I fratelli Skladanowsky

Wenders amuses himself, and in the way reflects about some general principles of cinema as an art. Several times he has made interesting films that are themselves cinematic objects and reflections on the nature of the cinematic object. His primary concern is the images. Whenever he deepens the complexity of his narratives, he is aiming at highlighting images. Those are the cases of the very recent Palermo Shooting and the remarkable American Friend: images which illustrate a story about images. When he takes out that intelligent narrative, directly sensitive to the medium, we are left with meditations purely based on images. Sometimes they work, sometimes they drag.

Here it half-works, because the project, intentionally, lacks a bigger form other than that of the interview the old Skladanowsky gives. All the black and white bits are built as episodes and inside those episodes we find other episodes (the original Skladanowsky films). Apparently this started as an academic project, so that would explain the lack of a bigger form, as well as the inaptness of some short bits. That does not explain the almost unbearable ending.

But something interested me here. Wenders picks on something left behind almost at the beginning of cinema. Images as abstract motion pictures, detached of narrative. That's something i think is worth some time exploring, and obviously so did Wenders. So, among all the old remakes of the pioneering films, i was interested in the dance bit. Curiously enough, it is the bit which gets more attention even in the child story of the black and white flashbacks. It is the film that has to be remade. The clothing of the dancers help the effect. It's remarkable, how it works in the eye. I've been spending time watching experiences like that. Besides that, there's little else to see here. And i found totally misused the contrast between black and white footage and the color bits of the interview, which had an uncomfortable video look which put me off. The b&w was already grainy and looked old, they didn't need to look for such a contrast to make the point.

My opinion: 3/5

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I had the great privilege of watching this in a local theatre, with live musical accompaniment by score composer Laurent Petitgand, and followed by an in-person, audience Q&A session with Wim Wenders. This was on the occasion of Wenders being awarded the European Film Academy's lifetime achievement award.

First of all, it's a pity that this film is not more widely known and appreciated, and is so hard to find. There were some DVD releases many years ago, which are long sold out. It's apparently available at some streaming service or other, but who really wants to trudge their way through the regional restrictions and DRM mess that these companies conjure up around the films? What I got to see yesterday is a remastered copy from 2023, with great picture quality and a new score (which, as I mentioned, was performed live at the showing). This gives me some hope that maybe a Blu-ray or UHD release might be in the works. I'll be first in line to get a copy, because the film is wonderful on so many levels.

Some words on the background - maybe this is well-known, but I learned it from Wenders' talk yesterday. The film was initially a short-film project with students of the University of Television and Film in Munich, Wenders' alma mater. This makes up roughly the first third of the full movie, being a fictionalised retelling of the Skladanowsky story from the perspective of Max Skladanowsky's oldest daughter, recorded with a hand-cranked camera from 1922. Everyone involved in the project had so much fun that they revisited it a year later, and turned it into this feature-length film. Apart from wrapping up the Skladanowsky story by also covering the Wintergarten presentations and their ultimate defeat in the face of the Lumières' technologically superior system, a highlight is the interview snippets with Lucie Hürtgen-Skladanowsky, Max's youngest daughter, who, at the time of recording, was 91 years old, still living in her father's house in Berlin-Pankow, and turning out to be an endearing, feisty woman with a great presence of mind and fantastic memory of events reaching back into the 1920s. The film is worth watching for her scenes alone.

The film works on so many levels. In its reenactments, it's a pretty authentic retelling, confirmed by daughter and niece Lucie, of the story of the Skladanowskys' development of the Bioscop film projector, their struggles, successes, and defeats. It's a story worth telling to anyone even remotely interested in the history of cinema, and makes a great case for the Germans' claim to innovation in the field along with the more widely-known French, British, and American innovators - even if the German system ended up being quickly replaced by its competitors'. In this footage, it's also an amusing comedy, with an authentic silent slapstick feel, because, in some way, it is authentic, having been recorded with period eqiupment and techniques. In its interview parts, it's a wonderful documentary based on the memories of a very fascinating and likeable contemporary witness. And, a level you sadly won't get when you watch this on the hopefully soon-to-be-available home video release of the remaster, it was especially amazing and touching to me to be able to see it in a way that was as close as I was likely to get to a Wintergarten-style show: in a public theatre, filled with other people interested in the art of cinema, and accompanied by live music (with Petitgand also using effects he sampled from a real theatre organ). This added a whole other meta level of excitement to the showing.

Ultimately, it's also a tragic story, considering the Skladanowskys' lack of success with their inventions. Wenders mentioned that this was a major reason for why he wanted to make this film. He was very touched when learning the story of these inventive brothers. Wealthy industrialists like the Lumière brothers or Thomas Edisons used their considerable resources to professionally develop and market their new technologies, while the Skladanowskys were rather poor fairground showmen, and inventing in relative isolation. Given the circumstances, what they achieved is even more impressive. It's a heart-breaking story of renegade inventors who had the dream and almost got there, despite their lack of means, and even were at the very front of developments for a brutally brief moment in time. Wenders makes a good case that it might have been down just to a couple of minor coincidences that most history books talk of the world of cinema having started with the Lumière cinematographe, and not the Skladanowsky bioscope.

I was initially a bit skeptical about how the mixture of documentary, reenactment, and imitation (using the 1920s camera) would work, but it turns out that the combination works just brilliantly and comes together very nicely. In retrospect, I don't know why I was even worried, given Wenders' track record. Who, by the way, came across as a very pleasant, down-to-earth, unpretentious person.

All I can recommend is: definitely go see this if you get the chance.

This biopic of the Skladanowsky brothers, who were some of the first to invent cinema, began as a project for Wim Wenders's students and evolved into a feature-length film released during the centennial of the cinema's invention. Also for 1995, Wenders was one of the filmmakers who paid homage to the Lumière brothers by making their own 50-or-so-seconds-long films for "Lumière et compagnie". The Skladanowsky brothers' Bioskop film projector premièred on 1 November 1895--nearly two months before the Lumière brothers' first program. It should also be noted, however, (and it's not in this film) that a few other inventors have earlier claims than do even the Skladanowsky brothers. To count projected drawn animation or the projection of films to non-paying audiences would add a few more names. Regardless, they were among the firsts, and this film, "A Trick of Light", is a fun little tribute to their invention.

Wenders interweaves various forms of narration and film technique to tell the story. First, there are fictional scenes (and not entirely historically accurate) of the brothers and one of their daughters working on the Bioskop and their films, which they eventually show to a paying audience. This part is photographed with a silent era hand-cranked camera and two characters provide voice-over narration at different times. Second, there is a documentary interview with 95-year-old Lucie Skladanowsky, daughter of the late Max Skladanowsky. Fictional elements are further interweaved with the interview, including via trick photography. The little girl from the previous fictional episode, for example, enters the interview undetected, as does the spy who was trying to steal the Skladanowsky's invention. All of this makes for an uneven picture. That Wenders and his students made the film over three or so years probably didn't help the film's consistency, either.

Nevertheless, it's an entertaining and sometimes interesting (although not too enlightening due to taking liberties with historical facts and the mixing of fiction with nonfiction) look at one largely forgotten group of cinema's inventors and their system of projection. Reenactments of the films are even shown. Yet, one wonders if they had shown what's left of the Skladanowsky brothers original films, or if Wenders hadn't taken as many liberties with history overall, or if the interview were not interrupted by fiction, "A Trick of Light" may have been better. Still, not many have given this part of film history any attention, so this was a unique project and worth watching.

'Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky' started as a research and production project by Wim Wenders and his students about the beginnings of cinema in Germany. The result was interesting enough to become a (almost) long duration documentary. In Wim Wenders' cinema, sprinkled with many thematic and formats experiments, the film fits smoothly.

The key events described in the documentary took place in 1895, which can be considered the Year Zero of the cinema industry. The invention of 'moving images' and its application in theaters for entertainment purposes floated in the air for several years, and inventors from different countries were engaged in a race to bring them first to the public. Among these engaged in the competition were the three Scladanowsky brothers from Berlin, a family of 'entertainers' making a living of performances that today we would call 'multimedia', combining dance, circus, pantomime, music and projected images. By means of the invention they called the 'bioscope', they produced short films of about 15 seconds, which they projected publicly on November 1, 1895, a few weeks before the first screenings of the films by the Lumiere brothers in Paris. They were first but not best. Theirs was a method with many limitations, especially with regard to the length of the films, so the invention of the French brothers won in a short time the race that laid the foundations for the art and industry of cinema. It was a defeat that did not discourage the Skladanowsky brothers, who learned the French method and used it to produce in the coming years short films that laid the foundations for the German cinema industry. Wenders' documentary tells their story with respect and courtesy and makes it known to the broad audiences.

'Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky' combines several cinematographic methods. The youngest daughter of the Skladanowsky brothers shares with Wenders and his team memories of the family. Though born more than a decade after 1895, she still has plenty of interesting things to tell about that period. Her testimony is combined with sequences from the first films made with the Stockanowsky brothers' bioscope. Interviews are interleaved with docudrama passages in which the three siblings and the older daughter of the main inventor appear embodied by actors, in the style of comedies of the early decades of cinema, completing over time the story. The combination works quite well, being complemented by fragments of epoch films that portray the atmosphere of Berlin and Paris at the end of the 19th century. Made exactly one century from the screening of the first moving images, 'Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky' brings to the spectators of today interesting and little known information. It is an endearing and respectful tribute to the pioneers of the 7th art.