Arrivée en gondole à Venise

Panorama du grand Canal pris d'un bateau (1896)

Alexandre Promio directed this thirty-five second film that has a camera placed on a boat and we capture a journey down the Grand Canal. If you're a fan of these early films then you'll probably enjoy this one for a number of reasons. For starters, the cinematography is exceptionally good for the era with the camera standing firm and not shaking all over the place. Another good thing is that we get a terrific view of many of the buildings and homes along the canal and this gives you a great chance to see how it looked back in 1896. This here alone is reason enough to watch the film.

This is a wonderfully elegant little film and thoroughly deserves its celebrity but it is almost certainly not the first "travelling shot" in cinema history as is so often claimed.

Alexandre Promio started his career in France in March 1986 (he was one of the men responsible for training the Lumière operators who would subsequently spread out worldwide). He himself was in Spain filming by April and stayed there until June. He was in Russia in July where he gave a command showing (one of many) for the Tsar and Tsarina (the Romanovs were themselves keen photographers).

He was in Italy at the end of the summer and almost certainly in Venice because Lumières opened a hall there in August and were definitely making films in the town. The film of Venice Lumière cat. 291 which appears on IMDb as 'Venice Showing Gondolas' was probably made at this time as was Lumière cat. 292 ('Pigeons sur la Place Saint Marc', missing from IMDb) because both of these films were being shown back in Lyon by early August (August 2 in fact). Ditto, 'Venise, tramway sur le Grand Canal' (shown at Lyon in September) Lumière cat 293. But none of these are panoramas.

There is no record of the two films shot from a Gondola, of which this is one, Lumière cat.295 and 296, being screened back in Lyon until December 1896 and January 1897.

In September Promio was in the US charged with the task of providing "American views" that Lumière could show at Keith's Union Square Theatre (very necessary since Edison and the new company American Mutoscope both finally had mobile cameras and the means of projecting films by the autumn of 1896). He seemingly made a large number of films during the month he spent in the USA (Lumière cat 319-340) and some of these are on IMDb but the remarkable thing is that, out of twenty films, not a single one is a panorama! Yet in his later career, Promio used the panorama as a sort of trademark. Everywhere he went, from Jerusalem to Liverpool, he took scenes from trains and he shot panoramas from boats on the Nile, the Bosphorus, the Mersey. So it is unthinkable that he should not have shot such panoramas in the US if he had already made his celebrated films in Venice before he went there.

In fact it is probably in the US that he first became familiar with the technique because while he was there in September 1896, American Mutoscope brought out a series of panoramas shot in Atlantic City and at Niagara Falls from trolley-cars and trains (all these are on IMDb) and it was Mutoscope who first referred to such film as "panoramas". Although he did not employ the term Edison (or rather James White and William Heise) had in fact shot a panorama earlier (June-July 1896) of the Niagara Falls with a camera fixed to the back of a train but the negatives came out badly and he had to re-shoot a new Niagara Falls series in December. So, if his was the first panorama, it has not survived.

We know that when he left the US at the end of the month, Promio went back to Italy. So it is reasonable to assume that these two panoramas shot in Venice date from this stay (September-December 1896). After that, Promio never looked back. It was panoramas all round the world.

This does not necessarily mean that either William Heise at Edison's or William Dickson at Mutoscope was the first man to take a travelling shot. The honour may still belong to a Lumière cameraman, a Swiss called François-Henri Lavanchy Clarke. He was Lumière's man in Switzerland as well as being the Swiss representative of Lever Brothers and made the first "product placement" film, Les Laveuses, showing women doing their washing amidst cases clearly marked "Sunlight Soap" in both French and German. (This film is also sometimes ascribed to Promio but there is no evidence of his ever having filmed in Switzerland). Lavanchy-Clarke was also responsible for covering the Geneva Exhibition which opened in May 1896 and ran until October. Amongst the attractions there was a "captive balloon" built by Swiss engineer Alexandre Liwentaal, which carried aloft some 400 passengers a day ten at a time (over 2000 ascents in all during the time of the Exhibition). It is entirely possible that the almost totally unknown "Panorama taken from a captive balloon" Lumière cat 995 (on IMDb however under its French title) may be the first "travelling shot" in cinema history.

Pace Orson Welles, the Swiss did not invent the cuckoo-clock (it was the Germans) but they may have invented both product placement in films and the travelling shot.

The Cinématographe was a vast improvement upon preceding cameras for its light weight and, thus, easier mobility and for its crisper photography. This provided the Lumière Brothers and Company the opportunity to pioneer how to compose shots, how to treat and direct the action within and outside of the frame and to decide the position of the camera. "L' Arrivée d'un train" was one of their more endearing examples of adroit framing, of positioning of the camera. To me, however, this film, a panorama of a canal in Venice, appears to be even more of a revelation, but seems to get historically lost among the company's many filmic innovations. It is simply a single tracking shot accomplished by placing the camera, tripod and cameraman in a gondola. As they stroll down the canal, the images of buildings, fellow navigators and such shift; the image changes with the mobile framing. This film is likely--has been credited as much by historians--the first to feature movement of the camera.

And, the man largely responsible for this innovation was Alexandre Promio. Supposedly, after witnessing the Lumière's films, he quit his job as an optician's assistant and took to making films for the Lumière Company. He travelled the world and, in the process, helped introduce cinema to the world.

The original novelty of moving pictures, that which distinguished it from other art forms, was merely that it reproduced motion. Until this film and others like it, the framing in films could just as well be done in painting or still photography. This was also at a time before films consisted of multiple shots and scenes. This was largely for technological reasons; the Latham Loop, which relieves pressure on the film and, thus, allows for more editing and longer pictures, had not yet become a standard piece of equipment. Now, however, there was the motion of the camera in addition to the motion of the subject, making the art form of cinema more unique--creating endless possibilities down the river.

Following this film, the Lumière Company produced various panoramas, affixing the camera to boats, trains, even a rickshaw. In America, reportedly beginning with "The Haverstraw Tunnel" (1897), the phantom rides began, which generally involved positioning the camera on the front of a train--giving audience's the point-of-view of the train, as it and you passed through the scenery, through tunnels and alongside mountain cliffs.

This short actuality film, "Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau", is available as part of the "The Lumière Brothers' First Films" (1996), which I highly recommend. In that film compilation, narrator Bernard Traverneir relates a story about this film. Supposedly, Promio was afraid that Louis Lumière would be upset with this innovation and apologized in a letter. Lumière, however, was impressed and instructed all of his globe-trotting cameramen to do panoramas. "Panoramas" was his preferred word for it, which was an apt word choice, indeed. "A picture rolled out before the spectator's eyes."

(Note: This is the eighth in a series of my comments on 10 "firsts" in film history. The other films covered are Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888), Blacksmith Scene (1893), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895), The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895), La Sortie des usines Lumière (1895), L' Arroseur arose (1895), L' Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896), Return of Lifeboat (1897) and Panorama of Eiffel Tower (1900).)

(EDIT: Since writing this review, I've read others' disputations, including david-bond-2's IMDb review, of this film's primacy claim, which is the danger of discussing "firsts" in anything. I still support most of what I wrote here, however, so I'll leave it as is.)