La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon

This is it!! if your looking for a thrilling few minutes of the French leaving work then it does not get any better than this.Action to look out for includes,

French woman walking at the screen, French bloke wobbling on his bike, The closing of the gates cliff-hanger Finale.

Oh and its maybe the most important few minutes in the history of cinema.

Forget the "twists" you've seen in films like Psycho (1960), The Sixth Sense(1999), and the Crying Game(1992), LEAVING THE LUMIERE FACTORY (1895) blows those plot points out of the water and takes it rightful place as the biggest shock in movie history.

December 28, 1895, The Grand Cafe' in Paris, France. Only 33 out of 100 tickets are sold to the first ever demonstration of the Lumiere Cinematograph. A jaded, French crowd sits in the theater waiting to see this mystery invention they know nothing about. The lights go down. A static, barren shot of the front door of a factory is projected onto the screen. Several seconds go by before a man stands up and shouts in disappointment, "It's just the old Magic Lantern!" (the magic lantern was a primitive slide projector for still photographs) Suddenly, the doors of the factory on screen miraculously swing open, a crowd of women pour out into the frame and a seizure of--believe it or not!--motion happens within the picture. Needless to say, the audience was caught completely off guard, and were absolutely dumbstruck.

Can you imagine it?! The audience had co clue that the picture would move! They must have went bonkers! It would be like you watching Jerry Maguire, and then Tom Cruise walks right out of the screen and sits down next to you!

When those French ladies opened the doors to the Lumiere Factory, they were also opening the doors to a whole new world of art and entertainment!

The appeal of ancient films like this one is that you get to see an actual moving image of life over 100 years ago. Here are a lot of people leaving a factory, all of them dead by now and none of them even remotely aware of the magnitude of the invention that they are walking before. I was shocked to read one reviewer call this film as boring as home videos today, and at least one other mistakenly identified it as the first film ever made (it was the first film made at the rate of 16 frames per second, rather than the then-normal 46 frames per second).

Sure, all you see is a lot of people filing out of a building and passing before the cinematograph on their way home from work, but this is a curiosity piece for dozens of reasons, not the least of which is that it was the first film made by the Lumiére brothers, who probably had a stronger impact on the development of the cinema than any other individual or group of individuals in history.

Even as the first film to come to cinema, it's still better than a lot of the films that come out today. The origin story of this film is completely fascinating. An unknowing audience attend the cinema assuming it will be a series of still images, until they get hit with the greatest twist of all time - a moving picture. The 33/100 who went to see this film are some of the luckiest people of all time, just imagine their shock.......

On the 28th of December, 1895, in the Grand Café in Paris, film history was writing itself while Louis Lumière showed his short films, all single shots, to a paying audience. 'La Sortie des Usines Lumière' was the first film to be played and I wish I was there, not only to see the film, but also the reactions of the audience.

We start with closed doors of the Lumière factory. Apparently, since the image seems a photograph, people thought they were just going to see a slide show, not something they were hoping for. But then the doors open and people are streaming out, heading home. First a lot of women, then some men, and one man on a bike with a big dog. When they are all out the doors close again.

Whether this is the first film or not (some say 'L'Arrivée d'un Train à la Ciotat' was the first film Lumière recorded), it is an impressive piece of early cinema. Being bored by this is close to impossible for multiple reasons. One simple reason: it is only fifty seconds long. But also for people who normally only like the special effect films there must be something interesting here; you don't get to see historical things like this every day.