Demolição de um Muro

Démolition d'un mur (1896)

This film from the Lumiere Brothers shows a couple men with picks as they try and breakdown a wall. There's also another man, I'm guessing the boss, standing over them and yelling. The wall eventually comes down and very close to hitting the boss as well. This actuality film is another very entertaining one from Lumiere and company. There's obviously nothing ground-breaking here but it's fun to watch simply because it captures a moment in time and gives you an idea of how people worked during this era. If you're a fan of these actuality movies then it's certainly worth watching.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

Anyway onto this film which is an early action scene wherein, as you may already know if you have some basic French – a wall is demolished. I do like early silent films that have these descriptive titles and it would be useful to have it today – for example Transformers could have been "big CGI things hitting one another for reasons you'll not care about" and so on. So this is what it does and it is interesting to see the absence of EHS here as the wall is essentially just pushed over. Once it has fallen the film plays backwards to show the wall being recreated. It is a simple effect that offers little to the modern viewer but I imagine that it made a bit of a stir when it happened to audiences in the day.

Otherwise though, it is so-so film to watch because walls falling down are not that interesting, if they were we would have summer blockbusters about such events (well I suppose we do but it is all about scale). Historically interesting in regards the developmental work of Lumière but that's about the lot.

Although those mired in an antiquated theoretical framework may mistake this movie as a Marxian commentary on the oppression of the free worker and the destruction of useful property that rightfully belongs to the proletariat, in actuality, it is no such thing, but a paean to the organizing genius of of capitalism. It is an answer to Marx,a throwing down of the gauntlet.

Some roustabouts are standing with sledgehammers and no idea of what to do: typical of the working class. At the command of the gang boss -- representing, as he does, the capitalist, who knows what he wants and will achieve it while paying his worker what the invisible hand of the economy will permit -- the workers, previously unmotivated, lift their hammers and destroy the wall.

The wall, the Marxian theoretician will have us believe, represents some useful function of society. The twisting of things to the service of propaganda is apparent. The wall represents evil, a separation among society. Only through work, directed by the capitalist, will walls be destroyed and all profit.

But there is more. The auteur retreats one step and runs the movie in reverse! At the command of capital, labor can make or unmake a wall. Clearly labor has no voice in the process. All direction comes from the capitalist.

Even when you could not care less about what you see on screen, watching a single shot created by Louis and Auguste Lumière gives you a weird feeling. Knowing that the images are shot over a hundred years ago, knowing that their little films are so important for the cinema we have today, makes it very interesting.

In 'Démolition d'un Mur' we see a man ordering his workers to tear down a wall. It represents a lot of things, whether that is intended or not, and that makes this single shot even more interesting. For its historical value alone it is worth watching, but there is some real joy in watching this Lumière film.

In 1896 the projectionists could completely disregard the wishes of the cameraman and crank a film faster or slower than it was shot. This could produce an effect not intended by the filmmaker. In this case, however, the film is cranked through the projector at normal speed (16 frames-per-second) and we see four men demolishing a ten-foot masonry wall with sledge hammers, picks, and an interesting device that seems to be a hand-cranked ram used to facilitate the toppling of the wall. Having reached the end of the film; the projectionist starts cranking in reverse, at a slightly faster speed, and the wall arises from the rubble (like a phoenix from the ashes) to resume its former place.