Watching the First Films In Awe
The other night I found the old Lumière films on YouTube. Auguste and Louis Lumière made ten short films in 1895 using their famous cinematographe. The set-up is very simple. The most famous of the films shows a train arriving at a station, something that famously terrified the first viewers who thought the train was coming at them in real life. Other films show workers coming out of a factory, for instance. They were essentially the world’s first documentaries, without any kind of editing, using a single camera that could not be moved. The only film that probably was arranged in a way is the one where a young man causes a gardener to accidentally hose himself (the world’s first screen comedy?).
It’s not the first time I’ve seen these little films, and you’ve probably also seen them before. But I find them fascinating. This was 112 years ago and the people we see on the screen died a long time ago. Yet here they are, very much alive, showing us what kind of clothes they wore at that time, what kind of trains they rode on, what kind of working conditions they had to live with (there’s a film where a group of men tear down a wall without any kind of protection).
The Lumières didn’t believe their invention would have any commercial value. Today, film is a multi-billion dollar business worldwide. Thank God we still have its origins preserved to remind us of the humble beginning.
Andra bloggar om: film
Published by Stefan Hedmark 2007-11-03 15:48
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