Kevin Bronwlow is the greatest film historian living today. He has built his reputation on the enthusiasm for silent cinema, passion that led him to spend decades discovering and restoring and lost and hidden gems from the first decades of the Seventh Art. He also gave enormous contribution to bringing silent cinema to new generation through the medium of television. The best such effort, which could also be characterised as Brownlow’s magnum opus, is Hollywood, 1980 documentary television series that could serve as ultimate history of first decades of American film industry. Brownlow and his close associate David Gill have decided to make similar work, that could serve as some sort a sequel or spin off of Hollywood. A decade and half result of their efforts came in the form of Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood, documentary television series dedicated to European silent cinema.
The series, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, covers roughly first four decades of European cinema and is divided into six episode. The first episode covers the very beginnings of film, starting with experiments by Lumiere Brothers and their first public showing of films in 1895, followed by development of film in France, creation of first studios, first experiments with various narrative techniques, editing, special effects, creation of new genres, ascent of first European film stars and international market that would ultimately be wrecked by First World War. Second episode is dedicated to Nordic countries – Sweden and Denmark - that were spared from the war and used this opportunity to develop their very distinct cinema industries that would experience their own golden age, before their top talents being taken by Hollywood in 1920s. Third episode is dedicated to Weimar Germany, whose film makers turned defeat in war, economic woes and political instability into source of inspiration that would make German cinema industry into artistic and commercial powerhouse. Fourth episode is dedicated to French silent cinema and the way how devastating war and artistic tradition led to new sorts of achievements on silver screen. Fifth episode, on the other hand, shows how British cinema desperately lagged behind both Hollywood and Continental Europe, despite having talents like young Hitchcock. The sixth episode shows how European cinema industries dealt with transition from silent cinema to sound, creating brief period of quality international coproduction that ended with Nazis taking power in Germany and wrecking not only German, but European cinema in the process.
Inevitable comparisons with Hollywood point towards Cinema Europe being the more ambitious project, which covered more time periods and more countries than the previous work. On the other hand, the series had six instead of thirteen episodes, forcing to be more focused on smaller number of subjects. Another issue was than in 1995 time took its toll, so Brownlow and Gill had less opportunity to provide first-hand accounts of 1920s films and often had rely on someone else’s documentary footage. The series was produced for 100th anniversary of cinema and had state televisions like BBC and ZDF behind it. As such, Brownlow and Gil seemed strangely limited to Northwestern Europe. While having four episodes dedicated to Scandinavian, British, French and German cinema in 1920s made sense, Italian cinema is only briefly mentioned, same as Soviet cinema, which was arguably most influential at the time. Some important cinema industries, like Austrian, Czech or Hungarian, aren’t mentioned at all. Cinema Europe is therefore much inferior to Hollywood and is a little bit of disappointment, at least compared to Brownlow and Gil’s previous masterpiece. It nevertheless, like their 1980 work, serves as a good starting point towards those interested in film history and classic masterpieces that, despite their lack of colour or sound, continue to inspire film makers in 21st Century.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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