Billed as a 'a celebration of childhood, as portrayed in fifty-three films from around the world', this beguiling, often thought-provoking documentary is a typically lyrical work from film historian, filmmaker and onetime Moviedrome host Mark Cousins. It also expands on themes from Cousins' earlier documentary The First Movie (2009) wherein he introduced cinema to children in a remote village in Iraq who had never seen a movie before. Near the start of the film Cousins states while most people think they know what the best children's films are, most of the truly great works have been forgotten: "I want to remember them."
However, A Story of Children and Film is more than just a treasure trove of forgotten gems for film buffs. Cousins sets out to analyze our collective fascination with children on film, arguing that childhood is itself cinematic, something that moves so fast through such remarkable changes we want to capture them moment by moment. Movies are like kids, kids are like movies. To illustrate this point Cousins intercuts clips from landmark films about childhood, from Steven Spielberg's E.T. - The Extraterrestrial (1982) to Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984) with video footage of his own niece and nephew at play. Along the journey he explores themes of self-consciousness via Hiroshi Shimizu's intriguing Children in the Wind (1937). Class conflict in Luis Buñuel's still-powerful Los Olvidados (1950), David Lean's masterful Great Expectations (1946) and Sergey Bodrov's Freedom is Paradise (1989). Storytelling and lies as a child's means not of denying reality but building on it in the intriguing Swedish film Hugo and Josephine (1967) and harsh but deeply affecting Polish drama Crows (1994). Nurturing and parenthood and the blurring of parent and child roles in films like Ken Loach's classic Kes (1969), the Dutch film Kauwboy (2012) and Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda's superb studies of childhood: Nobody Knows (2004) and I Wish (2011). He concludes with the subject of childhood dreams via remarkable sequences from Night of the Hunter (1955), the original German version of Emil and the Detectives (1931) and Chilean gem The Newest City in the World (1974).
Cousins shrewdly discerns a consistent emotional arc prevalent throughout almost all the most celebrated performances by children in international cinema: shyness then stroppiness building to confidence then eventually performance. His preference for naturalism and emotional honesty over expressionism and what he perceives as contrived sentiment are evident in his selections. Always a champion of Iranian cinema, here he praises The Boot (1993) and The White Balloon (1996) for their honest appraisal of childhood anger, and amusingly observes that for kids: desire plus impotence is a recipe for disaster. By comparison Cousins exhibits mild disdain for mainstream American cinema which he argues are solely into "the performative aspects of life." He illustrates his point by way of Shirley Temple in Curly Top (1935) as an example of forced performance but also observes how Margaret O'Brien's naturalism counteracts the Hollywood fantasy of Vincente Minnelli's evergreen Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).
Cousins' steadfast belief in social realism as the default setting for all worthy artistic cinema strangely ignores his own observation about fantasy building on reality rather than simply denying it and, like his lilting analytical narration, see-saws between persuasive and grating. Occasionally he goes off-topic as when he waxes lyrical about a trip to Skye while his niece and nephew's antics on-screen are unfortunately not as compelling as he seems to think they are. While A Story of Children and Film was largely very well received, a few detractors accused Cousins of overreaching with his theories and, more damagingly, reducing cultural nuances and individual themes of international films to reflect parochial British concerns like class. Yet Cousins clearly aims to emphasize the universality of the childhood experience ad how great films about children resonate with global audiences, regardless of race or culture. In that instance, he succeeds.
I must admit I was a lot more interested in the clips than I was in Cousins' home movies, and I do like essay documentaries which seem to be out of fashion in current cinema, they're more a TV medium. Also, I don't care what anyone says, for me Cousins has a great, soothing narration style.
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