Arbeiter verlassen die Lumière-Werke

For almost anyone with an interest in the earliest motion pictures, watching this footage of workers leaving the Lumière factory never gets old. Its historical significance, as the first movie that Louis Lumière showed at the first public demonstration of his cinematograph, would certainly make it well worth remembering for that reason alone. But beyond Lumière's visionary and technical abilities, he also had a knack for choosing material for his features that was interesting in itself.

This particular subject could not have been more appropriate for his first public presentation. The seemingly simple footage is almost a microcosm of the new world created by cinema. The widely varying reactions of the various workers (not to mention the occasional dog) contain almost every common reaction to the camera: some are curious and don't mind showing it, some are curious and pretend not to be, some are a little uncomfortable, some seem to be fascinated by having their picture taken. With the 'cast' as large as it is, you can watch the film a good number of times and still not lose interest.

Beyond that, the way that the camera field is set up shows an innate sense of the value of movement, particularly movement towards the camera, in holding the attention of the audience. Some of Lumière's best films made further use of this idea.

In one very short movie, this film preserves an important step in cinema history, while also containing material that, in a sense, portrays and foresees many of the future effects of the Lumière brothers' invention. That we can experience both, any time that we view this footage of these long-past men and women and their honest reactions to the camera, is still fascinating.

Forget the "twists" you've seen in films like Psycho (1960), The Sixth Sense(1999), and the Crying Game(1992), LEAVING THE LUMIERE FACTORY (1895) blows those plot points out of the water and takes it rightful place as the biggest shock in movie history.

December 28, 1895, The Grand Cafe' in Paris, France. Only 33 out of 100 tickets are sold to the first ever demonstration of the Lumiere Cinematograph. A jaded, French crowd sits in the theater waiting to see this mystery invention they know nothing about. The lights go down. A static, barren shot of the front door of a factory is projected onto the screen. Several seconds go by before a man stands up and shouts in disappointment, "It's just the old Magic Lantern!" (the magic lantern was a primitive slide projector for still photographs) Suddenly, the doors of the factory on screen miraculously swing open, a crowd of women pour out into the frame and a seizure of--believe it or not!--motion happens within the picture. Needless to say, the audience was caught completely off guard, and were absolutely dumbstruck.

Can you imagine it?! The audience had co clue that the picture would move! They must have went bonkers! It would be like you watching Jerry Maguire, and then Tom Cruise walks right out of the screen and sits down next to you!

When those French ladies opened the doors to the Lumiere Factory, they were also opening the doors to a whole new world of art and entertainment!

This one-minute film is arguably the first movie ever made. Other inventors had previously filmed actions - like Edison's motion photography of a sneeze - but the Lumiere brothers developed equipment that tremendously advanced the medium. At the time, of course, their `cinematograph' must have bewildered their peers, including their subjects. In this first instance, the brothers record employees leaving their factory, some of whom understandably struggle to hide their awareness of the camera. The Lumieres attempt to make the film more entertaining by introducing animals and a bicycle, but `La Sortie Des Usines Lumiere' doesn't nearly match the ingenuity of their later films. The most interesting aspect of this short film is the brothers' selection of a familiar working class ritual as their subject. Their choice is the initial evidence of their curiosity about all of the world's people, a quality that makes viewing their experiments immensely rewarding and fascinating today.

Rating: 8

The appeal of ancient films like this one is that you get to see an actual moving image of life over 100 years ago. Here are a lot of people leaving a factory, all of them dead by now and none of them even remotely aware of the magnitude of the invention that they are walking before. I was shocked to read one reviewer call this film as boring as home videos today, and at least one other mistakenly identified it as the first film ever made (it was the first film made at the rate of 16 frames per second, rather than the then-normal 46 frames per second).

Sure, all you see is a lot of people filing out of a building and passing before the cinematograph on their way home from work, but this is a curiosity piece for dozens of reasons, not the least of which is that it was the first film made by the Lumiére brothers, who probably had a stronger impact on the development of the cinema than any other individual or group of individuals in history.

Even as the first film to come to cinema, it's still better than a lot of the films that come out today. The origin story of this film is completely fascinating. An unknowing audience attend the cinema assuming it will be a series of still images, until they get hit with the greatest twist of all time - a moving picture. The 33/100 who went to see this film are some of the luckiest people of all time, just imagine their shock.......