Bringing together the entire History of Cinema in a single audiovisual work is, at a glance, an impossible task. Well then, this is what the historian did, critic and filmmaker of Irish origin Mark Cousins in a work presented around the world back in the year 2011 with the title, already premonitory of what one was going to find, of The history of cinema: an odyssey. A mammoth job, but very entertaining, of 900 minutes duration divided into 15 episodes that try to do just that, invite us to a new and very stimulating journey through the history of the so-called seventh art.
And if we say the title is premonitory, we do so for two reasons.. The first is because Cousins' work is, above all, that, an odyssey, a trip. And like every trip it is, especially, discovery or, we could say, of re-discovery, an invitation that points, input, towards two other new directions. The first refers to the fact that, although it seems obvious, The History of Cinema cannot be understood without the evolution of the technology that supports it. Born at the end of the 19th century and developed throughout the 20th century, Cinema is an art that has been irremediably linked to the runaway development that the Industrial Revolution suffered throughout the last century.. So, Cousins takes us on a tour of the different technical advances, from the development of cameras and all the tools that accompany the practice of cinema, even the different ways of projecting, arriving in the last chapters to show us how cinema can escape from the traditional screen to occupy natural or architectural spaces and, however, continue being cinema.
That technical evolution, has led to the evolution of the language of cinema. According to the cameras they have become lighter, as lenses have evolved and new technological elements have been incorporated, the art of cinema has been changing. From the wooden chambers of the Lumière brothers, passing through the great cinema devices of the first decades of the century, to today's modern and light cameras or the appearance of the so-called steady-cam, which allowed the camera to be carried in the hand without any shocks in the image (and how well Stanley Kubrick used it in The glow), going through modern digitalization technologies and special effects, the cinema, his way of telling us stories, It has been transformed in a way that its inventors could never have imagined.. It's not free, in this sense, that the first images we see in this series of a film are those of Saving Private Ryan, by director Steven Spielberg. Without a doubt one of the peaks of recent cinema where these advances can be seen in all their practical sense.. How could Spielberg have achieved that degree of realism without the help of modern technology?? On your tape, camera and, especially sound, They give a feeling of immersion that would not have been possible just a few decades ago. The technique would open, So, space for new languages and forms. There are hundreds of examples throughout this work.
But the second reason why the title of this vast work is a clear preview of what we are going to see is, precisely, for that totalizing intention that it has. Con The story of film: an odyssey, Mark Cousins has intended, no more no less, to rewrite the story that until then we had of official History (or more widespread) of Cinema. A story that pivoted especially on a Western perspective, mostly North American, but also European. Cousins tells us that this view is erroneous and even, suggests us, a bit racist for everything it omits. And that which omits or subtracts, is the most relevant, not so much for what it contributes to our own knowledge about cinema, but for that vision that comes with it and that invites us to stop looking at our navel and look up., towards a new horizon that we no longer perceive as a limit or border, but like an open door to new worlds.
For Cousins, cinema is a universal art. Born in France (and in New Jersey), The invention quickly spread to all the countries in the world that, each one in their own way, they developed their own art. So, so relevant is the cinema of the American New Wave of the years 70, like what was happening in Senegal at that very moment, thousands of miles away. In North America at the beginning of the 20th century, cinema appeared as mere entertainment, but it was soon to develop into a major art. From France to Germany, Russia, Poland, Romania or Japan, the art of cinema was going to expand throughout the globe, contributing, from every culture, your own vision of life. Cinema as a receptacle for stories of all kinds, from comedy to musical, passing through the modern blockbusters, but also as a political or ideological weapon. This global vision is especially accentuated when approaching African and Asian cinematography.. If we asked ourselves who is the best-known actor in the world, what would we answer? Well no, it’s not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. I called Amitabh Bachchan. Because? The answer is in this series.
From Chaplin and Keaton, a Hitchcock y Hawks, from Orson Wells to Stanley Donen, passing through Kurosawa, Ozu and Youssef Chahine, also Von Trier, Bergman, Fellini or Passolini, de Polanski and Tarkovsky, by Nagisa Oshima and Mani Kaul, Paul Schrader, Win Wenders, Ken Loach o Jodorowsky, but also John Sayles or Kieslowski, from Kiarostami to Claire Denis, going through Tarantino, The Cohen Brothers, Lynch, Christopher Nolan about Alexander Sokurov. But, even so, all this is just a sample, Well this job is, In fact, an invitation to continue investigating on your own and make your own story.
Having said that, let no one be scared, The story of Film es, first of all, a very fun work. Told by Mark Cousins himself (with a voice that sometimes reminds us of Werner Herzog from his documentaries), It is essential to see this work in its original version. The Cousins series is, first of all, an enthusiastic and militant work, loaded with a fine irony that points, as we said, to a new conception of the global history of cinema. But, above all, It also points against a vision of the art of cinema understood as something more than a mere spectacle without soul.. Of course cinema is a business. And we must not forget that cinema is, probably, the most expensive art form in the world. But it's not just that. It can't be. Cinema is not just figures and box office data. It's much more. It is also a bridge to life. You can find it in of the movie. GERARDO LEON
