DVD Release: The Story of Film: An Odyssey

DVD Release Date: Nov. 20, 2012
Price: DVD $69.95
Studio: Music Box

2001 is one of hundred of films featured in The Story of Film: An Odyssey.

The 15-hour-long 2011 documentary production The Story of Film: An Odyssey isn’t fooling around when it sets off on its mission to survey the history of cinema, beginning with the invention of motion pictures at the end of the 19th Century and up through the multi-billion dollar globalized digital industry of the 21^st Century. Directed and hosted by film historian Mark Cousins, it’s undeniably a monumental work about yesterday and tomorrow—and everything in between.

Researched, curated and filmed over a six year period on five continents, The Story of Film: An Odyssey covers 120 years of world cinema in 15 hour-long installments brimming with more than one thousand film clips from the greatest and most important movies ever made, including. The Birth of a Nation, Frankenstein, The Grand Illusion, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Little Caesar, Blade Runner, The Seventh Seal, Raging Bull, Gone with the Wind, A Hard Day’s Night, City Lights, Saving Private Ryan, Johnny Guitar and Psycho and hundreds more. In Cousin’s own words, he considers his mammoth work to be a “a love letter to cinema.”

There’re also a whole slew of interviews of filmmakers and actors on-hand, including Stanley Donen, Gus van Sant, Lars Von Trier, Wim Wenders, Abbas Kiarostami, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, Jane Campion and Claudia Cardinale.

There are no bonus features on the DVD (as if anyone’s gonna want to watch more than 15 hours).

Here’s the breakdown of the 15 hour-long installments of The Story of Film: An Odyssey:

Part 1 – 1895-1918: The World Discovers – A New Artform.
Part 2 – 1918-1928: The Triumph of American Film – and the First of Its Rebels
Part 3 – 1918-1932: The Great Rebel Filmmakers – Around the World
Part 4 – The 1930s: The Great American Movie Genres – and the Brilliance of European Films
Part 5 – 1939-1952: The Devastation of War – and a New Movie Language
Part 6 – 1953-1957: The Swollen Story – World Cinema Bursting at the Seams
Part 7 – 1957-1964: The Shock of the New – Modern Filmmaking In Western Europe
Part 8 – 1965-1969: New Waves – Sweep Around the World
Part 9 – 1967-1979: New American Cinema
Part 10 – 1969-1979: Radical Directors in the 70s – Make State of the Nation Movies
Part 11 – 1970s and Onwards: Innovation in Popular Culture – Around the World
Part 12 – The 1980s: Moviemaking and Protest – Around the World.
Part 13 – 1990-1998: The Last Days of Celluloid – Before the Coming of Digital
Part 14 – The 1990s: The First Days of Digital – Reality Losing Its Realness in America and Australia
Part 15 – 2000 Onwards: Film Moves Full Circle – and the Future of Movies