Book review: 'Close-Up' by Cousins M.

A couple of months ago a friend of mine bought this book, and after he telling me about it, I bought it too. Today, finally, I finshed reading it and I don't regret I ever bought the book. For everyone who is interested in the history of film(making) this book is very adviceable.

The book describes the history of film in 3 chronological areas: the silent movies, soundmovies and the digital movies. It doesn't only describes the history of Western movies, but it deals about the whole world history of movies. In my case, that means tha when Cousins was telling about let's say Iranian movies in the late thirties, I really didn't know or even heard of any of the films he was telling about, but he does it in such a way, that it never became boring, or, like Sean Connery said: "M. Cousins is incapable of writing anything about cinema history without making it fascinating."

Marc Cousins is a filmhistorian, producer, director and he gives readings all over the world. As head of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in the 90's he has contacts with lots of famous filmdirectors and actors. In addition, he regularly writes articles for BBC, the Times and many other papers and magazines.

The book I read is a dutch translation, the original title is 'The Story of Film' (ISBN: 1560256125).