This holiday weekend, if you go out to a movie or rent a video to watch at home, be sure to give thanks to August and Louis Lumiere, the inventors of the first movie camera, the Cinematographe (translation: “writing the movement).”
“The Lumiere Brothers’ First Films,” a Kino on Video release, is a time capsule that witnesses the birth of motion pictures. This is an enchanting collection of 85 “actualities” filmed between 1895 and 1897. These indelible images were conceived by the Lumieres to “bring the world to the world.”
Each film consists of a single, mostly static, 50-second shot, but they are anything but antiquated. Over unobtrusive piano accompaniment, Bertrand Tavernier, the director of “‘Round Midnight,” offers informal commentary that is at once insightful and delightful.
He hails “the first masterpiece,” the famed “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.” Of another film depicting French soldiers attempting to leap onto the back of a horse, he observes, “By just seeing the film you can understand why we lost so many wars.”
Tavernier, with tongue often in cheek, notes other awesome firsts, including the first film (workers leaving the Lumiere factory in Lyon), the first remake (other workers leaving the factory), the first tracking shot (the camera is mounted on a train), the first home movie, the first newsreel, the first suspense film (a baby taking its first steps), the first special effects thriller (a demolished wall topples and then, in reverse, rights itself) and the first comedy (a mischievous boy tricking a gardener into spraying himself with a hose).
He also takes special joy in pointing out the screen’s first overactors, from a too-solicitous waiter to a wildly hysterical observer of those hapless French soldiers.
The Lumieres’ legacy is also celebrated in “Lumiere and Company,” an omnibus film in which 39 directors from around the world, including Costa-Gavras, Claude Lelouch, Spike Lee and Wim Wenders were charged to make their own “Lumiere film” using a restored Cinematographe.
“The Lumiere Brothers’ First Films” retails for $49.95. It can be ordered at 800-562-3330. “Lumiere and Company” is available on the Fox Lorber Home Video label and retails for $19.98.
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