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Though it barely constitutes as a film, 'The Passage to Venus' is likely the earliest film in cinema history. No, not the earliest film of any particular genre or method, but just the first FILM in general. As for what it contains, there's not much to it. You might as well read the IMDb description and that is pretty much it. It's only about six seconds long, the quality of even the finest print of this film is low and hard to see, which is natural considering the film's extraordinary age. However, how impossibly important this film really is makes up for the less than compelling actual contents of the film, as it really enhances the awe inspiring quality this film would otherwise never inspire.

OR IS IT?

It is true that this is the very first sequential photographic series put to motion ever produced, there is an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. The tragedy is that this is not actually the heavenly body of Venus passing before the great burning day ball in the sky. It is in fact, the world's first screen test, as these are only models, placeholders made to test the plates which would be used for the real deal. Regrettably, the actual footage of the Venusian transit may be lost forever. According to Wikipedia, "A 2005 study of the surviving material concluded that all the extant plates made with the photographic revolver are practice plates shot with a model and that none of the many plates successfully exposed during the eclipse seem to have survived."

Yet we must interpret it as it is: A film. Indeed, it is fitting that man's first foray into something so invariably groundbreaking in influence, cultural impact and importance to art as film is indeed, baby steps, waddling up towards the stars. Or at least, the pretend ones spinning above the nascent medium's crib in its nursery. If we play along with this vision, we cannot help but be in awe of man's great scope for this technology's use, to chart astrological and scientific phenomena, to revolutionize the preservation of once in a lifetime events, and indeed attain near-apotheosis in achieving the ability to preserve, simulate and replay life itself as long as the powers and mediums employed would hold. It is staggering in and of itself that this alone survived into the age where it could be immortalized nearly forever, to inspire every generation with proof that even in simulacra, man has always been driven to achievement by gazing upon the wonders within the stars.

This is the oldest thing listed on the entire IMDb. I'm glad to have discovered this neat trick where you can literally look at any submission on the entire website. You just type in a keyword and then get rid of the check in the box. This website has literally 5.3 million entries! It's quite nice to get to see the first one. I believe "Roundhay Garden Scene" was technically the first movie ever made.

This is actually a series of photographs, so it probably doesn't count as a movie. It's only 5 seconds long, but it's great to see history in motion! Of course, it's very low quality. I imagine this would be in the public domain so it shouldn't be hard to find. Weird when I make a review longer than the actual entry! I'm sure you have time to see this. ***

On 8 December 1874, French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen recorded a series of images with his photographic revolver of the transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun. Plans to observe the astronomical event had been in the making for some time, and records made by Janssen's method required the invention of a new camera. Since then, historians have considered this a turning point in pre-cinema history and the history of photography or as the beginning of the invention of motion pictures. One film historian, for example, called Janssen "the originator of modern cinematography" (Friedrich von Zglinicki, quoted by Hermann Hecht in "Pre-Cinema History"); while Virgilio Tosi has said of Janssen's revolver photographique, that it was "a genuine scientific cine camera in embryo". Generally, the revolver photographique figures as a starting point for Chronophotography and is cited as especially of influence on the work of fellow French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (see "Falling Cat" (1894)).

Janssen presented his plans to photograph the transit of Venus with his revolver and had the first version of the camera built by clockmaker Eugène Deschiens in 1873. The camera was called a "revolver" because of its similarities to the firearms, such as those introduced by Samuel Colt. Others have said that "revolver" is a misnomer or that the camera is more similar to a machine gun. Before Janssen, others had tried to record sequential photographs; reportedly, Englishmen, one named Thompson and the other Thomas Skaife, invented cameras that made several images. Others photographed staged and slightly altered poses in lieu of being able to take instantaneous sequential pictures. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (also known by the pseudonym Nadar) did this for a revolving self-portrait circa 1864. Similarly, in 1870, Henry Heyl photographed a couple in a series of waltz poses, and he synthesized their motion via the projection of his Phasmatrope.

Many of these early cameras, which can be viewed at the George Eastman House website, very much resemble guns, as does Marey's later photographic rifle. It seems an appropriate combination of two technologies that emerged earlier in the 19th Century and which allowed for the development from still photography to that of instantaneous and serial images. Despite their mechanical similarities of rotation, however, Janssen's cameras are only cylinders. The second version made in 1874 by the father and son instrument makers Redier, featured intermittent movement of the Daguerreotype metal plate by means of Maltese-cross gears. This cylindrical camera, which could be operated either manually or automatically, was attached to a horizontal telescope that was pointed at a small heliostat, to record 48 images in 72 seconds of the "Passage de Vénus".

Janssen's team of eight people traveled to the Kompirayama hill in Nagasaki, Japan for the event, while two other members of his party went to Kobe, Japan. The next day, Janssen reported that his observations were a success, despite the caveat that it was "cloudy at intervals". Unfortunately, as the sources mentioned at the bottom have discovered, this record is no longer known to exist. The plates from several English parties who used cameras based on Janssen's for the transit don't seem to have faired too well, either, over the years—except for at least one that has been said to still be known to exist. (By the way, the English cameras were by John Henry Dallmeyer, who is also notable for having provided the lenses that helped to make possible Eadweard Muybridge's "automatic electro-photography" beginning in 1878 (see "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" (1880))). The animation of images available on the web, including at YouTube, and in Tosi's educational film mentioned at the bottom are of a simulation conducted by Janssen earlier in 1874. Janssen presented artificial passages to the Académie des Sciences on 6 July 1874.

In addition to arguably being the first instance of cinematography, these images are also early examples of time-lapse photography and of scientific filmmaking. (By the way, part of Tosi's thesis is that cinema was invented out of the research needs of science by the likes of Janssen, Muybridge, Marey and others and not as spectacle, i.e. by the likes of Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson and the Lumière brothers).

Chronophotography, or cinematography, weren't of main interest to Janssen, though, but, rather, a means to aid his scientific research, as was also the case for Marey. Of the rest of his life, Janssen was an accomplished astronomer, including discovering the gas helium. Nevertheless, he continued to take part in the invention of motion pictures in another way, by appearing in the work of Marey and the Lumière brothers. These Frenchman, of course, would be among the first to invent celluloid film cameras and projectors. On 1 January 1884, Janssen posed wearing a turban and smoking a cigarette for close-up chronophotographs on a disc made by Marey (see the book "Picturing Time" by Marta Braun). On 11 June 1895, he was among the French photographic society filmed disembarking from a boat in "Débarquement du congrès des photographes à Lyon", which the Lumière brothers projected the next day at a private Cinématographe screening for them. Janssen also appeared in the Lumière film "Discussion de Monsieur Janssen et de Monsieur Lagrange", for which during the projection of it, he and Lagrange hid behind the screen and reenacted the dialogue of that discussion (source: Stephen Herbert, Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website). Additionally, Janssen met Edison in 1889 while the "Wizard of Menlo Park" was in Paris and introduced him to the Académie des Sciences and to Marey (source: Braun). Although most people today may not know much about the true invention of the movies, Marey and the Lumière brothers knew whose shoulders they were standing on.

Main sources: the essay "Jules Janssen's 'Revolver Photographique' and its British Derivative, 'The Janssen Slide'" by Françoise Launay and Peter D. Hingley and the book "Cinema Before Cinema: the Origins of Scientific Cinematography" and film "The Origins of Scientific Cinematography: the Pioneers" (1990) both by Virgilio Tosi.

French scientist Pierre-Jules-César Janssen (1824-1907), a keen observer of eclipses (and now most famous as the discoverer of Helium), decided to try and capture the motion of Venus crossing the sun through sequence photography, which was a milestone in the development of cinema itself. But at this point we are still in the realm of the individual photograph.

Janssen's mission was to capture the point of contact between planet and sun during an eclipse, since this could help determine solar distance more precisely. Since the exact moment that this would occur could not be determined, he did not want to depend upon a single photograph that might miss the event entirely. Instead he decided to take a rapid sequence of photographs. He achieved this by constructing his cinematic revolver. The revolver was somewhat similar to a Colt revolver. It was driven by a clockwork-driven Maltese Cross-like mechanism capable of taking 48 exposures on a Daguerreotype plate over a period of 72 seconds.

Daguerreotypes were becoming an antiquated technology by this time, but, as Stephen Herbert explains -" the metal plate ensured an absence of flare that could have been a problem if a glass plate had been used - and a wet plate would in any case have been inconvenient to use in such a camera. With the sun as the source there was no shortage of light, so the 'slow' daguerreotype process was ideal."

Jannsen traveled to Japan to take his photos, and they were presented the following year as individual images. It would be several years before they could be presented as an animated sequence. Yet here they are, the first chronological entry on imdb.

This movie shows us the Venus transition, it was a short movie but the picture quality was pretty good

This film won every award at the 1874 Oscars.

The very first moving picture was of the planet Venus.... taken from a time when we though every planet in the solar system could contain life... the person who filmed this must have wondered if anything was looking back at him from Venus....

I couldn't resist commenting on this and trying to fill 600 words.

Quite literally out of this world (I am so clever...) this efficiently paced documentary does not overbear us with sentimental narration or a mawkish score, it just lets its subject matter speak for itself.

A vision of the passing planet that may indeed be a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of existence or may indeed not be.

In all seriousness, I admire how these people, who were not artists but scientists, embraced the new technology for the study and documentation of their passion.

As a wise bunny once said "It doesn't have a lot of female or minority characters, but it doesn't have any white male characters either so I guess it's OK".

Venus has indeed been an inspiration from antiquity to modernity.

To most this may look simply like a home movie. But it's labeled the first movie ever actually made on IMDb. That's no small accomplishment. This 1-2 second movement of Venus across the sun is not only mentally exciting, but also incredibly groundbreaking. I myself cannot confirm if it's actually Venus going across the sun, but if it is, it also showcases an excellent appearance of space movement, which was still in its relative infancy in photography.

I doubt this was actually filmed frame by frame. They could've most likely just took a few photographs on a standstill camera and wrapped them all together to create the illusion of movement. But hey. Isn't that what stop motion is about? So not only is it the first movie ever, the first movie to show the sun looking good, it's also the first stop motion movie ever made. Isn't that incredible?

I probably would've given this a lower rating if it was newer, but since it's the first of it's kind, I think it's well deserving of a 9.

I watched the short "Roundhay Garden Scene" which was recorded in 1888 and thought, "Certainly there can't be any moving pictures older than this." Then "Passage de Venus" was suggested. If I was shocked that moving pictures went as far back as 1888, I was stunned to see something dated 1874.

Per Wikipedia it was shot by a French astronomer in Japan. It is supposedly Venus passing in front of the sun. Who am I to argue? The footage, as you can imagine, is very grainy and of poor quality. I'm surprised it survived long enough to be made into a digital format. It's only six seconds long and without being told, it's anyone's guess what you're looking at. One thing is for sure, you're looking at history, and that's enough for me.

I feel like that's something we don't talk about enough. Sure, it's scratchy, but for the oldest surviving film, the quality's held up marvelously.

As for the rest of it... eh. I give it props for being the first of it's kind, but other than that, there's not much going for it. If I didn't look up the backstory for this piece, I wouldn't have the slightest clue as to what I'm looking at.

A lot of prep work went into this mission. We see the guy standing in the farm at night doing math in his head. He wasn't just doing that, he was staying there with his eyes shut. Meanwhile, someone rides in a boat on a blinding day.

"Passage de Vénus" is not a film in the traditional sense, but rather a historical curiosity - a scientific experiment that accidentally became the first step toward cinema. French astronomer Jules Janssen, armed with a "revolver-style photo gun," captured a rare astronomical event: the transit of Venus across the Sun's disk. The result is surprisingly poetic - a distant planet as the lone heroine, the Sun as the stage, and the astronomer as a director from the future.

Technically, the footage is far from perfect: the frames are blurry, the motion barely discernible, and the plot is nothing more than a black dot crawling across a white background. But the historical value of this work is immense. Within it are the first sparks of what would become cinema two decades later.

It's not the kind of film you'd recommend to friends for a movie night - but it is most certainly where it all began.

This is probably the oldest film on IMDB. Whether this is a film or not, it's hard to say, as this is 6 seconds of images put together. This technique may have been performed before by other men, but this is the oldest record we have. The initial intentions were not to catch movement for its own sake, but multiple shots were required because you were unable to specify the exact time of the Venus passing in the sky. It still makes me think, though, how far we have come 145 years later. It brings a combination of joy and sadness to see these images, it makes me wonder what was that day in Jules Janssen's mind. When listening to Alexander Graham Bell capturing his own voice, projecting to the future, this set of pictures makes you feel like history was made on that very day.

Check Films by the year. YouTube. Hello hello miss love galip Yyyhhh was the time to get my Christmas Christmas gifts from my Old I am so happy I wanna I love your dreams come on you are just beautiful women males gender sexual good life just curious what did she do with the book she said it would also make her think about sexual.

1904 Palestine - proramme documetaire 1906 buffon dance 1908 Narren-grappen 1914 varahaisia filmiäänkokeito 1915 diplodocus 1919 kulshev effect 1923 saad zaghloul back 1926 villiers?

1932 miss norah blaney 1934 doomsday.

DEBIDO A QUE ES MUY ANTIGUA , ESTAS SERIES DE IMÁGENES QUE NO SE APRECIAN TAN BIEN QUE DIGAMOS Y ES LÓGICO , FUE UNO DE LOS PRIMEROS PASOS EN LA HISTORIA DE LA FOTOGRAFÍA Y AL MISMO TIEMPO EL INICIO A ÉSTE MARAVILLOSO MUNDO DEL CINE QUE AHORA DISFRUTAMOS. PERO PARA SU ÉPOCA EL PODER CALIFICARLA DE MANERA POSITIVA AÚN ES BAJA, ÉSTO POCO A POCO IRÁ CAMBIANDO CON EL PASAR DE LOS AÑOS Y EL CINE EVOLUCIONARÁ. LUEGO GRACIAS A LOS AVANCES EN LA TECNOLOGÍA SE PODRÁ DISFRUTAR DEL CINE EN TODO SU ESPLENDOR .

It's scratchy, it keeps cutting, and yet it's truly remarkable. It really is a fascinating look back in time 148 years ago, to when history was made, all through the transit of Venus.

Although I would argue "Man Walking Around the Corner" as the first film, in a sort of semi-modern sense (also arguable considering the medium it was shot on), IMDB classifies "Passage de Venus" as such. The series of photos shot by Pierre Jules César Janssen of the beginning of the transit of Venus across the Sun is something to behold within the context of the time. Surely an observation of this sort in the quality that this film is in, would be largely overlooked in the modern world, but is clearly the opposite for the time it was shot. And I believe many people nowadays, even, would be surprised at the level of mechanics that was available during the 1870s; a mere 10 years after the American Civil War.

No matter which film is classified as the first, the concept owes itself to all those who worked to pioneer it and those who helped support it in its infant stages, such as Janssen, Muybridge, Le Prince, and as much as I hate to say it Edison. I like to imagine what these progenitors of modern film would think of what their invention has become, and I like to imagine they'd be elated at the beauty.

How could anyone (besides an idiot) give this short such a low rating? I'm annoyed at what I'm seeing. This is one of the first attempts at making a film, and you idiots give it a 2? A 3? That is really poor on your part. I'll tell you why.

First of all, where do you think today's movies came from? Did cinema evolve out of nowhere? Of course not! Cinema had to progress. People had to get their ideas, experiment, mess around, whatever. You cannot give this such a low rating! Yes, it's a scratchy mess, and impossible to identify what it's about, but you have to start somewhere. So maybe it's not exactly a great film in itself, but still deserves at least a 7.

The guy who gave it a 10 was really thinking about it. He understood. You cannot criticize it for its scratchiness or anything. The fact it is one of the earliest attempts at filmmaking is enough.

I will admit it's not a true film. As IMDb's summary states, it is merely photographs, and is not 'filmed', per say, on a filmstrip. The first true celluloid film was Louis le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene" in 1888, but until then this is an important movie suggesting the beginning of our medium. It is also important because the event it portrays is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we wouldn't be able to witness today. But, thanks to Pierre Janssen, we can.

The first movie? I don't think we can actually call it a "movie" per se, after all it's just 5 seconds long and, if i'm not mistaken, it is only 20 frame in total. But it's still amazing to think that we can see something from more than 100 years ago.

I think we can consider this extremely short movie (after all it's only 5 seconds), not only something big for the movies in general (although i don't know how many in those years saw these projections in the same way see them), but also it is something huge for the scientific side. It is still a recoded passage of a planet in front of our Sun.

My rating is 10/10, too much? Maybe, but since i liked very much, i'll stick with it. And also, the rating is personal, so someone else can have a totally different opinion from me and put a 1/10, and that's ok. But for me i can't give it less than 10.

This hits hard

the way venus transits across the sun just hits very different nowadays and i can't believe that this was only 5 seconds and deserves to be way longer.

I don't believe it can be considered a film in the full sense of the term. The fact that it is probably the oldest fragment of cinema we know of does not make this product definable as a "film." Its entirely scientific and non-entertainment purpose alone would be enough to eliminate any debate. Moreover, there is the fact that this product was not recorded on film but on a series of different photographic plates.

However, it is not possible to overlook the historical importance of this product, nor the influence of the photographic revolver designed by Janssen, which made it possible to capture this event. Nevertheless, both reviews and evaluations should refer to film, not to artifact.

Rating: NC.