Watching The Story Of Film.

I'm netflixing my way through a documentary series called, The Story of Film.

It's kind of quirky.

The narrator/writer is a Scottish guy, who if you close your eyes and think "German", you'd swear was Werner Herzog because of the measured way he talks.  (How Scottish can sound German is a mystery...)  So that's a little distracting.

He seemed determined to include all the world cinema in his series.  So sometimes it's seems a little bit of a reach.  He can't quite ignore Hollywood, though it seems like he wants to.  Many of the directors from around the world end up there, afterall.

To his credit, he says right at the opening sequence that he's interested in the art not the commerce of film.  But he's definitely got a love hate relationship with Hollywood.

He uses a lot of street corners and traffic and empty buildings as background, which sometimes seems very tangentially connected to what he's saying. Some kind of thematic symbolism that is not always apparent to me.  (Not sure why he couldn't use a constant stream of movies in the background, though the empty street corners do have a way of making me concentrate on what he's saying.)

His interviews also are pretty odd.  He interviews some very odd people -- like the daughter of an important players best friend or something.  What the interviewee is saying often isn't the point the point he seems to be trying to make.  And, something that's kind of funny, they often seemed annoyed by his questions.

There is a certain lack of awareness of irony in some of what he says versus the interviews.  For instance, he'll talk about 'leftist cant' in French cinema, and yet seems unaware that his narration is full of the same thing. 

There's a funny leftist cant/politically correct aspect (see above about "world" cinema at all costs).  For instance, when talking about the movie 'Napoleon' he throws in this howler about how the invasion of Italy was "a completely illegal act" (I'm paraphrasing.) 

Well, for goodness sake.  It's Napoleon!!

There are a couple of important redeeming characteristics, though.

One, is he really does do a good job of working his way through the important events and directors and studios.

Secondly, he says something pretty thought provoking about every five minutes or so -- which is about ten times more often than most documentaries these days.

They are full hour long episodes, not the forty minute variety, which makes them seem long, and thick, and interesting and thought-provoking, so the quirks become something almost endearing.