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At the end of the summer of 1894,

Antoine Lumière, father of Louis and Auguste,

discovers Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris.

It's a small individual screen

in which images come to life when you insert a coin.

"We'll take the image out of the box," thought Antoine.

"And project it in front of the public, onto a large screen."

"I'm going back to Lyon, my sons will figure out how."

WRITTEN AND NARRATED BY THIERRY FRÉMAUX

FEATURING A SERIES OF CINEMATOGRAPHIC FILMS

SHOT BY LOUIS LUMIÈRE AND HIS CAMERAMEN FROM 1895 ONWARDS

LUMIÈRE THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

Since the miracle lies in its mechanics and simplicity,

it would be enough to simply recall the fascination

sparked by the Lumière cinematograph.

But the shots it created brought about a new way of representing life,

such as From the Bow of an Ocean Liner in Rough Seas,

the title of this film.

We might merely contemplate these images,

yet they reveal the splendour of the world anew,

and ask more of our gaze than we ever imagined.

The films you're about to see

express our desire to speak of aesthetics, staging, and framing.

We'll leave behind the quarrels over the creators of early cinema,

since all those who preceded Lumière are co-inventors of cinema,

including the charlatans, the adventurers,

the prophets, and the madmen.

When it appeared in 1895,

the Lumière cinematograph swept aside everything in its path.

It will unite its creators, and gather its dreamers.

And it would become an art in its own right when it became cinema.

Yet one day, the Lumière films vanished from the screen.

We decided to bring them back into cinemas, to show them once more.

We'll project them on the big screen, as the great works they truly are.

They're accompanied by the music of Gabriel Fauré,

a contemporary of the Lumières.

Each film lasted 50 seconds.

We'll discover about a hundred of them.

Thus, from many Lumière films, we'll make a single Lumière film.

They've been preserved and restored.

Today, their beauty can be revealed,

returning them to the world as its forgotten memory.

For Lumière already embodies cinema.

1894 BRINGING IMAGES TO LIFE

"I'm going back to Lyon, my sons will figure out how," says Antoine.

He takes the train, like the one seen in this film, number 931.

The Lumière brothers get to work.

First Auguste, the elder, then Louis, the younger.

Across the world,

attempts are being made to invent what would become cinema.

Louis reflects on what already exists and adds something of his own.

One sleepless night, inspiration strikes him.

The mechanism of a sewing machine, the persistence of vision,

the need for perfect movement.

Before Christmas, a device is up and running.

Giving rise to a family legend, Auguste would say:

"One sleepless night, my brother invented cinema."

Louis Lumière has just devised a technique

and, in doing so, projected the future.

We're in Lyon at the beginning of 1895.

Antoine Lumière is happy. His sons have figured it out.

Now we travel. Here in New York, not far from Union Square.

In that winter of 1895,

an engineer from the Lumière factory travels to America

to buy film stock from the New York Celluloid Company.

Onto this "film", a name borrowed from English,

Lumière applies a chemical emulsion of his own making.

He keeps the 35mm format,

the same width as Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope.

To avoid accusations of patent infringement,

he opts for round perforations rather than square,

and a single perforation per frame,

rather than four like the American system.

Today, this remains the identifying hallmark

of films made with the Lumière cinematograph.

In Lyon, as three sections of transport corps parade through Place Bellecour,

beneath the Basilica of Fourvière,

Louis and Auguste Lumière file a patent in February 1895,

one of the hundreds they would sign throughout their lives.

Their device does not yet have a name.

Their father Antoine suggests a name of his own, Domitor,

which would set the device apart in an already crowded lexical landscape.

Louis refuses. He wants to call it the cinematograph,

which means "writing movement".

But Léon Bouly, a French inventor who never actually invented anything,

had registered the name, so they'd have to wait.

At the Lumière factory, everyone is hard at work,

like these carpenters at their benches,

beating out a rhythm with their horizontal and vertical movements,

in a ballet that gracefully fills the space,

as if they had to show every aspect of their craft in 50 seconds.

Nearby, Louis and Auguste are in their laboratory.

They're putting the finishing touches to their device,

as it's due to be presented in Paris.

The Lumières travel to Paris.

Louis decides not to present the device itself,

but rather the use for which it's intended.

To do so,

he needs to produce a chronophotographic view, in other words, a film.

They're expected on 22 March, so they need to act quickly.

Everything takes place between the 15th and the 20th, probably the 19th.

Nothing is certain, but there was no rain that day,

which made it an ideal day for filming (tournage).

We say tournage because the crank has to be turned.

The expression has stuck.

The film's ready. They'll call it

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, or simply Leaving the Factory.

They board the train and leave Lyon, full of anticipation.

In France, nothing is decided outside the capital.

On 22 March 1895,

Auguste and Louis present their work to their fellow scientists.

They first discuss their work on colour photography,

a dream close to their hearts, which would lead to the autochromes.

At the end of the session, they unveil the cinematograph,

though not yet known by that name.

The new device astonishes audiences as it projects moving images,

showing a procession of male and female workers

passing through the gates of the Lumière factory.

Those present, including Léon Gaumont,

a friend of Louis Lumière, are impressed.

More than that, it's a triumph.

Let's recall what we know.

The filming is thought to have taken place in Lyon on Tuesday 19 March,

at lunchtime, to take advantage of the sunlight.

Louis Lumière stands in front of the factory gates in Montplaisir.

He asks people to leave as naturally as possible.

They don't always comply, casting a few glances at the camera

caught in the innocence and excitement of a new experience.

But a mystery remains.

Which version did they screen in Paris?

There's this one, the best known and the most beautiful.

Yet the press mentions a horse-drawn carriage that doesn't appear here.

Indeed, there's also this version,

in which a carriage and a horse can be seen.

What's more, people are dressed as they would be in March, at the end of winter.

Could this Leaving the Factory be the correct one?

Then a third version was found.

A carriage pulled, as you'll see, by two horses.

Which suggests a major production.

We can be sure of nothing, except for one thing.

When Lumière turns the crank,

the course of history is shaped in the technical accomplishment

of a small device of iron and wood, perfectly designed.

More than just a first, the exhilaration of three versions

and two remakes reveals something new.

A subject, a frame, a shot.

And the determination, on the part of the Lumières, to see things through.

A belief in an event to which, despite the legend,

they attached great importance.

That day, a phase came to an end.

There were many inventors before Lumière. There were none after.

With this first film, everything is already present.

Cinema is cinema.

Every year, the Lumière family travels to La Ciotat,

to the Clos des Plages estate.

In the summer of 1895,

Louis spends his time refining his device, producing views,

effectively films, though the term wasn't used yet.

He shoots a few scenes, something he would do every summer,

such as this one, Boarding for the Outing,

a portrait of family life.

A private harbour, a small boat, a few friends from Lyon.

In 50 seconds, everything that defines a departure at sea must be shown.

Saying goodbye to those who are leaving

and, handkerchief in hand, doing so rather demonstratively.

With Lumière, there's always time for children.

Let's look at this film, almost a sequel to the previous one.

The camera shifts towards the sea.

A different crew, but the same setting.

The Lumières film themselves, and their children.

They would do so often.

A summer evening, swimming and games, the impression of walking on water,

illustrating the magic of the new invention.

Louis Lumière films other subjects, in Lyon and in La Ciotat.

He screens them to entertain his family and friends,

and to make sure it works, too.

It's starting to take shape,

with screenings that astonish and move audiences.

From the Mediterranean, they return to Lyon once again by rail.

This film calls to mind the work of the English painter J.M.W. Turner,

who depicted trains 50 years earlier.

The inspiration is the same. Lumière shows movement.

He places his camera on the roof of a locomotive,

which spills its steam into the darkness of the tunnels.

Thus, cinema offers the viewer a place he's never occupied before.

The camera as a substitute for the gaze. This is just the beginning.

In the autumn of 1895, Louis begins to wonder.

Should the cinematograph be reserved for science,

or made available to the public?

The second option prevails.

Antoine, the father, says, "Leave it to me."

The advent of cinema is close at hand.

1895 PROJECTING IMAGES

When Lumière unveils his device in March 1895,

he performs a double gesture.

He's the last of the inventors, and the first of the filmmakers.

Workers Leaving the Factory changes everything.

This film provides unmistakable proof.

The inventors' quarrels have faded away.

The essential nature of the cinematograph

is what will now permeate

the millions of films made thanks to it, in the years to come.

Cinema has arrived fully formed, just as it will always be known.

These two Parisian women in the foreground don't know it,

but something is unfolding very close by,

not far from the Eiffel Tower and the Champ de Mars we saw earlier,

and the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais now in view.

It's the autumn of 1895. The Lumière event is poised to begin.

Antoine Lumière embraces Parisian life.

He chooses a venue on the grands boulevards,

where fashionable society gathers.

It's the Indian Salon of the Grand Café, at 14 Boulevard des Capucines,

near the Opéra Garnier, whose majestic presence

is the subject of this Lumière film, number 154.

From this point, the device is officially called the cinematograph.

The advertisement claims it can "reproduce movement

by projecting life-size images onto a screen before an entire audience."

Since March, Louis has shot around ten films.

His father plans to screen them on 28 December of that same year, 1895.

This will be the first paid public screening of the Lumière cinematograph.

We know this first screening well today.

It begins with Workers Leaving the Factory,

Rue Saint-Victor, the women, the men, the bicycles, the dog,

we've been over it, you know it all by heart.

Horse Trick Riders, in which a soldier pretends to be clumsy

and unable to stay on his horse.

Then we have Fishing for Goldfish,

which shows Auguste Lumière shaking little Andrée,

who doesn't understand what he wants

and glances at the camera in desperation.

The Photographical Congress Arrives in Lyon,

filmed by Louis at Neuville-sur-Saône,

the congress members already enjoying themselves.

The Blacksmith at Work, a blacksmith so proud to be filmed

that he chose to wear a white shirt and a tie.

We know The Sprinkler Sprinkled, the first fictional work, the first gag,

one of Jean-Luc Godard's favourite films.

Then there's Baby's Breakfast,

which again shows Auguste Lumière and his family,

naturally enough, since Louis is filming and Auguste is the one acting.

Jumping the Blanket, much like Horse Trick Riders,

is a lads' game, a barracks-room joke,

one of many such films that would follow,

raising some doubt about the quality of our troops.

Place des Cordeliers in Lyon. The camera is set up in the street,

cinema observing. A future classic.

And finally, The Sea, at La Ciotat,

a late summer afternoon,

children playing on the jetty, diving off it.

Those children whom cinema will always cherish.

That was the programme of the first screening.

What the audience saw.

Among the guests at the screening, a man sits in the front row.

At first, the still image on the screen fails to impress him.

"Have I been brought here for this?" he says,

but when the crank begins to turn,

and the films are revealed in all their splendour,

he's left speechless.

At the end of the show, he approaches Antoine Lumière

and begs him to sell him this new invention.

To ward off a potential competitor, the latter replies mischievously,

"The machine is not for sale. Be grateful, young man,

it would ruin you. It has no future."

That man was Georges Méliès.

1896 AN INVENTION FOR THE PUBLIC

"Cinema is an invention with no future."

A remark taken out of context and endlessly misquoted as prophecy.

The Lumières went on to produce more than 2,000 films,

which shows they clearly saw a future in it.

Projecting images means inventing the audience to see them.

So Louis Lumière begins to think about his audience.

He shoots a great number of films, he trains cameramen,

like the one we see here, filming near the Tuileries Garden,

Parade of Flowered Cars.

Or rather, trying to do so,

since he seems to having some trouble setting up his cinematograph.

As the historian Paul Génard noted,

threading the film into the camera took time.

In any case, he takes his time. The length of a film.

Now the operator can proceed.

It's remarkable to see these two films running back to back.

We might even have liked to see what he was filming,

but perhaps he wasn't really filming at all.

This film, like the one before it, is a "making-of",

probably the first time a filmmaker is seen at work.

Note that the crank is positioned facing the lens, rather than to the side.

Mounted on a tripod, the apparatus is easy to use,

lightweight, and can be transported easily.

Producing a film is a solemn affair.

Everyone carries themselves properly, like this operator and his team,

as well as this woman, perfectly dressed for the occasion.

A gendarme is present, apparently guarding the shoot,

but paying no attention to this man who crosses the road

at a most inopportune moment.

Every operator Lumière sends out onto the world stage

contributes to a major undertaking.

Producing films in great numbers, filming everywhere.

Yes, young man. To fill the screens of the new theatres opening in Paris,

in Lyon, in Brussels, in London, and in Berlin.

And here in Vienna, Austria,

where Lumière, or more precisely his operator Charles Moisson,

shows the entrance to a cinematograph hall.

Through the filming of city streets,

cinema never ceases to document its own history.

Just two weeks after the Grand Café screening,

Lumière is back behind the camera.

"You must entertain the public," his father tells him,

so he invites Félicien Trewey, a cabaret artist,

clown and magician, but also a friend of the family.

As you can see, he's dressed elegantly for the occasion,

in patent-leather shoes and a tailcoat.

Louis and he make Spinning Plates, the title of this film,

which, believe it or not, is listed as number one in the official catalogue.

Starting with small plates, then moving on to larger ones.

Huge dishes spinning like plates, as he performs his act.

Ready? Go!

While they were at it, they shot another one.

In fact, they would make six in one go.

The set's the same, but Félicien Trewey, to change things a little,

has refined his costume, adding a wig,

and a rather questionable white paper collar.

The film is called Serpent. Trewey unfurls a streamer,

its many arabesques tracing a white plume

that seems to mesmerise the magician himself.

"The illusion of the serpent is complete," wrote the press at the time.

It didn't take much.

And hup, hup, hup, one more turn, then another,

and finally, hup, hup. And that's it, done.

Félicien has given it his all.

The cinematograph is an immediate success.

Public enthusiasm is just starting to take hold.

Lumière explores every genre. Comedies,

realistic scenes, and short sequences like this one,

featuring the Lumières' wives, Rose and Marguerite Winckler.

A musical concert. Piano, violin,

and an argument, just like in Fellini's Orchestra Rehearsal.

Speaking of these two women, it's worth noting

that four Winckler children would marry four Lumière children.

Antoine, their father, would say to them,

"Don't complain. Between all of you, you only have one mother-in-law."

There are many films that demonstrate

that Lumière truly thought in terms of spectacle,

and that from the very beginning, he was as a genuine filmmaker.

Take this film, shot in 1896.

We've seen The Sprinkler Sprinkled already, one of the earliest films.

There was also The Card Game. Here, Lumière combines the two,

Card Players Sprinkled.

The effect is multiplied with intersecting storylines,

as in Godzilla vs. King Kong.

Suspense, improvisation, everyone fighting everyone else.

In short, a fine piece of nonsense,

but nonsense designed to please the audience.

Louis Lumière, here behind the camera, understands his era.

He senses that cinema will become a new form of art and entertainment.

The audience will be part of the spectacle,

even when everyone falls silent, captivated by a character or a gesture,

allowing the silence of the auditorium to express its own astonishment.

Men and women seated on two benches,

whose lines of perspective converge toward the heart of the action.

The framing is perfect.

Dressed up for the occasion,

they watch the scene and present it to the audience.

This would become a Lumière mannerism: Insistent glances into the camera,

as if to make quite sure that the spectators are with them.

They're hamming it up a little on the right there, but no matter,

they show us the wonder of this spectacle.

We'd already guessed what it was.

And there it is: the painting was upside down, now it's the right way up.

Bravo, bravo, to the audience's delight.

And, of course, a "thank you."

This film was shot at the MICAREM exhibition of 1899, in Paris.

A closer look reveals a profusion of activity.

Parades of carriages, women dressed for the ceremony,

men in top hats, and soldiers with spiked helmets.

And this impromptu confetti fight,

which doubles as a rather masculine way of courting.

Yes, yes, sir.

No need to check, we saw it perfectly well.

To invent the audience

is also to show it, in order to bring it back into theatres.

This film is called The Broken Pot. The premise?

A man, blindfolded, has to break the suspended pots with a stick.

So he's blind, he gropes about,

and the comedy arises from his clumsiness,

which makes the crowd laugh.

For the first time, the audience in the theatre

watches the audience in the film.

The men sense what's coming,

waiting for the contestant to make a fool of himself.

The children are at once attentive and in fits of laughter.

Well, he's taking too long.

The camera was even stopped and then restarted.

He had 50 seconds to complete the challenge,

and we won't even know the outcome.

Beyond its pursuit of the spectacular,

the cinematograph became the commentator of its era.

And that era was the age of acrobats and the circus.

Accordingly, several films are devoted to a family of virtuoso gymnasts,

the Kremos. The first is called Somersault,

beginning with a boy-girl warm-up, there.

And then this child here, who prepares us for what's to follow.

One: single somersault.

Two: double somersault.

Three: triple somersault.

And hop, off he goes.

No. The bow.

MILITARY RHYTHMS

Lumière films show us what their era was like.

An era of military life, provincial garrisons,

and young men in formation.

In France, and elsewhere too.

The whole world liked to watch its armies on parade.

National pride was expressed through displays of strength,

discipline, and speed.

Well, in this particular case,

discipline and speed were, let's say, relative.

First, a bugle call.

The title of this film is listed in the Lumière catalogue.

It's called The Alarm, and shows a group of soldiers

leaving a farm where they spent the night.

We can see that the bugler becomes the true director,

keen to get everyone out on time, that's to say, within 50 seconds.

There we go, done.

Oh no, there's still one left. Quick!

And this child who thought the filming had finished.

The cult of militarism also involved showcasing the armies of other nations.

The Mexican army, in this case, performing a bayonet drill

of admirable choreographic invention.

One might think it's been speeded up, but no.

The frame rate varied between 16 and 20 frames per second.

Shot at a fast rate, say around 20 frames per second,

the film would be projected in slow motion, as we see here.

Well, perhaps not that slow.

If, on the other hand, it was shot more slowly,

then it appears jittery in projection, as we see here.

But the operator was free to establish the correct speed.

Eventually, audiences began to tire of watching armies parade past.

Innovation would arise from the unexpected, even from accident,

when operators allow chance to bring about the decisive moment.

Here, in Italian Lombardy,

a military wagon becomes stuck in a ravine.

A man raises his arm, believing the film to be ruined.

On the contrary.

He doesn't realise that the incident gives this shot a dramatic intensity

worthy of the films of William Wellman or John Ford.

"God, how beautiful war is!" as seen on screen.

History would be filled with military films like these,

admirably composed from an aesthetic standpoint.

This one, shot in the Alps in the summer of 1899,

is called Mountain Battery.

And the overall movement, which begins in the background of the image,

punctuated by the rhythm of the torrent's flow

and smoke from the explosions, ends in the foreground,

with soldiers dropping to the ground.

If you wanted an example of a single-take sequence,

this film could be replayed endlessly.

It's magnificent.

IN CITIES, IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, AMIDST THE THRONG

Back to Paris, the other Lumière city, which, along with Lyon,

is the most frequently filmed by the cinematograph.

Lumière's vision is grounded in the day-to-day,

in lives of pleasure and routine. Work during the week,

and Sundays devoted to play, to leisure, at home and outdoors.

He places his camera at the very heart of life.

His cinema is the people, their gestures, their multitude.

Through Lumière's mastery of framing,

his films also reveal the aesthetic potential of cinema.

To truly understand the cinematograph, we must forget the most famous films,

those that overshadow all the others,

and linger, for example, in the port of Marseille,

to explore what is one of the major themes of Lumière's cinema,

people, the public, the crowd.

At the dawn of the 20th century, crowds of people filled the streets,

the boats, the festivals and the cafés.

Here, a perfectly composed shot from a slight high angle,

with two groups of people, and in the foreground,

fishermen mending their nets.

Lumière also captures rural life.

This film is called Wheat Thresher.

We chose it for its beauty,

but also because it shows that a richly composed shot

is already a form of staging, forcing the viewer to see everything,

and leaving a trace that is cinema itself.

There were many operators, hence the constant changes in point of view.

France is also a land of mountains.

Here we are in Chamonix. A street, donkeys and horses, loose or harnessed.

At the edge of the village, an almost artificial backdrop,

like the matte paintings that would later be used in cinema.

The result is light tones and brightness in the background,

in the foreground, the darker, sharper elements,

captured in a natural, spontaneous way.

Apart from that, the film isn't in slow motion,

it's just that the streets of Chamonix aren't very lively.

This is Haymakers.

Once again, a film of great visual quality,

and the finest look to camera of early cinema.

As we've said, the camera couldn't move. Clearly, the father knows this.

He's so afraid of stepping out of frame that he keeps staring at the camera.

Everything in this film is staged,

evident in the stiff movements of these haymakers,

as if the operator had marked out positions on the ground for them.

Indeed, the mother asks her children to stick to the marks,

which they do, more or less.

But in the end, the youngest couldn't care less.

Here we are in Geneva.

Washerwomen in smocks bustle about, soaking laundry in tubs.

We notice the children skipping into the frame,

casting glances at the person directing the scene,

who doesn't hesitate to intervene.

Does this film mark the birth of advertising?

For Sunlight soap, that is.

It should be noted that it was shot in May 1896.

Screened in New York as early as June, it was titled there

Washing Day in Switzerland.

Weeds, the title of this film,

"was shot by my brother," according to Louis Lumière.

Indeed, this is the sole film attributed to Auguste,

then on holiday in La Ciotat.

One might wonder whether he was inspired by a painting by Jean-François Millet,

which bears a similar title, The Weed Burners.

Auguste clearly had talent. It's a pity he didn't make more films.

Another remarkable film.

Another film showing women at work.

They worked a great deal.

This film was shot in Carmaux.

Since 1876, women were forbidden to descend into the mine.

So they remained on the surface.

And to tasks just as arduous, as this film shows,

loading coke into wheelbarrows and wagons.

Staying on the subject of working women,

here we are in Épinal, on the banks of the Moselle.

In this magnificent shot, with the city in the background,

eight washerwomen and four children are at work on the riverbank.

The cinematograph filmed women a great deal.

We see them at work, at sea, as actresses,

sometimes as silently ironic commentators on male pursuits.

Wives as actresses, Lumière women, always women of the people.

DISTANT LANDS

In January 1896, Louis Lumière decided to train operators

and send them overseas.

For several years,

the 'little Lumière planet' will be in full swing.

They film cities, streets, and their inhabitants.

One can imagine the shock felt by Western audiences

as cinema reveals, through gesture and movement,

such distant and beautiful lands.

Louis Lumière asks his operators to bring these images back

and show them to the world.

So views of Naples would be screened in New York,

and those of Moscow would be shown in Buenos Aires.

To do so, they would cross the oceans, like Gabriel Veyre here,

travelling to Asia aboard the Tonkin, a Messageries Maritimes ocean liner,

built in the shipyards of La Ciotat.

The voyage is long.

Boredom sets in, there are group games, and rope skipping.

Above all, they're making a film,

as everyone, judging by their direct looks to camera,

seems perfectly aware of it.

Especially that man there, with his hat and glasses,

who takes charge of things.

Even in Asia, the military is never far away.

And for good reason: Saigon, in Vietnam, seen here,

was at the time a French colony.

At this inevitable stopover,

the cinematograph shows its armies being deployed.

When he arrives in what was then Indochina,

more specifically, the Saigon province in Cochinchina,

Gabriel Veyre films a conquered land,

where the occupier stages displays of power.

Here's another Workers Leaving the Factory,

this time from the naval arsenal.

Shot from the side rather than head-on,

it isn't filmed in the same way as the Lyon-Montplaisir version.

Only men emerge, all workers of the French state,

parading somewhat gloomily under the gaze of Westerners in colonial helmets,

an armed soldier standing guard,

and an operator who, by turning the crank,

gives this scene all its interest.

We stay in Asia.

Japan, by contrast,

is an independent country and not subject to colonial rule.

Upon arriving on the island,

Gabriel Veyre captured daily life with evident affection.

Here we see a farmer at work, movement in the frame,

the paddle wheel irrigating the rice paddy.

Throughout the 20th century,

cinema would be a means of describing life on Earth.

With Lumière, it was there from the outset.

It's always tempting to evoke Ozu

when a Japanese meal is filmed at floor level.

The director of Tokyo Story had not yet been born,

but this family portrayal anticipates the very best of his cinema.

When Lumière arrives, Japan has only just opened itself up to the West.

At once picturesque and perfectly authentic,

this splendid film also shows that Lumière

is following in the footsteps of the Western Japonist movement of the time.

With his cinematograph,

the operator Constant Girel looks on with an anthropologist's curiosity,

sharing his sense of wonder and his desire to reveal it to others.

The previous films possessed great visual qualities.

This one did too, but we can't fully appreciate it, as the surviving material

was too damaged for a satisfactory restoration.

So why show it?

Because despite the ravages of time, the film remains profoundly beautiful.

This low-angle shot of a bridge in the historic city of Kyoto,

shop signs, women in traditional dress and clogs sheltering from the sun,

the coming and going of rickshaws,

everything leaves a trace of what Japan was like in the Meiji era.

We're far from having seen everything.

Unmoved by the commotion around him,

nothing distracts Louis Lumière from the plans he's devising.

Once recruited, in January 1896,

his operators set off quickly and travelled far and wide.

In Asia, as we've just seen, but also to the west.

The New World, America, New York.

There too, the cinematograph will explore

and examine, leaving behind films of great value.

"Public transport is the conscience of peoples" — Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.

Here's another film on the subject,

even more sophisticated, and livelier too.

We're back in the United States, in Boston, on Washington Street.

And once again, isn't it beautiful to look at?

In cinema, a shot must say it all.

Each scene has its own intrinsic value. It's not a fragment of something,

nor the beginning of a sequence: it is the sequence.

Once again, this film shows that cinema invents its own gaze

and challenges the spectator.

Here, the perspective shifts from a wide avenue

to the intersection of two streets,

allowing the cinematograph to capture a different reality.

One thing should be recalled.

Just weeks after its arrival in 1896,

Lumière cinema was driven out of the United States

by enforcers of the Pinkerton Agency, citing American protectionist laws

invoked by Thomas Edison, their competitor.

They beat a hasty retreat, leaving from Hudson Bay.

But they'll return, and one day,

the United States will become the land of cinema.

The end of the 19th century is a time when travel intensifies,

dreams of elsewhere take shape, and the world feels smaller.

Urged on by Lumière,

taking on the roles of diplomats, journalists, and great travellers,

the operators set off across the oceans,

filming coastlines and people on the beaches,

placing their cameras aboard boats

to observe more closely, like here, the port of Algiers.

The first operators, the first filmmakers,

answer the first question of staging

that every filmmaker after them would go on to ask.

Where to place the camera?

Through these operators, we'd learn the history, the journey, the legend.

Their talent lies above all in the simplicity of the gesture,

and in that of their intentions.

With Lumière, then, and still today,

cinema is a means of understanding ourselves better.

We arrived in Algiers by sea.

We depart by tram, receding with a striking reverse tracking shot,

while Gabriel Fauré's Élégie, Op. 24,

envelops the white city in a lingering melancholy.

PROMISE OF THE WORLD

"Cinema is the promise of the world," Blaise Cendrars writes in the 1920s.

That promise is youth.

Lumière filmed children extensively, his own and those of others.

From little cherubs taking their first steps,

to boys playing marbles in the street,

he filmed them all with the same gaze, the same curiosity, the same tenderness.

Here, filmed in Lyon, a dance contest where, clearly,

everyone does things their own way,

like this little chap in the middle, there,

who looks straight at the camera and becomes the subject of the film.

Careful, childish squabbling.

The framing seems to come straight from Auguste Renoir,

who painted close-ups of curly-haired children

and young girls' faces.

Here, the little curly-haired youngsters give each other a proper thrashing.

- Give me that! - No!

- Here! - Give me back that spoon!

She's crying. Oh, poor thing!

In the playground, not much is happening apart from a game of leapfrog.

Do I really need to comment on it? It'll bring back memories for all of us.

Ah yes, Demolition of a Wall wasn't the only film to be projected backwards.

Projectionists quickly had fun with this new trick, delighting audiences.

Forwards.

Backwards.

Then forwards.

Then backwards.

Forwards again.

And once more.

These young girls from the Ashanti tribe

were filmed in Lyon, which was hosting one of those colonial exhibitions

that were flourishing all over Europe,

and which, all too often, were little more than human zoos.

And yet, there's something in this film.

These adolescent girls express, through their bodies and collective energy,

a youth and nobility that make them powerful and unforgettable.

In the same vein, the title of this film speaks for itself:

Negro Children Bathing.

It's thought that Gabriel Veyre made it, but where it was shot remains unknown.

Maybe in the Antilles or in Venezuela?

Or perhaps Cuba,

where equality between whites and blacks had just been proclaimed.

Here too, the cinematograph does justice to its subjects,

to these children whose explosive youth bursts from the image.

A classic example of Lumière's staging directions:

"Children, the film will last less than a minute."

"Put yourselves in front of the camera and show what you can do."

It must have been tricky to rehearse, but the result is remarkable.

The gym teacher, in jacket and tie, keeps an eye on proceedings.

There isn't a single child who isn't busy doing something,

something of their own invention, sometimes.

In short, there's a bit of everything.

The end of the 19th century is a time of peace,

even if it wasn't to last.

Moments of happiness are all the more cherished.

This film, shot in the south of France, is called Bicycle Lesson.

One also thinks of this poem by Victor Hugo:

"The cannons are still hot; they have done their duty.

The called-for fire has kept its promise; it is done.

The dead are dead."

In portraying childhood life, Lumière blended themes and gags

as the scenarios gradually took shape.

He knew how to capture the naturalness of children, their way of playing,

and the way they look at the camera.

And some subjects offer a retrospective echo of cinema history,

such as this film, a chaotic pillow fight

between girls and boys in a dormitory,

prefiguring the scene Jean Vigo would film in Zero for Conduct.

Alright, children. Now you'll have to clean this all up.

TRAINS AND TRAVEL SHIPS AND SHORES

Here's a film that's both calm and lively.

The filming is calm, the square is bustling.

This is Puerta del Sol in Madrid, in the spring of 1896.

Look down there, to the left. An ingenious manoeuvre,

allowing the direction of the carriage to be reversed.

Other than that, we see trams on rails, one-horse carriages,

two-horse carriages, and carts drawn by several horses.

And as Bertrand Tavernier pointed out,

overhead shots create the miraculous impression

that the camera is always in exactly the right place.

Another camera position, another variation on trains and trams,

in Toulouse, on Rue Alsace-Lorraine.

We're on the curve of a bend, which gives the film a sense of movement.

With perfect execution, the conductor steps down, then climbs back on.

For reasons known only to him.

Then a man in a bowler hat arrives, plants himself in front of the camera,

and waits for a woman with whom he has a mysterious exchange.

Other than that, nothing, just that it's a magnificent shot.

Whilst the film strip itself is silent, the projector does emit a faint sound.

Nevertheless, silence is part of the spectacle,

everyone fixing their attention on the screen.

Americans wouldn't say "soundless cinema",

but "silent film", "silent movie".

Yet sometimes, silent films were screened in noisy conditions,

because the theatres themselves weren't always silent.

Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station is the best known,

but there were plenty of scenes like these,

filmed from platforms in France, in America, and elsewhere.

Each time, the angle is different, the rhythm too,

but the sense of excitement is the same.

Here's a film admirable for its fluidity,

which begins with a false start, as the crank stops,

cuts the film, then starts again, like the film itself.

Here, the camera frames the port of Toulon,

where the crowd awaits the President of the Republic, Émile Loubet.

What we now call a tracking shot was, at the time, called a panorama.

These sumptuous camera movements are the hallmark of Lumière cinema.

He and his operators made a speciality of them.

We're about to see a few.

Perhaps not the most famous panorama, shot in Venice by Alexandre Promio,

but this is surely the most beautiful.

So we bow our heads and watch.

With their arabesques, depth of field, and masterful framing,

Lumière's films reflect a vision of the world

inseparable from its mode of representation.

This mode is entirely his own, posing questions of style and visual staging.

How can one enchant using reality alone?

How to hold interest without trying to impress

the spectator, the industry, and later on, the market?

To impress: an obligation cinema would come to impose on itself.

Like photographers who venture outdoors,

like painters who leave palaces behind to feel the sun and the wind,

Lumière would blend sky and sea,

fragile boats riding the waves, and the launching of ships in ports.

He would look at the world in motion, at speed, with tenderness.

ACTORS! In filming The Sprinkler Sprinkled,

Lumière intended humour to be part of the game, in front of,

and with the camera.

In this way, cinema would become a complete representation.

This could be seen as a kind of prelude to the martial arts film.

But this forerunner of Bruce Lee is a Kabuki theatre actor

who performs, before Constant Girel's camera,

a synthesis of combat techniques.

The proof? Just watch.

Oops, sorry. It's not over yet.

Back into position.

The film is almost perfectly staged.

Lumière, or the art of the remake.

This scenario had already been filmed a year earlier by Gabriel Veyre in Mexico.

Here, the scene takes place in Lyon,

and pits two men against each other in a pistol duel.

Everything seems real in this scene designed to frighten the audience,

even the bursts of gunpowder.

On the other hand, the victim does a rather poor job of playing dead.

He's clearly not quite dead,

judging by the way he stretches out his right arm

to make himself easier to carry.

They say that a good fiction film is also a documentary of its own staging.

Thus, in this film, number 889,

the setup is built into the scenario itself.

Everything is meticulous and ingenious,

and transparent to the audience, drawing them in.

This chapter is called Actor,

but could just as well be called 'Birth of the Spectacle'.

It could also be called 'Making a Fool of Oneself in Front of the Camera'.

HAVE PITY ON A POOR CRIPPLE

The Fake Cripple was filmed right next to the Lumière factory.

It makes use of everything cinema then had at its disposal.

Use of the frame, the long shot, depth of field,

and a precisely calibrated staging.

Even if, rather foolishly, The Fake Cripple, the title of the film,

gives away what's going to happen.

Beyond the comic aspect,

it's the staging and the rhythm that really impress.

Exclamations, shouts, movement.

As in this film, where the actors laugh enthusiastically at their own jokes,

an enthusiasm in which a dog is clearly eager to take part.

Foottit and Chocolat, an Englishman and a Cuban,

were music-hall performers, circus clowns,

whose characters became hugely well known.

The expression "être chocolat" supposedly comes from here,

the idea of getting taken in.

Six films are devoted to them. This is the third, The Rocking Chair.

Here come the Kremos again.

We weren't going to deny ourselves that pleasure.

By family, we mean the father,

and the children, whose elastic bodies are put to good use.

This second film is called Double Somersault,

and it's far more sophisticated.

Yes, it's true, Lumière even invented cat videos.

When he begins making his films,

Lumière doesn't have many precedents to draw inspiration from.

So he goes looking for subjects, filming whatever comes his way.

A cat, for instance.

A cat that's having more fun than the spectator watching it.

A cat at play, and a cat that takes a tumble.

In the Lumière catalogue, one also finds this.

Theatrical reconstructions, dramatic or comic vignettes,

drawing on history to capture the interest of the public.

This one is titled Nero Testing Poison on His Slaves,

and is certainly rather theatrical.

"Bring me another," says Nero.

It was worth the wait, he's a born actor.

He takes his time, but he plays dead extremely well.

Well, maybe he's not so great at dying after all.

This film bears the number 2007.

A late film therefore, shot in 1902,

on a specially constructed set at the Lumière factory in Montplaisir.

Cinema is already changing.

Méliès, the young friend of Antoine Lumière,

has burst onto the scene with a world of his own.

Films are getting longer.

Cinema becomes comedy, theatre, magic, and phantasmagoria.

They now know how to splice images, create special effects, colour the film.

As in this film, called The Fantastic Meal.

And it's signed at the bottom right, as you may have noticed: Lumière.

But this kind of cinema, as we approach the end of the Lyon adventure,

a cinema influenced by urban cabaret

and by masters of illusion,

this kind of cinema is not what defines Lumière cinema.

CINEMA's INVENTIONS (THE BEAUTY OF THE CINEMATOGRAPH)

Lumière cinema uses no tricks and no colouring.

There are no gratuitous effects,

and it never separates itself from the cinematic act.

For it owes its existence solely to this camera,

whose presence is conspicuous.

Lumière and his operators grapple with questions of staging,

the same questions that thousands of filmmakers would ask after them.

The role of the camera, the power of a subject, the idea of movement.

Look, in this film shot in Naples in 1896,

at these men on the shore pulling in their fishing nets,

drawing two horizontal lines that frame the shot.

We're already in the neorealist world of Luchino Visconti's The Earth Trembles.

The beauty of the cinematograph, we said.

Here, at the foot of the Champs-Élysées, in a Paris one might call Proustian,

a woman. Is she the mother, the aunt, the nanny?

A woman watching over children at play.

As with the painter Édouard Manet,

Lumière's imagination, his vision of the world,

speaks of the majesty of a peaceful life, of a happy life.

A way of capturing and showing everyday life at the turn of the century,

of which it is both faithful witness and definitive recorder.

Jean-Luc Godard said that if you want to change the grammar,

you must look to the illiterate.

Lumière was cinema's first illiterate.

He had to invent its grammar, his grammar,

and its language, his language.

He moves straight from technical stammering

to the accomplishment of an art,

to which he gives a style uniquely his own.

Here, amid the crowd leaving the service,

we sense the patience of the shot which sharpens our gaze.

The camera is set up facing the great doors

of Cologne Cathedral in Germany.

Leaving church, leaving the factory. At the time, it was the same thing.

Cinema began with innocence and candour.

Narrative complexity would come later.

Lumière borrows from Auguste Renoir and would inspire Jean Renoir, his son,

ushering in the 20th century.

He's been described as an Impressionist, referring to a pictorial movement

he may not even have known.

He placed his camera in fields, by rivers, in the streets.

He practised a cinema that speaks truth through beauty,

and beauty through truth.

Like these untamed glances of children parading before the camera

in a street in Stuttgart.

Cinema is writing with a camera.

Small and easy to handle, as cameras would later become,

immobile and delicate, as the Lumière cinematograph was.

Here, the camera, placed at a distance,

defines the frame that contains an extraordinary scene.

A horse at full gallop runs in circles, held by a rope,

as several riders mount it in turn.

In front of the majestic Prague Castle,

which forms the background of this admirably composed image,

the horse even grants them a final bow,

as if to round off an aesthetically perfect film.

We've already seen this earlier.

This one owes as much to photography

as to the unprecedented way of filming troops on horseback.

Troops approaching from the distance, filling the frame.

The film's value lies in its final seconds.

A magnificent end to the shot there,

precisely as the riders come closest to the camera,

in an organised dispersal, full of dust and movement.

Pure cinema. Nothing but cinema.

And the film runs to its end. Everything disappears,

the scene is over, the camera has fulfilled its task.

Here we are back in Chamonix,

at the premises of the Paris–Lyon–Mediterranean Railway,

as a carriage carrying tourists arrives.

Here, one thing is evident: cinema captures attention.

A large crowd gathers to witness the event.

The value of this film lies in its pictorial perfection, its light,

the breadth and depth of field that give us so much to see.

Look at those horses, at the end of the street, on the right.

The travellers disembarking, the majesty of the stagecoach.

The value of this film lies in its beauty.

The previous film, with its mode of travel,

almost anticipates Stagecoach.

If we stay with John Ford, this recalls a scene from The Searchers.

The characters dance together, following the same pattern as these cyclists.

A choreography that Maurice Pialat reused in Van Gogh.

After the arabesques of the trams, those of the Spanish army.

Had someone invented cinema before him,

Lumière would nonetheless have been a filmmaker,

and one of the most important.

His style and convictions have endured.

They opened the path to a new art,

whose splendid future his own films already foreshadow.

For what the Lumière cinematograph lays the way for

is the arrival of Murnau, of Bresson, and of Kiarostami.

Of Chaplin, of Bergman, and of Ozu.

It's a cinema of long takes and of simplicity.

Lumière is domestic life.

Cinema is a vernacular art.

Today, the earliest images return to question what cinema has become,

and to haunt contemporary modernity through the territory it has claimed,

the trace it has left, whose strength and beauty deserve to be restated.

One day, filmmakers would film aeroplanes in the sky.

Lumière, by contrast, filmed the waves of the sea.

Through its eternal present, this is the modern shot par excellence,

the Atlantic, near the Rock of the Virgin in Biarritz.

Framing, contemplation, wonder. Even boredom, if prolonged.

And later, certain filmmakers would not hesitate to do exactly that.

In his hands,

and in those of his operators, whose measured, talented mimicry

demonstrates the coherence of Louis's teaching,

cinema goes beyond the mere reproduction on screen

of emotions already experienced in the theatres of Paris's grands boulevards.

He invents a new way of seeing, a new point of view.

You can feel it in this utterly hypnotic scene.

We conclude by discovering two films never before shown in cinemas.

In April 1900, at the Paris World's Fair,

everyone showcased their inventions, and Lumière had his.

A strip of film 75mm wide was projected onto a huge screen.

Not the 70mm that would be invented 50 years later,

but 75mm, and in 1900.

An image of extraordinary definition opens up a vast field,

allowing the world to be embraced.

Lumière himself films the inauguration of the Water Tower Pavilion.

This shot, this monument, this procession of people

already anticipates the visual ambition

soon to be embraced by Griffith and Gance,

Eisenstein, Fritz Lang and Murnau.

This 75mm process posed major technical problems for Louis Lumière.

He couldn't resist exhibiting it, and shooting with it,

but he never managed to project it.

We simply can't resist showing it to you,

because in 2025, digital technology makes it possible.

These films exist once more.

There are about ten of them. Here's a second one.

The original idea remains: writing with the moving image,

creating movement within movement by filming an unusual setting.

By 1900,

his successors—Méliès, Gaumont, Pathé— had arrived.

Lumière knows that cinema

is heading towards a future that no longer belongs to him,

like a moving walkway that has no end.

This panorama, shot from a mobile platform of striking modernity,

is probably Louis Lumière's final shot.

"DEATH WILL CEASE TO BE ABSOLUTE"

Lumière's final shot is not a farewell to cinema,

for on 30 December 1895, two days after the inaugural screening,

the earliest critic wrote:

"When these devices are made available to the public,

when everyone can photograph those dear to them,

their movements, their actions, their familiar gestures,

with words poised on their lips, death will cease to be absolute."

With Lumière, the cinematograph would invent and reinvent itself,

endlessly exploring its own territory,

as if to show future filmmakers that they must never stop enriching it.

In 2025, we no longer experience these scenes as people once did.

Cinema has changed. Everything has changed.

But not the Lumière films, which don't belong to any so-called primitive art.

They're at once classical and modern.

And today, as cinema once again finds its place in the world of images,

the Lumière legacy takes on renewed importance.

By its very nature and dignity, cinema is an ethical art.

It will also serve as a call for calm, an instrument of peace.

Lumière is an authorial act.

To seek, to doubt, to marvel.

An authorial act.

There's always movement, even if sometimes invisible,

to the point that, as here, it takes on a lightness,

forcing the eye to wait, then understand.

The position of the spectator

gives meaning to what's being contemplated.

Lumière, and cinema, belong definitively to the big screen,

the only means capable of conferring the necessary power and clarity of vision.

Thomas Edison and the other inventors think in terms of a format.

Lumière, on the other hand, discovers not only a form, but more than that,

a poetic language and a shared social practice.

Beyond its legend, the Lumière gesture is both a beginning and a culmination.

Setting him against Méliès is misleading.

Méliès reinvents the world through illusion,

Lumière captures reality as it is.

One foreshadows Fellini, the other anticipates Rossellini.

The first leads to Hollywood, the second to the French New Wave.

Lumière shows his spectators their own lives,

and sends his operators to film lives unlike their own.

Ultimately, that's all cinema has ever done.

It tells me who I am, and who others are.

It's time to look again at Lumière.

To watch these cinematograph's scenes

is to clear our eyes of everything that's shaped them up to now,

to return to the source, to the original intention

of this invented language, defined by its 50-second form.

Cinema dominated the 20th century.

What will become of films, theatres, and spectators by its second centenary?

To celebrate its memory means to take care of it.

To safeguard its future is to take care of ourselves.

A FILM COMPOSED OF 120 SCENES

SHOT BETWEEN 1895 AND 1905

BY LOUIS LUMIÈRE AND HIS OPERATORS

STREET OF THE FIRST FILM, LYON, FRANCE TODAY

REMAKE BY FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA (WITH ROMAN COPPOLA)

"LEAVING THE FACTORY"

WITH MY OLD HAND-CRANKED "PATHÉ 35MM" CAMERA

IN MEMORY OF BERTRAND TAVERNIER