Customer Reviews

Lumiere Brothers First Films

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Imagine seeing beautiful moving images from the 1890's! It's fascinating to see the buildings, clothing, and vehicles of the time.

The prints are very clear, and the commentary by Bertrand Tavernier is amusing. This is clearly a production that was made with care and love.

I'm submitting this review in the hope that sales of this wonderful disc will increase, allowing Image Entertainmment and Kino Video to continue to produce such treasures.

What a wonderful and fun DVD! The images are fascinating, the narration is delightful and informative, but there is one annoying problem. Many times throughout they make reference to the 50 second length of all the films, but, unfortunately, on this recording they only last 40 seconds BECAUSE THEY WERE RECORDED AT THE WRONG SPEED! The Chapter numbers also don't match up with the table of contents. But over all, this is a very worthwhile and enjoyable DVD.

If you are a true student of cinema and have any sort of affection for the early pioneers, then you have to add this DVD to your collection. "The Lumiere Brother's First Films" presents 85 of the films the brothers made 1895-97, all lasting under a minute in length. The Lumiere Institute restored each of these gems from the original 35mm film, which cover the tremendous breadth of their work, from their first dolly shot to their recording history in countries around the world. The films are narrated by Bertran Tavernier, President of the Lumiere Institute. Now if somebody would do the same thing for Edison, Melies and the other pioneers of film, I would be even happier. This DVD was released in 1996, the same year that 40 international filmmakers such as David Lynch, Spike Lee, Zhang Yimou were allowed to make their own one-minute Lumiere films using the restored original camera for "Lumiere & Company." Not as important as this collection, but certainly an interesting tribute.

I would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in early cinema. To the reviewer who complained that the film here is presented at the wrong speed, I would point out that the narrative references were not to 50 "seconds" of film, but rather to 50 "feet" of film, which works out to approximately 40 seconds.

Antoine Lumière, the father of Auguste and Louis, saw a demonstration of Edison's Kinetoscope invention in Paris. When he came home he described the impressive device to his sons and told them that he thought they could do even better. Thus, the two brothers began work on their own camera device and proved their father correct. The Lumiere brothers' device was mobile, unlike Edison's Kinetoscope. Thus it could be moved about to make films of real life in progress. Their camera produced less jitter in the resulting films, thus allowing the brothers to experiment with different film techniques. In 1895 they began putting their invention to work filming employees passing through the front gate of the family business. In these early day, the Lumières as well as Edison, were likely to film what we would describe today as "home movies" since the idea of the feature film really hadn't even been born yet. For the next two years the brothers continued experimenting with their device, and filmed over 1500 "actualities". This collection contains 85 of those short films, each 50 seconds long.

The narrator of this set is Bertrand Tavernier, and he knows the Lumières work specifically the way Robert Osborne knows cinema in general. Thus he is able to add all kind of insightful comments. According to Tavernier, the Lumières weren't just carrying their camera out to interesting locales and shooting films. They were also looking for interesting ways to present images on film. Since Louis was an experienced photographer before the brothers built and began experimentng with their own device, he was able to incorporate his talent into their work with the motion picture. For example, "Train arrival in the station of La Ciotat" is more than just a documentation of passengers embarking and disembarking a train. There is also a sense of perspective and depth that makes the little "actuality" special and artistic. In "Carnaux: Taking out of the coke oven" there are factory workers on different levels and at different depths all going about their separate tasks that makes the image very interesting to behold. The Lumieres use a similar technique in ""Washerwomen on the river". Besides doing an excellent job of documenting everyday life while demonstrating interesting motion picture techniques, the Lumieres were also capable of producing very amusing little comedies. In "Mechanical delicatessen trade" a pig is shown being loaded into one end of a box. After the workers turn a large wheel attached to the box, they open the other side and remove sausages. This still proves amusing over a hundred years later to almost everyone except vegetarians.

I highly recommend this DVD set as a way to familiarize yourself with Edison's French contemporaries and fellow pioneers in the art of cinema. You have to be interested in the art and history of film to really appreciate it, though.

This DVD, which presents the films with one's choice of just a piano score, English narration by director and film scholar Bertrand Tavernier, and French narration by Thierry Fremaux, presents many of the early films made by the Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis. They're grouped into categories such as work, travel, play, children, and actualities. Though they're all under a minute long, they give a fascinating look into what life was like in France (and in places like Ireland, England, Egypt, and Azerbaijan) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a world that was ordinary to those who were being filmed but which seems like a magickal time capsule for those of us watching over 100 years later. Monsieur Tavernier's commentary gives a lot of great insights into and background on their techniques, their career, how they got started with film-making, the public reaction to the films, the different types of genres they had, and what's going on in the films themselves. One could watch these very early films over and over again and never get tired, since there's so much going on and always someone or something new to pay attention to and focus on. The audio commentary actually seems preferable to just watching the films themselves with the piano score, since it explains so much that one might not have otherwise known. Although as wonderful as this tribute to these pioneer film-makers is, I was rather disappointed at how almost none of the films are given names or dates. It really helps if one knows the name of the film one is watching and when it was made instead of just seeing it or hearing it described (particularly if you're keeping a list of all of the silent films you've seen). All of the other DVDs of early film I've seen have identified their films instead of just throwing them at the viewer. One hopes that this disc will come back into print, and that perhaps an updated edition will correct this seemingly glaring oversight.