Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 31, 2023

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of The Complete Story of Film.

The Complete Story of Film encountered so many ultimately hilarious delays in being released on Blu-ray that I started a running joke with another film journalist friend who was getting the same seemingly endless "street date change" announcements from Music Box Films. After each and every PR blast alerting us to yet another delay, I'd ask, "What? Are they including [insert name of movie released that particular week] now?" Hey, when you've advertised your documentary as the complete story, it had better be complete, hadn't it? Of course, since people are still evidently making and releasing films up to and including the very day you may be reading this, a complete story may be well nigh impossible. One way or the other, the long wait for The Complete Story of Film may be worth it for those who like a whirlwind tour through decades of international cinema, with an approach which amounts to a more or less "meta" demonstration of so-called "montage theory", though there may be some stylistic and even content quirks here that could chafe against certain sensibilities. Written, directed and narrated by Mark Cousins (to frankly varying effect), The Story of Film: An Odyssey was first broadcast in 2011, and then a decade later Cousins followed things up with The Story of Film: A New Generation, which premiered at Cannes in 2021. This Blu-ray collection aggregates both pieces in a four disc set.

Norman, is that you?

The Story of Film: An Odyssey takes up three of the four discs in The Complete Story of Film set, and it's not hard to understand why, since this documentary covers everything from the birth of the moving image up through right before the year of this piece's production (2011). Cousins makes a rather provocative assertion very early in his narration, claiming that "the story of film" is inherently "racist", a comment to which I wanted to immediately respond, "Whose story of film?" If you're interviewing a basement bound teen who sits around watching slasher films all day, you're obviously going to get a different "story" than if, for example, you started quizzing the likes of Martin Scorsese about his World Cinema Project, and as such I found this comment along with other "pronouncements" by Cousins to be unhelpful at best and factually inaccurate at worst. Cousins is Irish, and if I may be permitted a moment of cultural stereotyping if not outright racism, he has both the gift of gab and perhaps just a bit of a predilection toward blarney and/or malarkey, as the "racist" introduction may indicate. At least he has a point of view, and The Story of Film: An Odyssey does attempt to provide a global overview of the evolution of cinema.

Now if some of Cousins' assertions may be perceived as a negative, one undeniable positive is that Cousins has a gift for Poetry, by which I don't necessarily mean in terms of offering flowery language (which Cousins most definitely does do), but more in an almost "metaphysical" sense in his ability to draw sometimes breathtaking comparisons between rather disparate films. It's here that The Story of Film: An Odyssey finds its true genius, as well as offering what is at least interstitially an unavoidable exercise in montage theory as Cousins cuts from film to film to film. Interspersed with the truly overwhelming number of films sampled throughout the over 900 minutes of this documentary's running time are some more curious newly shot moments, some of which are thematically tied to Cousins' frequent referrals to "phantom rides" (i.e., POV shots taken from the front of trains or cars and the like), and others which may simply offer various views of people staring into the camera.

There are also some interesting if kind of random feeling interviews with various people in the global film community, ranging from Norman Lloyd to Sharmila Tagore. I will say I felt that Cousins was trying at times to twist his content around some of the evidently more newly done interviews, rather than vice versa. In that regard, some of the archival interviews might contextually fare better, even in (again) a "meta" sense, as in a downright hilarious clip of Peter Bogdanovich in his hoity toity critic mode interviewing John Ford, who quickly shuts things down with a loud "Cut!" to the cameraman.

Anyone who works in this line, where we're tasked with giving our opinions on films, knows that public reaction can be widely variant to sometimes even seemingly innocent commentary, and so I'm not immune to the fact that it's inherently ironic that I should offer my opinion about Cousins' opinion(s). I will say that Cousins has the sort of dogmatic demeanor that almost makes you want to question his authority, but he so frequently comes up with unexpected combinations, as well as delving into all manner of lesser known films, that he ultimately offers more than enough insight to offset any deficits. The fact that this set's insert booklet offers almost eleven pages of a list (in a rather small font) of films utilized in the documentary, spanning from the 1880s to 2010, may give some indication as to just how wide the net Cousins attempts to throw here is.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Story of Film: An Odyssey is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in a variety of aspect ratios, but with much of the newer interview footage in 1.78:1. This piece is so gobsmackingly all encompassing that there's simply no way there wouldn't be pretty wide variances in image quality, and that's certainly the case here, though I will say on the whole, while this is ostensibly a progressive presentation, it looked to me like quite a few of the film clips may have had an interlaced element at some point during the workflow, and some in fact looked upscaled. More modern digitally captured productions tend to fare better than some of the film offerings, but that said many of the film offerings have good detail levels and a generally natural appearance. There is a glut of both archival and what I assume was newly shot interview material. The new material has some extremely odd framings at times (see screenshots 1 and 14 for two examples), but offers good clarity and commendable detail levels.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Story of Film: An Odyssey features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 options. The surround track opens up some of the omnipresent scoring (which kind of hilariously utilizes what I assume is some stock music, some of which sounds almost exactly what they use during the "which house will they choose" segments on HGTV's House Hunters). There is intermittent engagement of the surrounds courtesy of various sound effects as well as some of the actual soundtracks, though I'd argue more with regard to the former element than the latter, especially since so much of this piece covers material either in the silent or monoaural eras. Cousins' lilting brogue is front and center and always easy to discern. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only on disc supplement is a Trailer (HD; 1:27) for The Story of Film: A New Generation, which is offered on Disc Four of this four disc release. However, the very nicely designed quasi-DigiPack (all cardboard which unfolds into five sections, with discs in cardboard sleeves) features a wonderful insert booklet which rather incredibly lists all of the films utilized, so that those interested might go back and do their own independent research.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the funniest all time comments someone ever posted about one of my reviews was "I wish reviewers would just stop offering their opinions", and if you feel the same way, The Story of Film: An Odyssey is probably not for you. Cousins is simply full of opinions, and some of them may frankly strike you as being daft, as I'm told the Irish are fond of saying, but others just may take your breath away, if only for a moment. This is an audacious achievement one way or the other and serves as a fascinating example of just how exhaustive one man's approach to a medium can be. Technical merits are generally solid, and The Story of Film: An Odyssey comes Recommended.