Man Walking Around the Corner

The trivia on the IMDb... entry is as good a word as any, I suppose ... says this is not a film. It was shot on a device of LePrince's devising which used sixteen lenses. By triggering then in order, he got an image over a span of time... sort of. The positions of the lenses differed, which meant that the series, when viewed, jumped around.

This tentative groping towards an explanation forces us either to define what a film is narrowly, or to understand the organic process that led to what we call a film now. The former leads us to pettifog over details that are often irrelevant, and the latter provides us with no clear answer to the question of what film is. Do we in the 21st century, who frequently watch "movies" shot on digital cameras, processed in computers and viewed on our computers even watch films?

I prefer to think as film as a recorded moving image which we view, one produced by a process which, in its commercial forms, includes films, movies, television, and other related items. It did not arise suddenly, but evolved out of earlier technologies, which include flip books, magic lanterns, phantasmagorias and such nineteenth century devices as praxizooscopes and kinegraphs.

If you accept that attitude, then the question of whether this is a film becomes irrelevant. It may not be a film by some technical definition, but it an important artifact in the development of that art.

Although often referred to as such, this two-second clip from 1887 by Louis le Prince is not an actual film at all. While in some ways it could be considered animation, the manner in which it was shot is important as to its qualification. Like the Eadweard Muybridge studies, "Man Walking Around the Corner" is compiled of a frame sequence of sixteen well-shot photographs to create the illusion of movement. The true first celluloid film is Le Prince's own "Roundhay Garden Scene" (1888), recorded on real motion picture filmstock, followed by "Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge" of the same year. As stated by reviewer boblipton, this film is then available as a listing on IMDb only as an early attempt to start the development of motion pictures, as an artifact of the preliminary stages of the medium.

Since I last edited/wrote this review, the problem concerning the picture quality of this frame sequence has been addressed. As other IMDb reviewers state, the two second short is "needing a restoration", etc, and rightfully so. This Louis le Prince film has been available for many years in a blurry, unwatchable format, which hardly allows us to appreciate the movement created by the photography or the details in the setting. The film is now rendered in a much crisper, nicer HD copy on YouTube--a huge improvement over the other one--and looks just as restored as "Roundhay Garden Scene" and "Traffic Crossing the Leeds Bridge". It's nice to see it looking much more cleaned up, and if you are interested this copy is the recommendable one.

The title tells us what to expect, although it remains somewhat inaccurate since the man appears to be walking across the corner, rather than around it. This is a minor thing to point out, however, and the movement is well-shot, although the identity of the man walking seems to be unknown.

Louis Le Prince, motion picture pioneer, took 16 photos, one each from a different lens on his special made camera, of a man rounding a corner in Paris. The 16 images were combined to produce the effect of a motion picture one second in length of the man turning the corner. The following year Le Prince would develop a one lens camera that operated on a similar principle and make what is now considered the first film - "Roundhay Garden Scene".

Le Prince would disappear mysteriously on his way to America in 1890, never to be seen again. The book "The Missing Reel" deals with the mystery and what might have happened to him. The documentary "The First Film" discusses Le Prince's work in the invention of motion pictures.

First, I must admit that I never heard about Louise Le Prince before I went in search for a oldest movie ever recorded. I heard about many movie pioneers, but never for Le Prince.

Now, I am very happy that i saw oldest movie ever recorded and I must recommend all people who want see this movie to watch it in slow motion (you can find slow motion version on YT), and you can find a version with all 16 frames remastered there (some versions have only 13 frames - two lost, one bad quality). Also, my recommendation is to find and read on internet about this movie and Le Prince, and you will find very interesting story.

Stuff like this happends all the time (walking around a corner). What people probably didn't notice: the pigeon peaking from the storm drain. Not too much is known about that! But burt canyon (a young tester) has been doing the research. Hes been in a hotel room 134 days filling it with post-its that all say: 'hidden reasons.'