MovieChat Forums > The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011) Discussion > A Warning to the Curious

A Warning to the Curious

posted 12 years ago by AssetsonFire
7 replies | jump to latest

Just a warning for any prospective viewers of The Story of Film. The series features spoilers for many films. I just finished watching L'humanite, and while doing so I couldn't help but recall the footage featured in the series and Mark Cousins' commentary on it. Likewise for Stalker, which I've yet to see, I can't now think of it without visualising a vibrating glass of water. It's a shame that a documentary about the magic of cinema lacks a consideration for the sense of spontaneous discovery that's one of its foremost pleasures. If you're bothered by spoilers, I suggest that you skip through the sections regarding any films you intend to watch in the near future and return to them later for Cousins' take.

Oh whisky, leave me alone.

[–] Enekobus 12 years ago

That's my biggest problem with it. It doesn't matter that much of what he says is pure opinion, but he has to talk about the ending shots of so many movies. He doesn't take into consideration storytelling and it's so infuriating! I saw Pickpocket and the ending wasn't nearly as powerful since I knew what was going to happen. He started talking about the ending of Reservoir Dogs, which I've never seen but I want to so I had to fast forward.

Agreed with your last sentence 100%. The minute he says 'in this last shot' I suggest making a note and coming back after watching.

Milk...it does a body dead

[–] kazzy312 12 years ago

Thanks for the warning. I too haven't seen either L'humanite or Stalker. I've seen the list of films that are featured in the documentary but I wonder how many of them are "spoiled" by Cousins?

[–] rudykawa 11 years ago

On the other hand many times when I watch a documentary or read reviews It's a bit disapointing that they get so much worried about spoilers that they don't even discuss anything about the movie. It's always a small summary from the story, but they can't discuss cinematography, editing, etc, and how everything was constructed because this could somehow reveal that a character is bad or something else.

Maybe some documentaries (as some movies) are meant to people that has already a broader collection of watched movies.

[–] AssetsonFire 11 years ago

The series was certainly designed as an introduction to the world of film as art, aimed at a fairly broad audience. Even so, there are several extremely obscure films featured that I believe even most film scholars won't have seen. You can quite easily discuss important elements of most films without spoiling significant events. My point is, as you must have seen, the ending of the film was often the direct subject under discussion, e.g. (paraphrasing) "Here is the end of Nostalghia, where we discover that the man had been living in an abandoned Cathedral the whole time".

~.~
I WANT THE TRUTH! http://www.imdb.com/list/ze4EduNaQ-s/

[–] idioteque123 11 years ago

I came here to mention this. I haven't seen the movies mentioned but plan to at some point. It was really pissing me and my roommate off. I think Memories of Murder, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Pickpocket were among them. I've seen Stalker before but it's still a total WTF

[–] L84AD8 11 years ago

If you look up the 101 best films ever made you can get lists from New York Times critics, Roger Ebert, Netflix Critics' Picks, etc., and you can also copy the list of movies included in Mark Cousins' documentary from hopscotchfilms' website.

http://www.hopscotchfilms.co.uk/storage/Story%20of%20Film%20list%20blo g.pdf

However, I would recommend avoiding the list and avoiding the documentary. Mark Cousins is like Lucy walking around making up scientific explanations to Charlie Brown.

Sh-it's a secret!

[–] dalbrech 11 years ago

Cousins is doing one of the oldest tricks of the phony intellectual;Finding some really obscure film and then proclaiming it as a true masterpiece and then dismissing a highly regarded film as garbage.And of course all the intellectual wannabes watching the series eat it up.

I'll Teach You To Laugh At Something's That's Funny
Homer Simpson