Falling Cat

Motion pictures were seeing a huge development in quality by 1894. There was Louis le Prince, who had created the world's first known celluloid film (and thus the first true motion picture, unless you count a bunch of photographs put together a 'moving picture'). There was Edison studios, who had created the first movies in the United States, (and who also wanted to prove themselves the inventors of the motion pictures, period). Then, there was Etienne-Jules Marey, a little-known Frenchman and filmmaker who started his career as a scientist and studier of animals. Long before Marey had bothered to attempt filming of the some of the first moving pictures, he was actually a photographer quite similar to Eadweard Muybridge in the sense that he also pioneered in motion pictures by still images, using animals and nude models for subjects to photograph. It was not until later in his career in photography that Marey succeeded where Muybridge didn't: it was he who became one of the earliest true filmmakers.

"Falling Cat" was shot using Marey's chronophotographic gun, a camera of sorts resembling a shotgun. Using this invention, Marey thus conducted his most well-remembered experiment, performed at the Bois de Boulogne public park in France: to prove, once and for all, whether or not cats always land on their feet when dropped. (Of course, this will no doubt bring to mind Muybridge's attempts at discovering whether a horse becomes air-born when galloping, another reason why the two are very similar to each-other). To conduct the experiment, the cat was accordingly dropped upside down from the top of the frame, and is shown to twist around in mid-air before landing safely on a cushion at the bottom of the frame.

Arguably, this short experimental film is also believed to have been the earliest film to feature a cat, and thus the earliest LOLcat video on YouTube. While I would say that's not far from the truth, there's no way of knowing for sure: don't forget the Edison company shot "Boxing Cats" the same year. The latter could be considered a LOLcat more than this one could, in the sense it includes funnier action; but until filming dates for both films are found, I don't believe there's any way to figure out for sure whether or not this claim can be considered correct.

"Chronophotography" is a term Étienne-Jules Marey coined to describe his scientific instantaneous serial photography of motion on glass plates and paper and celluloid roll film, as well as his camera and projection inventions. Some continue to make a distinction between chronophotography as pre-cinema history and cinematography, but it's a thin arbitrary distinction, which is readily apparent when viewing a film such as this one, the so-called "Falling Cat", which was photographed on celluloid—just as were the films of the Edison Company or of the Lumière brothers. Marey's film is shorter and not perforated, but the main difference is that he wasn't interested in commercializing his inventions and films. Nevertheless, authors like Marta Braun and Virgilio Tosi have argued for Marey as the central figure in the invention of cinema. At least, in examining the history of chronophotography and the archeology and invention of movies, for me, has added to the common narrative of film beginning with entrepreneurs seeking commercial exploitation, a coincident narrative of film being invented out of the necessities of scientific research.

Marey was a physiologist, an academic, president of various prestigious institutions and an accomplished experimental researcher whose interest in engineering furthered his research. He contributed to many fields: he made medical and motion graphing devices and methods, advanced aviation, pioneered the study of labor productivity, and demonstrated how a cholera epidemic in France was spread by contaminated water supply. He turned to photography as a means to study motion after seeing the sequential photographs of horses in motion by Eadweard Muybridge (see "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" (1880)). Marey, however, decided to go the single-camera route (as opposed to the multiple cameras Muybridge used) of a fixed point-of-view, as Jules Janssen had done earlier with his photographic revolver used to record the "Passage de Vénus" in 1874. Similarly, Marey initially used a photographic rifle to photograph images on rotating glass plates, as well as a single-plate box camera. The mechanic Otto Lund helped make these cameras. The chemist Eugène Chevreul provided specifications for the "black hanger"—a dark shed or "set" for the experiments. On 15 October 1888, Marey announced, then showed on 29 October, to the Académie des Sciences that he was filming on paper film rolls. Coincidently, that announcement was one day after another Frenchman, Louis Le Prince, had taken his paper film experiments in Leeds (see "Accordion Player" and "Roundhay Garden Scene"), which were far more secretive due to Le Prince's commercial aspirations. In the summer of 1889, Marey started using newly-available celluloid film.

Over his career, Marey photographed images on thousands of glass plates and made nearly 800 films (Abel). Most of them were made at the Station Physiologique near Paris, with government funding and with assistants, who included, over the years, Georges Demeny, Lucien Bull and Pierre Noguès. He authored over 350 scientific books and papers (source: Deac Rossell, "Breaking the Black Box"). Human locomotion and gymnastics, the gait of horses and, especially, the flight of birds were favorite subjects. The most popular today, however, involves a cat—which seems natural given the abundance of cat videos available on YouTube and elsewhere. Braun lists 13 cat films made by Marey. Four of them involve a cat walking or trotting, but the rest are all a cat being dropped. Two of these series were presented by Marey in a published paper. This "Falling Cat", perhaps, even accomplished a feat more impressive than demonstrating a talent for playing the piano. By using its weight to twist mid-air to land on its feet, the feline did nothing less than contradict Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion and the mathematical law of conservation of angular momentum. Among other animals put to this task, the rabbit was the only other to succeed in confounding the science of the day.

Marey seems to have been more concerned with inventing the means for the analysis of motion than in its synthesis—being content with viewing his films in a zoetrope—and demonstrating them, such as at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. He even used sculptures based on his photographs in the zoetrope for a three-dimensional effect. In synthesizing motion, Marey was concerned with confirming the analysis of what couldn't otherwise be seen instead of mirroring reality back. As Braun put it, "Marey sought not to represent nature but to discover the laws that governed it." It was only after the Lumière brothers' Cinematographé that he would bother to complete his own reversible camera/projector in 1896. Unlike Marey, however, Demeny became interested in and pursued the commercial possibilities of these inventions (see "Je vous aime" (1891)).

Despite his disinterest in the commercial and spectatorial possibilities of movies, Marey was friends with, or at least met, some of those who were: including, in addition to Demeny, Muybridge, Edison, the Lumières and Ottomar Anshütz—all of whom were surely influenced by his work. This interconnectedness and coincident developments in scientific chronophotography and commercial movie development is why I don't consider there to be a single person, a date, or particular film that can be pointed to as the origin of movies. Additionally, despite, and unlike Muybridge, his disinterest in the artistic composition of his images (although he and Demeny did publish an artist's handbook), he had an impact on art similar to Muybridge. Marey's single-plate chronophotographs where images often partially superimposed over each other have especially been cited as an influence to artists from realists like Thomas Eakins, who took up chronophotography to provide models for painting, to Impressionists like Edgar Degas and Georges Seurat and the Surrealist Max Ernst. He especially inspired Futurist and abstract paintings such as František Kupka's "Les cavaliers", Giacomo Balla's "Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" and Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase".

(Main Sources: "Encyclopedia of Early Cinema" edited by Richard Abel. "Picturing Time" by Marta Braun. "The Great Art of Light and Shadow" by Laurent Mannoni. "Cinema Before Cinema" by Virgilio Tosi.)

Falling Cat (1894)

The title pretty much tells you exactly what happens in this Edison short. A cat is dropped and lands on some soft cushions. For those PETA fans, have no fear everything was pulled off smoothly.

Is that enough of a plot for you? Considering this was 1894 there's no point in really expecting a plot. There's certainly nothing terrible or great about this picture but fans of early cinema will want to watch it just because of the historic value. I'm fairly certain this was the first cat to ever be put into a movie so that there gives you a historic reason to watch it if you needed one.

Cats usually dont walk backwards. In this film they dont. My favorite part is when they show the cat at the door way when its raining and black out. Staring east. Whats over there we all ask (viewer's). It doesnt matter.