Champs-Élysées

Champs-Élysées (1896)

This Lumiere Brothers actuality film is yet another one that has the camera simply placed on a street and it captures what was going on during that moment of time. This one here has a couple children playing on the ground with a dog. In the background we see a larger group of people walking around. That's pretty much all that happens here and if you're a fan of the actuality films then you should enjoy this. The children appear to be having fun with their pet and there's quite a lot of activity in the background so there's plenty of things to view here. If you're a fan of these types of movies thankfully a large number of the Lumiere Brother films still survive.

Along the edges of the Champs Elysee, carriages roll, ladies with parasols stroll and a small girl pets her dog. Most of the movement is from the middle of the screen's top, downward to the right, instead of the more usual left. This is just like the bookend shots of Vincente Minelli's "Gigi", which seems to me to be no coincidence. The other well-known image of Parisians at play, Seurat's " A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte", shows people moving in many directions, which makes it unsuitable for the well-ordered life of the Parisian well-to-do.

The earliest film makers showed many locations, but rarely people at leisure on an ordinary day. Why is that?