A Sto­ry of Chil­dren and Film

“Ben decides to throw grapes in his mouth,” says Mark Cousins, grave­ly. Ben and his sis­ter Lau­ra are Cousins’ young nephew and niece. The chil­dren have spent a relaxed morn­ing build­ing a mar­ble run in their pyja­mas. The only unusu­al thing is, Uncle Mark has set up a sta­tion­ary cam­era to detect their emo­tions, using them as a hook for themed clip pack­ages of cinema’s chil­dren. Shy­ness, the­atri­cal­i­ty and sulk­i­ness are among the abstract fil­ing cat­e­gories that give shape to this good-natured and enjoy­able col­lage documentary.

A Sto­ry of Chil­dren and Film is the ​‘does exact­ly what it says on the tin’ fol­low-up to Cousins’ cel­e­brat­ed 15-hour tele­vi­sion series The Sto­ry of Film. It is a film to divert and enter­tain and remind peo­ple why cin­e­ma is great. It is also hope­less­ly niche and feels slight­ly rote for a crit­ic who knows his stuff, but has made lit­tle effort to struc­ture his film cre­ative­ly. We see Lau­ra and Ben emot­ing over their mar­ble run, we see clips. We see Lau­ra and Ben emot­ing over their mar­ble run, we see clips. You get the picture.

This is alle­vi­at­ed by the stream of tru­ly great clips that span place – from Iran to Japan – and time – from The Kid to Moon­rise King­dom – from main­stream clas­sics like E.T. to lit­tle-seen mas­ter­pieces like Boudewi­jn Koole’s Kauw­boy. 53 films are incor­po­rat­ed and there’s not a dud among them. Cousins curates his mate­r­i­al with an acces­si­bil­i­ty born of pas­sion, filled with infor­ma­tion and deliv­ered like a free-form slam poet. When he explains that a scene is shot with alter­nat­ing reverse-shot cam­era angles to con­vey an intense exchange, it’s a bonafide tid­bit for non-tech­ni­cians to take away. There are enough moments like this to enable atten­tive minds to skim off film­mak­ing savvy with­out bog­ging down what feels like a fleet-foot­ed sprint.

The speed and turnover of clips is both the film’s premise and its undo­ing. Rich­ness lingers in every piece of film footage and it’s a wrench to be pulled from the worlds they imply and back to Cousins’ flim­sy over­ar­ch­ing the­sis. To recap: that’s Lau­ra and Ben play­ing with mar­bles, demon­strat­ing that chil­dren expe­ri­ence vary­ing emo­tions. Cousins’ lilt­ing North­ern Irish voice com­men­tates on his sister’s kids as if they are an exot­ic strain of mon­goose found doing some­thing unex­pect­ed in a for­est glade. The con­trast between his po-faced scholas­ti­cism and these ordi­nary lit­tle peo­ple is marked. ​“Peo­ple have often seen lots in a small thing,” jus­ti­fies Mark, fold­ing in ten­u­ous book­ends about artist Vin­cent Van Gogh’s inspirations.

A Sto­ry of Chil­dren and Film is a won­der­ful and wise guide, with ample ammu­ni­tion for any film-lover’s ​‘to see’ list. It would be child­ish to com­plain about the teacher’s tech­nique, if only child­ish­ness wasn’t so glee­ful­ly on message.