S01E01 Birth of the Cinema
Mark Cousins tells the story of cinema, starting in this episode with the birth of the movies, telling the glamorous, surprising stories of early moviemaking and the first film stars.
The Story of Film: An Odyssey
S01E04: The Arrival of Sound
The coming of sound in the 1930s upends everything. We watch the birth of new types of film: screwball comedies, gangster pictures, horror films, westerns and musicals, and discover a master of most of them, Howard Hawks. Alfred Hitchcock hits his stride and French directors become masters of mood.
Overview
A worldwide guided tour of the greatest movies ever made and the story of international cinema through the history of cinematic innovation.
Episodes
S01E02 The Hollywood Dream
Movies in the Roaring Twenties: Hollywood became a glittering entertainment industry with star directors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. But the gloss and fantasy was challenged by movie makers like Robert Flaherty, Eric Von...
S01E03 The Golden Age of World Cinema
The 1920s were a golden age for world cinema. The programme visits Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai and Tokyo to explore the places where movie makers were pushing the boundaries of the medium. German expressionism, Soviet...
S01E04 The Arrival of Sound
The coming of sound in the 1930s upends everything. We watch the birth of new types of film: screwball comedies, gangster pictures, horror films, westerns and musicals, and discover a master of most of them,...
S01E05 Post-War Cinema
Mark Cousins explores how the trauma of war led to more daring creations for cinema, focusing on the darkening of American film and the drama of the McCarthy years. Screenwriters Paul Schrader and Robert Towne...
S01E06 Sex & Melodrama
Sex and melodrama in the movies of the fifties: James Dean, On the Waterfront and glossy weepies. We travel to Egypt, India, China, Mexico, Britain and Japan to find that movies there were also full...
S01E07 European New Wave
The explosive story of film in the late fifties and sixties: The great movie star Claudia Cardinale talks exclusively about Federico Fellini; in Denmark, Lars von Trier describes his admiration for Ingmar Bergman; and Bernardo...
S01E08 New Directors, New Form
The dazzling 1960s in cinema around the world: In Hollywood, legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler reveals how documentary influenced mainstream movies. Easy Rider and 2001: A Space Odyssey signal a new era in America cinema. We...
S01E09 American Cinema of the 70s
The maturing of American cinema of the late sixties and seventies: Buck Henry, writer of The Graduate, talks exclusively about movie satire of the time. Paul Schrader reveals his thoughts on his existential screenplay for...
S01E10 Movies to Change the World
The movies that tried to change the world in the seventies: Wim Wenders in Germany; Ken Loach and Britain; Pasolini in Italy; the birth of new Australian cinema; and then Japan, which was making the...
S01E11 The Arrival of Multiplexes and Asian Mainstream
Star Wars, Jaws and The Exorcist created the multiplexes, but they were also innovative. In India the world’s most famous movie star, Amitabh Bachchan, shows how Bollywood was doing new things in the seventies too....
S01E12 Fight the Power: Protest in Film
Protest in the movies of the 1980s: brave filmmakers spoke truth to power. American independent director John Sayles talks exclusively about these years. In Beijing, Chinese cinema blossomed before the Tiananmen crackdown. In the Soviet...
S01E13 New Boundaries: World Cinema in Africa, Asia & Latin America
Film in the 1990s enters a surprise golden age. In Iran we meet Abbas Kiarostami, who rethought movie making and made it more real. Then, in Tokyo, we meet Shinji Tsukamoto, who laid the ground...
S01E14 New American Independents & The Digital Revolution
Brilliant, flashy, playful movies in the English speaking world in the nineties. We look at what was new in Tarantino’s dialogue and the edginess of the Coen Brothers. The writer of Starship Troopers and Robocop...
S01E15 Cinema Today and the Future
Movies come full circle: They get more serious after 9/11, and Romanian movies come to the fore. But then David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive becomes one of the most complex dream films ever made and Inception...
Cast
Mark Cousins
Presenter / Narrator
Mario Cordova
Narratore
