Place des Cordeliers à Lyon

Place des Cordeliers à Lyon (1895)

This actuality film from the Lumiere Brothers basically has a camera set up on a street that is covered with snow. For less than a minute we see the various activities on the street including a passing carriage as well as several people walking around. Obviously a lot of people won't see the appeal of these types of actuality films but if you're a fan then you'll know what I'm talking about. Usually these films just capture a moment in time and that's exactly what we've got here. There's nothing special or ground-breaking but we just see what was going on for this brief moment in time.

This short film by the Lumiere Bros is notable for being one of the 10 films shown at their first film show in France, at the Salon Indien. What we see in these brief 35 seconds is a brief view of a street, the Cordelier's Square of the title. There are pedestrians, cabs and horses, and some very interesting looking architecture which can be glimpsed in the background. This is all you see which makes it one of the blander Lumiere features. Having said that you can't be bored because it's only over 30 seconds in length and is in fact a time machine into a world long gone. We wouldn't be able to witness these brief moments in time without the Lumiere Bros. So, like all the Lumiere films it's worth it's worth a watch because of this.

Some of the film restorations on these old movies you find, either on YouTube or on a Blu-Ray release, are fantastic. I found a really nice one on YouTube of this film. Along with nine other films, Cordeliers' Square in Lyon (1895), was shown at a Paris, mini-film festival, by pioneering filmmakers, the Lumiere brothers, in December of 1895. In this installment, we are in Lyon, France, on a bright sunny day at a busy town square. Huge buildings and many cool horse drawn carriages cover the scene. Like all of these pre-1900 films, they are shot with a single camera. Its an incredible view coming from the ninth film ever shown to a paying audience. It almost looks like it could be, the first outdoor movie set in film history, copied by studios ever since. This is a good one. It's brightness creates a happy mood. The dawn of theatrical motion pictures.

9.7 (A+ MyGrade) = 10 IMDB.

I'd really like to say a lot of nice things about this typically well-composed Lumiere actuality with lots of movement to keep the viewer interested throughout its length. However, once I've said that much, there isn't anything more to say. This sort of shot was a standard production of the era -- I'm tempted to write "commonplace" except that when you're doing something early and get it right, that would be cruelly wrong.

The reason I find this just ordinary good is that nothing particularly interesting happens. There's no one fighting a wintry storm like Broadway AND UNION SQUARE (1902), there's nothing exciting like DISTRIBUTING A WAR EXTRA (1899) and no one looks at the camera, engaging the modern audience reproachfully as they do in so many Mitchell & Kenyon movies. It's just a well composed view of a world that has vanished. How jaded I am!