Popular reviews

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 20

  The Story of Film is a fifteen hour documentary series about the history of world cinema which is thorough, informative, knowledgeable, and just about everything you could want from a fifteen hour documentary series about the history of world cinema. If you're interested in film studies or in learning about the backstory of a medium we all know and love then this is a great resource which supplies a solid chunk of film school knowledge.

  There's just one important thing to keep in mind: its "story of film" is a revisionist account of the past which is far from objective. Writer/director Mark Cousins has a very distinct ideological perspective, and he wants to change the way people see film history.…

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★★ 14

  As a history buff and cinephile, my bookcase is filled with books on the history of film, and I watch every documentary on the subject that comes across my path. The most recent was this one, courtesy to M0n0, and 900 minutes on the history of film immediately piqued my interest.

  And I believe the most positive thing I can say is how in-depth the documentary goes into exploring film internationally and taking us through the history of cinema across the world. Along with the United States, I was able to learn about movies in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, Brazil, China, Japan, and other locations. I already knew a lot of the stuff, but I was able to…

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  Review by Tom Morton ★★ 13

  It's hard for me to objectively review this after watching it in chunks over the last couple of weeks. I definitely remember, early on, thinking that it was really good - there was certainly some wonderful stuff about silent film, I'm sure of it. I'm not sure if it gets worse as it moves into the modern day or if Mark Cousins' bad habits just add up as they go along, but by the end, watching the last couple of episodes tonight, it made me SO angry. His shit visual metaphors, the interviews that go nowhere, the unexplained superlatives, the fact that he couldn't let footage of some people creating moulds go past without saying "breaking the mould" twice.

  I…

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  Review by autocinephilia 3

  I watched the entire thing over the weekend and finished it today, and for a documentary lasting fifteen hours, Mark Cousins' love-letter to cinema wasn't difficult to get through at all. Cousins details an incredibly large sample of world cinema in his fifteen hour film-school lecture, and although not as comprehensive as a real film class, this documentary is a great primer for anyone interested in film's history and its evolving techniques.

  Cousins greatest strength is that his examination of film does a good job at balancing time between each era, and he approaches all styles and genres without bias. For example, he doesn't get overtly nostalgic when addressing the change from film to digital, and focuses on the innovations…

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  Review by Arjun Rajput ★★★★ 5

  Essential viewing for anyone interested in film history. 15 hours of this honestly gives a better all-round perspective than a year of film school about important film movements, key filmmakers, narrative innovations, business and the notion of cinema in different countries. The best part about it though, is how relentless it is in pinning down Hollywood over and over again.

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  Review by Colin ★★★★½ 11

  Beautifully narrated series and that's not sarcasm I do genuinely like Mark Cousins voice.

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  Review by pileofcrowns

  There's an oft-told story of film that goes something like this: D.W. Griffith invented everything, the French New Wave reinvented everything, and New Hollywood perfected everything. It's a dangerous story because it's factually incorrect, not to mention Eurocentric and simplistic. Numerous objections to that story of film have sprung up over the years, rightly in my view, that emphasize overlooked films and overlooked filmmakers, that incorporate, even highlight, non-Western cinema and the great cinematic achievements of women.

  That new revised version of film history strives to be objective, neutral, inclusive, universal. I personally don't think it is truly objective, but it is, for better or worse, the new canonical history of film, the story of film that is roughly accepted…

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  Review by A.A. Dowd 2

  Did you know that Orson Welles saw Stagecoach 30 times before making Citizen Kane? Or that Billy Wilder had a sign outside his office that read, HOW WOULD LUBITSCH DO IT? The history of cinema is a history of connection—of filmmakers borrowing, stealing, and learning from each other. That's one of the driving principles of The Story of Film: An Odyssey, a 15-hour documentary made for British television that chronicles more than a century of moviemaking across six continents. The Music Box will unfurl this episodic epic over seven weeks, screening two one-hour installments back-to-back Saturday and Sunday mornings through mid-November (with three episodes the last weekend).

  For those without an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, the movie is an invaluable…

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  Review by megan ★★★ 2

  it took me 27 days to watch all of this mini series

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  Review by DIREKTIONZ 14

  Just seen one episode therefore I’m not going to rate this, but I’m also not recommending this. It’s not a mandatory watch for the history of cinema, not in my eyes. It’s overly self-indulgent and pretentious with an, for me, unbearable voice-over work. Couldn’t stand one second of this

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  Review by ‮حُسَين‬ ★★★★★ 9

  هذا العمل هو موسوعة سينمائية وليس مجرد وثائقي فهو يغوص في تاريخ السينما وكأنها كيان حي يسرد رحلته منذ لحظة ميلاده وحتى تحوله إلى أحد أعظم الفنون في تاريخ البشرية وكأن السينما تتحدث عن حياتها بدأت كضوء بسيط وحركة خفيفة على الشاشة، ثم تحولت إلى لغة عالمية تفهمها القلوب قبل العقول ومن هناك، ينتقل العمل إلى استعراض الحركات السينمائية العظيمة، منذ السينما الصامتة التي ولدت الفن البصري، مرورًا بالعصر الذهبي لهوليوود الذي شكل أفلامًا خالدة، إلى التعبيرية الألمانية التي عبّرت عن الجانب المظلم للنفس البشرية، وصولاً إلى الموجة الفرنسية الجديدة التي جددت الأساليب السينمائية؛ كل حقبة وحركة أسهمت في تطور السينما بشكل فريد وأضافت بعداً فلسفياً وفنياً على السرد السينمائي وتسليط الضوء على كل مخرج ساهم في بناء هذا الفن…

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  Review by Hutch ★★★★ 4

  When I used to frequent the Edinburgh Arts Festival I’d set up my camp at the Film Festival’s HQ where Mark Cousins was the director. I developed a bit of a crush on his soft spoken, lilting, Belfast brogue and even more of one on his passion for cinema. So coming into his fifteen part, fifteen hour, Story of Film, developed from his seminal book of the same name, I’m already in some sort of movie heaven. 

  Cousins’ view of the history of cinema is one I’m highly sympathetic to. His focus is on the innovations, the breakthroughs, the evolutionary steps in film language and the way its stories, forms and ideas have started to cycle back on itself, echoing…