I've been so busy kickstarting my Toronto After Dark coverage that I forgot to talk about this week's episodes of The Story of Film: An Odyssey. So, before I head to the festival this evening, I will quickly summarize this week's episodes. Episode 7: The European New Wave
This episode starts with the films of Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Federico Fellini and moves towards to launch of French New Wave. The episode includes discussion of classic films, such as Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Fellini's 8 1/2, François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, and Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. There is also a brief discussion of the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and they reinvigorated the Western film. Much of the discussion in this episodes leads directly into the next. Episode 8: New Directors, New Form
This is the first episode of The Story of Film that contained film history that was mostly new for me. Leading off of French New Wave, this episode went heavily into “New Waves” in other countries, including Poland, Africa, and Japan. There was some discussion on the early films of Roman Polanski, but that's where the familiar names ended until the episode returned to North American in the latter half. Here, there was discussion on the rise of “New Hollywood Cinema,” which included films such as John Cassavetes Shadows, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. There was also a brief discussion of Psycho and the famous shower scene. There will be no Story of Film episodes screened next week due to Toronto After Dark, so it's time to take a break from film history and enjoy the festival.
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