Quai de l'Archevêché

The Lumiere Bros knew what their audiences would find interesting--so, upon hearing the Saone river flooded, they went out with their camera and got a brief moving picture of two horse-drawn carriages going through the waters while creating ripples. Wow, that's SOOOOO interesting, is what you'd hear today from lots of folks. And indeed, it is unspectacular to watch--like I said, just horse-drawn carriages rolling through the waters. However, the history is what makes this still short still interesting today--otherwise, it is a short film of a rather unremarkable subject.

The Lumieres had their cameras ready when the Saone flooded -- they were headquartered in Lyon, after all. Although these pictures of floods are not particularly interesting to the modern eye, because they are mostly pictures of horses drawing drays through the water, there are some interesting aspects to the composition.

Paramount is the use of contrasting lines of movement. The Lumieres came into motion pictures through still photography and understood how to compose for the movie frame better than any of their contemporaries. What they also came to understand early was the attraction of contrasting lines of movement to draw the viewer's eye to every part of the picture. Here, the low ripples of the water and the horse-carts provide that contrast.

The Lumieres would elaborate on this in "Laveuses sur la rivière" and "New York, Pont de Brooklyn". Today it is a standard technique in film making. Here it is in its basic form

A horse bit a mans neck as he talked about the steel plants profits. And when a gal offered a plate of salad to the horse, the horse took and broke the plate on its own head.