will (briefly) tell you why...and then the ball is yours. Run with it. I would love for everyone reading this list to compose their own personal top ten. There are no rules in how you chose to play this game, no guidelines save one:

RULE #1:
YOU MUST CREDIT THIS BLOG AND LINK TO THIS POST IN YOUR RESPONSE!

Just a small matter (but one which was sadly neglected the last time I tried this!).

Also one very strong recommendation - please tag five more people so that we can keep this going.

The rest is up to you.

Here is my own list, titles followed by the stories of how we met...