Concours de boules

Concours de boules (1896)

This film here is a rather interesting one if you enjoy watching these old actuality films. There's a large group of people standing in the street and in the middle of the frame there's a game going on. People are rolling either large rocks or some sort of balls and after rolling it the person will then go down to where the ball landed. When watching these types of movies it's always fascinating just being able to see what people were doing or wearing during the era that the film was shot. This one here gives you some great footage of all these people gathered for the event and we get to see the type of clothing as well. You also get a chance to see one man walking on crutches and there's a lot of fun stuff here.

This looks like a match at bocce to me, but I have little doubt that it is not the variety of bowling played by elderly Italians in New York, but some variety that would make aficionados sneer, like playing tennis on the wrong surface .... whatever rules you grew up with being the only proper way to play the game.

The Lumieres start with good camera placement to produce a motion picture composed of hundreds of impeccable individual photographs, unlike many of Edison's cameramen who were much more interested in... well, showing you everything, including the boring parts, because that's part of reality. The Lumieres keep thing moving, including by having some guy hobble across the field. It holds your attention for the entire movie.