This long, long film (broken down into bite-size parts) starts exactly where you think it would: at the birth of the cinema.
We get a few detours -- clips from "Saving Private Ryan" and why Hollywood is not classic, but Japanese film is. We also learn that ideas, not money, is what drives movies -- and we learn the connection between Carol Reed and Martin Scorsese (bubbles).
But what makes this section really great is how it examines the innovations that now seem so simple -- the close-up, the cuts, the "phantom ride"... how we can show two people in conversation without them even having to be in the same room through the power of editing. This seems so obvious now, but someone had to figure it out over a century ago...
We get a few detours -- clips from "Saving Private Ryan" and why Hollywood is not classic, but Japanese film is. We also learn that ideas, not money, is what drives movies -- and we learn the connection between Carol Reed and Martin Scorsese (bubbles).
But what makes this section really great is how it examines the innovations that now seem so simple -- the close-up, the cuts, the "phantom ride"... how we can show two people in conversation without them even having to be in the same room through the power of editing. This seems so obvious now, but someone had to figure it out over a century ago...