Dear Orson Welles (and other essays) by Mark Cousins

When this thick hardback arrived out of the blue from Irish publisher, The Irish Pages Press, with the most polite review request, I was flattered to be included in this mailing. I’ve been dipping into it over the past few months and enjoying it very much indeed.

I do love reading about film in general, and was vaguely aware of Mark Cousins’ name – but couldn’t put my finger on anything he’d done at the time. Now, having read his Wikipedia bio, I know where I’ve encountered him before… in the late 1990s, he took over from Alex Cox as the host of BBC2’s late night cult movie slot, Moviedrome. He has also written many articles for the BFI’s Sight & Sound mag which I used to get (I only stopped because their print size is just too small!). His own films are mostly documentaries, many of which were made for Channel 4, but I’m sorry, I don’t recall having seen any.

Anyway, identity confirmed, it was time to dive into this collection of essays which stem from a variety of sources. Some are reprinted from publications like the aforementioned Sight & Sound or Prospect, others written when as he says in his foreword, ‘when I was sodden.’ Although born in England, Cousins grew up in Belfast during the Troubles, and now lives in Scotland.

He begins with a piece that’s bound to grab the reader’s attention written for Prospect in 2015. During his thirties, he lived in LA at times, where he hosted an interview show, including many from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

I was not yet my best in those years – the late nineties – and it, the City of Angels, was way past its. We met in the middle.

He name drops actors names prolifically, from Jack Lemmon to Dennis Hopper, Janet Leigh to Rod Steiger on the first pages. He visits Monroe’s ‘pearly’ grave. But it is talking to some of the great directors that he really lights up, like Robert Towne, director of Chinatown.

…Towne clearly loves the city, the way that director Federico Fellini loved Rome, aware of its iniquities, but enthralled by its mythic properties, its transformation by night.

Stanley Donen, the veteran director of Singin’ in The Rain and, as Cousins reminds us, Bedazzled (the 1967 Peter Cook and Dudley Moore retelling of Faust in Swinging London) is another who entrances him with his simple wisdom about the Hollywood system, ‘simply a garden, a fertile patch of ground on which many different things grew.’

There is a whole section devoted to Cousins’ essays in letter form to his favourite film directors, mostly dead ones – this is where the titular Orson Welles comes in, and Cousins imagines a trip around some of his own most meaningful movie-associated locations to discuss, ‘What are the movies?’ they begin in Cannes. Pasolini and Donen also get letters.

In the section ‘Thoughts on Form’, he makes interesting points on many aspects of cinema, but in a 2005 essay called ‘Widescreen on Trauma’ looking at some blockbuster movies like Batman Begins in which Batman is born from his parents being murdered and an encounter with a bats’ nest, he says:

The intensity of mainstream cinema, its adrenalised, souped-up, turbo-charged quality has explained its licence to print money for decades now. Hollywood is, let’s face it, a kind of traumaland, a Disneyland of distressing events.

He goes on to say that few films go on to analyse the source of their initial trauma, Hitchcock’s Marnie, being one that had a go at it. This is where documentary can really show cause and effect. He also cites Kieślowski’s Three Colours: Blue as a film which enables the viewer to ‘feel closer to the flame of life. They also make us feel safe in getting close.’

The last essay I shall quote from comes from 2013, and is simply entitled ‘Z’. It’s all about using the z-axis, and one of the first examples he uses is an absolute favourite scene of mine:

Omar Sharif’s spectacular camel ride towards the camera in Lawrence of Arabia is z to the power of z…

When Sharif finally arrives, and we see those limpid pools for the first time – gives me goosebumps just replaying it in my head. (Watch the scene here).

This is a wide-ranging collection of fascinating essays that will interest anyone who enjoys reading about film, as I do. While I’m not particularly au fait with a lot of world cinema or documentary film-making, I always enjoy reading about it. There are touchstones aplenty in many of the pieces which will ground the reader, and free them to follow where they lead. I’ve added a whole list of movies and other things to look out for, and I’ve also acquired one of Cousins’ other books, The Story of Looking from 2017.

See also what Kaggsy thought of this book here.

Source: Review copy – thank you! Irish Pages hardback (Aug 2024), 448 pages.

BUY at Blackwell’s or Amazon UK (link will work) via my affiliate links.