Mark Cousins Archives

Mark Cousins discusses Powell and Pressburger

Posted on 13th December 20234th January 2024 by victorfraga

The latest issue of Doesn’t Exist is entirely devoted to the work of Powell and Pressburger, and it features interviews with film historian Ian Christie, journalist and documentarist Mark Cousins and filmmaker Sally Potter. In addition, the magazine includes a recreation Michael Powell’s iconic Peeping Tom (1960) in fashion photoshoot format.

This article contains only the interview highlights. Click here in order to find out more about Doesn’t Exist, and to acquire your luxury hard cover edition right now and read the full interview!

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Victor Fraga – Would there have been a Michael Powell without an Emeric Pressburger, and vice-versa?

Mark Cousins – Each existed without the other, but it was a case of 1+1 = 3. Powell’s extravagant, Blakean visual imagination was ballasted and steered by Pressburger’s European sense of society, psychology and decency.

VF – The filmmakers predate the notion of auteur in film. Are they the earliest British auteurs?

MC – Alfred Hitchcock and producers Alexander Korda and John Grierson are, arguably, the first British auteurs. Powell and Pressburger are the wildest early auteurs of British cinema. They are part of a lineage that includes F. W. Murnau, Federico Fellini and Vera Chytilova.

VF – How would you describe their approach to sexuality? Was there a prevalent beauty stereotype?

MC – In Powell and Pressburger films, you could say that sexuality isn’t just a desire for certain types of people, bodies or types. It’s a multidirectional force, uncorallable and not only confined to one person’s desire for another. Pamela Brown in I Know Where I’m Going! [Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945] is clearly to be adored, a Rousseau-ean force of nature, but the film totally understands Roger Livesey Harris tweet beauty too. The film’s sense of sexual desire overspills heterosexual boundaries. More generally, Arthur Koestler’s idea that creativity is about “bisociation” makes sense in the Powell and Pressburger multiverse. Beauty is polyvalent, Anton Walbrook can stop your heart, Deborah Kerr will almost always make you catch your breath. A deep theme in Powell and Pressburger is a sophisticated hatred of prejudice. They just don’t want to exclude other people. This means that they don’t see desire as otherable. All modes of beauty are their modes of beauty. “Nothing human is alien to me”.

VF – What are the rightful heirs and heiresses of Powell and Pressburger in the 21st century?

MC – Lynne Ramsay. Damien Chazelle.

VF – Why do you think Powell and Pressburger’s films continue to have such a powerful impact on the imagination of so many creatives, in cinema, fashion, arts, music, literature, theatre, among others?

MC – Because they are an exciting eruption of unconscious material. Because they aren’t only wildy stylistically daring, they marshal their high style to real questions about war and history. The closest parallel isn’t in European cinema or the anglophone world. The other filmmakers who really used melodrama to open up to the trauma of history were in… India. Powell and Pressburger are like the best of so called [I never seldom use the word] Bollywood directors. Especially Guru Dutt. But that’s another story.

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The image at the top is from ‘Peeping Tom’, and it belongs to the BFI Archive. The two image belongs to Doesn’t Exist.

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock

Posted on 22nd June 202327th July 2023 by victorfraga

Northern Irish film historian Mark Cousins has made a career of celebrating cinema, digging into the techniques and feelings that have kept us coming back for over a century. Film geeks of a certain age may remember him as the host of Moviedrome in the late 90s, introducing unique classics to late night British TV. More recently, his 15-hour opus The Story of Film is required viewing for those in love with the silver screen. His new work looks at one of film’s most celebrated sons, but in a different way than you would expect.

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock is a visual essay of the Psycho (1960) director’s work. “Personal” insight is provided in the narration by Hitch himself, played by impressionist Alistair McGowan. Speaking from the great beyond, Cousins imagines what the filmmaker would make of the modern world, before finding the universal themes that make his movies timeless – escape, desire, loneliness, time, fulfilment, and height.

While the delivery gives the feeling of a supernatural director’s commentary, the analysis follows the format of many of Cousins’ previous films. Instead of the director’s hushed, calm Ballymena accent showing you what every door opening, colour choice, and character trait represents, this fictional Master of Suspense reveals them himself, as if we were a listening to a man reflecting on his legacy. McGowan is a convincing host, punctuating lines with laboured nasal breaths, while Cousins’ script catches Hitchcock’s conversational style, ending many sentences with rhetorical suffixes like “don’t you think?” Pleasingly, Cousins himself makes a couple of cameos in his own movie, in a nod to its subject.

As you would expect, it’s a splendid tribute to a body of work, breaking down exactly why films like North By Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), and Rear Window (1954) will last forever, without making things too academic. Through his leading man, Cousins presents Hitchcock as someone interested in the showmanship of movies; in playing with our discomfort. He shows that every choice has a purpose, from 1935’s The 39 Steps being filmed on a set to heighten the tension; to 1960 cinema audiences being left in the dark for 30 seconds after Psycho ends, in order to be alone with the thoughts. There are small personal insights, based on things he stated during his life. McGowan’s Hitchcock expresses his pleasure at his birthplace of Leytonstone celebrating his movies, but admitting that this genius was only really ignited once he escaped to America. The chapters on loneliness and fulfilment also tie themselves to his personal life.

However, it should be said that this is not a personal profile. Stories about Hitchcock that have emerged over the years paint a difficult picture for those who venerate him, but despite the intimate nature of the concept Cousins keeps things focus on the movies. Even mentions of relationships, such as that with wife and collaborator Alma Reville, are presented in a professional context. Cousins focuses on cinema without giving the feeling that the rest is ignored, rather it’s just a different sort of conversation.

A treasure trove of trivia, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock invites you to look at the artist from a different angle, away from the persona that he cultivated over the years. Given the amount of words and pictures devoted to the late director, it’s to Cousins’s credit that his reflection rises above the crowd.

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock is in cinemas on Friday, July 21st. On all major VoD platforms the following Monday.

The man behind the great women

Posted on 21st May 202021st May 2020 by victorfraga

Mark Cousins’ Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema is a follow-up to his earlier work, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2016). Again he explores how movies are made, but this time through hundreds of clips from films directed by women.

In actress Tilda Swinton’s introduction voiceover, she says, “Most films have been directed by men; most of the so-called movie classics were directed by men. But for 13 decades and on all six filmmaking continents, thousands of women have been directing films too. Some of the best films. What movies did they make? What techniques did they use? What can we learn about cinema from them? Lets look at film again through the eyes of the world’s women directors. Lets go on a new road movie through cinema.”

The documentary is structured around a series of “how to” questions, the film broken down into 40 chapters that begins with Openings and ends on Song and Dance. In between are chapters discussing a range of subjects, amongst them: believability, framing, tracking, dream and bodies.

In conversation with DMovies, Cousins spoke about being drawn to the external world rather than his internal world, the need to bleed cinema of gender generalisations, and how we all have the power to instigate a change to keep the contributions of women filmmakers alive.

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Paul Risker – Film and storytelling to my mind is a process of answering questions. Would you agree, and what led you to decide to structure the film with a series of “how to” questions?

Mark Cousins – I don’t think I’ve heard the idea that filmmaking is about asking questions, but I can see what you mean. I always ask myself, “How do I avoid banality?” Another way of saying this is, “What is the form?” The conventional way of looking at the great female filmmakers would be chronological, or looking at industry employment trends, or doing interviews, or to report on the Weinstein revelations. I decided to do none of these things. Instead, I wanted to focus on the work of the filmmakers, not their gender or victimisation. Once you decide to look at the work, then – if you’re a filmmaker rather than a more theoretical person – you end up, by a process of elimination, asking “how” to questions.

PR – One of optimistic impressions to take away from Women Make Film is that in spite of women filmmakers being marginalised, they’ve found a way to express their creativity. Would you agree that this is a source of optimism?

MC – I agree that Women Make Film is a work of optimism, or I’d say affirmation. It’s about what has been made, rather than what hasn’t been made. I passionately believe in structural change in the film world and the revolution against sexism, but – also – years ago I became a bit impatient with those activists who hadn’t actually seen many of the thousands of films directed by women.

Also, I don’t quite see the great films directed by women as a sign that human storytelling can’t be silenced. I don’t think that film is necessarily a storytelling medium, to be honest. I realise that sounds contrary, but many of my favourite films: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958), Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985), The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, 1990), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968), D’est (Chantal Akerman, 1995), etc, aren’t really very story driven! And on your bigger point about creativity: Again I don’t want to sound contrary, but when people make films (or make anything) they are not necessarily expressing themselves! I certainly don’t have a rich inner life that I’m desperate to share with the world. It’s the world, the outer life that is rich, and I use my cinema to clock it, to bear witness to the richness and to throw my anchor onto it.

PR – In your opinion, does it harm cinema to have a focus on gender? Should the end goal be beyond equality, reducing the focus on gender to appreciate the filmmaker as “filmmaker?”

MC – Focusing on gender was a necessary means to an end. I hugely admire the pioneering film feminists of the 1970s and since, who came up with ideas such as the male gaze. But the end was not, I think, to identify and separate male and female cinema, as if they are black and white chess pieces. The idea, surely, was to out the unacknowledged power and gender imbalances in film production and aesthetics. Once that was done and at the very moment it was done, it was also important to bleed cinema of gender generalisations, like you bleed a radiator. There is nothing gendered about the movie frame; it’s an androgynous rectangle, and that’s one of the reasons why shy people and queer people in particular like it. To go to the cinema is to escape the pressure to be what a man or woman is supposed to be like. The voice-over artists in WMF have all brilliantly embodied that in their work.

PR – In your video essay on the Blu-Ray release, you speak about your collaborators who watched films, suggesting scenes, supporting you in researching and making the film. Hearing this, my immediate thought was how we can only understand film together – filmmakers, critics, audiences, academics and scholars, amongst others including technicians and actors. To my mind, you remind us of the importance of a community of ideas, of sharing to fully understand cinema.

MC – In my real life, I totally agree with you on this. Co-operation is one of the biggest themes – it’s the final message in the first great poem, the epic of Gilgamesh, for example. And yes, my collaborators on this film were great: John Archer and Clara Glynn at Hopscotch Films, my regular editor Timo Langer, executive producer and voiceover artist Tilda Swinton. The other voiceover artists: Jane Fonda, Debra Winger, Sharmila Tagore, Kerry Fox, Adjoa Andoh, Thandie Newton. Our London-based researcher Sonali Battarachya, the great LA film historian Cari Beauchamp, etc. But I hope you don’t think I’m again trying to disagree with you! My desire for cinema has always been a solitary thing. I’m quite an anxious person, and am often worrying what other people around me are thinking. Alone in front of the screen, such social and psychological worries ebb.

PR – Do you believe access to film should continue to be a concern? I ask because there are filmmakers featured in this documentary whose work audiences will likely only see these small glimpses.

MC – Definitely, and Women Make Film is a shoulder to the wheel of advancement. Many of the filmmakers featured within it are dead, but that doesn’t mean that their work has stopped contributing to film culture. In some cases – for example the McDonagh sisters in Australia, who were successful in the silent time – the directors have stopped (been prevented from) contributing to movie culture. We can make that change; everyone reading this can make it change.

PR – Speaking with Pollyanna McIntosh about her feature directorial debut Darlin’, she told me, “I’d love to just never talk about the film and just let people experience it how they experience it, because you don’t make a film to say: This is what the case is, this is the truth”. Do you agree with this sentiment, and what are your hopes for the experience of the audience?

MC – Totally. On the day that I complete a film, I want to stop speaking about it because the thinking is over, the picture is locked, the sound is mixed. The reason that I do speak about my work a bit is because it’s a tough world out there for fledglings.

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

Posted on 21st May 202027th May 2020 by victorfraga

These are the words spoken by actress Tilda Swinton in the introduction voice-over: “Most films have been directed by men; most of the so-called movie classics were directed by men. But for 13 decades and on all six continents, thousands of women have been directing films. too. Some of the best films. What movies did they make? What techniques did they use? What can we learn about cinema from them? Lets look at film again through the eyes of the world’s women directors. Lets go on a new road movie through cinema”. Mark Cousins’ Women Make Film: A New Road Movie is a follow-up to his earlier work, The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011). Once again, he explores how movies are made, but this time through hundreds of clips from films directed by women.

The world is a place of exclusion and inequality, and Mark Cousins’s important, one might say necessary road movie is an effort to right the wrong of so many voices ignored through exclusion and inequality in film. But this is not a film with any agenda other than to acknowledge and recognise their contribution to what is a communal and collaborative art form. Cousins in a video essay included on the Blu-ray, frames his intent to not see them as victims. Yet that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t feel anger or frustration, because speaking with the director, he says, “It’s not to plead a special case for women directors; it’s just to be enraged at their lack of level playing field, their sequestration”

It’s a shared human want to have someone to listen to us. Most people want to be heard and understood, and a work of art is no different. When I interviewed director Terence Davies about his Emily Dickinson biopic, A Quiet Passio (2016), he observed, “She obviously needed to express herself deeply in poetry like everyone else who works in any kind of art form. You want a response, you need a response and if there is no response or a response is indifferent, where do you find the courage to go on?”

Thinking back on these words now, Women Make Film is important and necessary because it is the act of listening. It transcends fixed critical terminology for rating the effectiveness of a film. The 14-hour-long documentary is simultaneously an enthralling road movie and a vital resource of knowledge, that will speak to those people who appreciate a thoughtful awareness of cinema.

One of our common misconceptions is that wisdom comes with age – it does not, it comes with life experiences. Cousins’ latest work, and his A Story of Film: An Odyssey, wrap themselves around this idea, because a lack of awareness is a lack of wisdom, and cinema is a language understood not simply by a numerical count. What you see and how you critique, and by this I mean to thoughtfully understand, is what cultivates a genuine wisdom, and Cousins’ contributions are invaluable in offering a hand to guide us.

David Mamet said, “The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, ‘What does the protagonist want?’ That’s what drama is. It comes down to that. It’s not about theme, it’s not about ideas, it’s not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.” Cousins structures this around a series of “how to” questions, the film broken down into 40 chapters that begins with Openings and ends on Song and Dance. In between are chapters discussing: believability, framing, tracking, dream and bodies. The choice of structure taps into film and storytelling as a process of answering questions, but more importantly, he builds the structure around themes and ideas, yet also how the filmmaker achieves what it is they want. Positioning the filmmaker as a protagonist, the result of the drama, the focus on themes and ideas are what these women filmmakers want, as much as what their characters want.

The passion and interest of the filmmaker shines through in Women Make Film. It lacks the authoritative bravado that can cripple academia – the brashness by some academics and scholars to forcefully state what a film means, as opposed to suggest a reading or a flexible point of view – a possibility of interpretation. Cousins possesses a humility towards his craft, and his ideas communicated in the chapter voiceovers by Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Debra Winger, Sharmila Tagore, Kerry Fox, Adjoa Andoh and Thandie Newton, one can almost hear a sound or feeling of questioning self-doubt. This is not authoritative statement, rather it’s a contemplation of cinema through the eyes of women filmmakers, a search for possible meaning within the scope of an art form that is subjective. To understand something greater than any one person or social collective, one needs to have humility, and this is Cousins’ strength, for who cinema seems to open up and bear its soul to him.

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema is on BFI Player in five weekly instalments, starting on May 18th.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles

Posted on 3rd August 201813th August 2018 by Jeremy Clarke

This takes the form of a letter, as in, a letter to Orson Welles read out by director Mark Cousins on the film’s soundtrack as the film proceeds. According to the press blurb, Cousins never wanted to make a film on Welles feeling that numerous books and documentaries had already said everything there was to say. But then Cousins was presented with an unexpected opportunity. He was given access to a box of hitherto unseen drawings, paintings and sketches by the great man. These, he felt, gave him a way to represent a side of Orson which hadn’t really been seen before.

So Cousins starts off in New York to Albioni’s doom-laden Adagio, today a familiar film music staple which was first used in Welles’ screen adaptation of one of the 20th century’s great dirty texts, Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial (1961). Welles himself, and the wider body of work which bears his name, is another of those dirty texts and Cousins proves himself exactly the person to have another crack at documenting him with the drawings and paintings from the box the perfect vehicle for that journey. For the newcomer to Welles it’s a great starting point; for the more knowledgeable viewer there’s a wealth of never before seen material here.

The whole breaks down into separate sections discussing Welles with regards to Pawn, Knight, King and – in a less chess-referenced epilogue – Jester.

The Pawn section deals with common people, starting with his mother Beatrice, A Christian Unitarian activist who got herself elected and ensured “a Christmas gift for every child” making a huge political impact on her son.

The more complex section on the Knight deals with several aspects of Orson’s love life – among them visual loving, chivalry and death/guilt. Up pops the four in a bed revelry from Shakespeare/Falstaff vehicle Chimes At Midnight (Welles, 1965) and a drawing of a devil who visits Welles when his then wife Rita Hayworth is absent. No drawing of Rita, but numerous clips from the film he built around her, The Lady From Shanghai/1947, including the transcendent sequence where whilst lying on the deck of a boat she requests a cigarette and the camera framing her face moves to follow down her arm to a cigarette coming into her hand which she then brings back up to her face.

As for the King,in the opening minutes there’s an unspoken reference to Donald Trump. The current Potus is reminiscent of various despotic characters created by Welles: newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane/1940), murderous monarch Macbeth (1948), racketeer Harry Lime (The Third Man, Carol Reed/1949) and corrupt cop Hank Quinlan (Touch Of Evil/1960). Cousins suggests current the state of the world would fascinate Welles whose formative years included the 1930s’ stock market crash, the Great Depression and the rise of fascism which lead to WW2.

The rather different Jester section has Welles (voiced by Jack Klaff) writing back to Cousins, suggesting that all the world’s a circus. Cousins’ imagined Welles throws up various ideas that don’t fit the film’s thesis – the japes of Welles’ home made Too Much Johnson (1938), the absurdist world of Mr. Arkadin (1955) and a series of drawings of St. Nicholas which gradually turn Santa Claus into a drunkard with a bottle.

It all works extremely well as a film, whether you already know Welles or not. That said, the wealth of material here cries out for additional exposure in other media – a book of pictures, an art exhibition or an interactive website. You can see that just from watching the trailer. For the moment, though, this film version will do just fine.

The Eyes Of Orson Welles is out in the UK on Friday, August 17th.