Directed by Mark Cousins • 2018 • United Kingdom

“Openings”
With examples from 1943 to 2013, from China to Iran, Australia to Finland, we look at how to open a film: from mysterious, direct, floating, foreboding beginnings to plunging straight in. All are instructive in how to create an immediate world.

“Tone”
What’s the tone of a film—not its story or theme, but what its world feels like? Back to Hollywood and director Dorothy Arzner with MERRILY WE GO TO HELL and its glamorous, amorous mood. This chapter looks at the myriad ways in which directors set the tones of their films: delight, anger, poetry, double tones, moral seriousness, caring, edginess, violence.