Coffee with Fiona and the ever-charming Mark Cousins. He was fresh from prostrating himself at the feet of Terence Davies in Cannes, where Davies’ new documentary, OF TIME AND THE CITY, had reduced him to tears. He says he’s found himself tearing up almost every time he’s tried to discuss the film since. He and Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw were chatting about it after the screening and neither could hold back their tears. That must have been quite a scene. But I bet it has the same effect when it plays Edinburgh.
Apparently both Davies’ unmade drama projects now have a bit of heat again, after his Cannes success. Even French critics who were not overly familiar with Davies were blown away by it.
I’m reminded of Mitchell Leisen’s TO EACH HIS OWN. It ends abruptly at its emotional peak, and audiences were staggering from the cinema, blinded with tears, crashing into the walls and each other and generally gashing their heads and knees. Cinema proprietors contacted Leisen and begged him to add thirty seconds of nothingness, chatter or additional end credits to the film just to allow patrons to compose themselves. His response: “No.”
Mark is now well into the production of his eight-hour television version of The Story of Film. The book comes with a quote from Sean Connery. I remember reading it: “Mark Cousins is incapable of writing anything about cinema -” at which point I thought, “Hang on… That’s not very nice!” but the Great Man goes on, “- without making it fascinating.” I mentioned this to Mark one time and he said that when Connery dictated the quote over the phone, he actually paused at just that point. “The cheeky monkey.”
My mercenary purpose in dragging Mark across town for this meeting was to extract from him copies of the rare and out-of-print THE HUMAN CONDITION trilogy by Shadowplay favourite Masaki Kobayashi, which I successfully did, so I’ll be writing about those beauties as soon as I’ve watched all nine hours.
Nine hours???!!!
Mark bought the films years ago on the advice of a friend who described them as the greatest film/s ever. The fact that Volumes 2 and 3 of Mark’s set are still shrink-wrapped strongly suggests that Mark did not share this view…
But he very kindly encouraged me to take my blogging skills, whatever they may be, into the more lucrative world of the printed page, and advised me on whom to approach. So, now I need to think about what kind of film book I would write. Any suggestions?
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