Lumière et compagnie

1995. The 100 year anniversary of the Lumiere Brothers first motion picture. What better way to celebrate this historical event than to gather 40 directors from around the world for a little game. The game? Each director is given access to the original Lumiere motion picture camera and about one minute of film time. Just the idea of these directors, who are used to making two hour films, throwing all their creativity into one minute is worth seeing. The rest is cinematic history. The directors are also asked to comment on why they film and if they think cinema is mortal or not. It would have helped though if they gave each director's film credits because half of them I never even heard of. This documentary gives us film in its purest art form. It's a must for film students and film lovers alike. Some of the best ones I would recommend to check out are John Boorman's, Peter Greenaway's, and of course, David Lynch's. I would have liked to see more American directors showcased like Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kubrick, or Francis Ford Coppola. But all in all, it is an engrossing, thoroughly amazing little slice of history. SEE IT!!!

This DVD is a collection of the interesting, although scattered, results of an inspired project. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Lumiere Brothers' first motion picture, 40 directors from around the world are each allowed to shoot a short film using their original hand-cranked model. The participants have to follow three rules: 1. The film is 52 seconds. 2. No synchronous sound (most use musical scoring or dub in foley sound, and many are silent) and 3. They have to get it within three takes. Unfortunately for the viewer, several of the filmmakers opt to merely capture trite snapshots of everyday life. While this keeps in tradition with the Lumiere Brothers' original films, which wowed audiences unfamiliar with moving images a century ago, it makes for a pretty unremarkable experience today. Patrice Leconte pays tribute to their film of a train arriving in La Ciotat, France in 1895 by documenting the arrival of a modern day streamliner at the same location. Alain Corneau applies the technique of color tints to footage of a dancer twirling about. Some of them set up elaborate sequences (Gabriel Axel, Jerry Schatzberg, Peter Greenaway), some are intentionally minimal (Wim Wenders, Regis Wargnier, Andrei Konchalovsky) or simple and symbolic (Arthur Penn, Abbas Kiarostami, Francis Girod, Cedric Klapisch) and a large number turn the camera on itself (Liv Ullmann, John Boorman, Claude Lelouch, Gaston Kabore, Youseel Chahine, Helma Sanders). David Lynch is one of the few directors who rises to the challenge with an exceptionally creative effort, and his is easily the most impressive of the bunch. I'm sure it was an honor for them to be approached for the project, but the entries of Spike Lee, Nadine Trintignant, Lasse Hallstrom, and Merchant Ivory are quite unimaginative and forgettable. The menu screen lists the directors alphabetically, allowing you to jump directly to your favorite ones. Each short is designated by a chapter stop, accompanied by brief behind-the-scenes moments and interviews in which the directors awkwardly answer questions such as "Why do you film?" and "Is cinema mortal?" These unsuccessful attempts at insight are best summed up by Michael Haneke's reply: "Never ask a centipede why it walks or it'll stumble." As a tribute to film history, it's a novel and occasionally successful idea, but much of the work is too inconsistent to earn repeat viewings.

The film would be inherently fascinating even if it were no good, but there's actually a lot here of genuine interest. The repeated questions about why the directors make cinema and whether it's "mortal" receive predictably lame responses, but the glimpses of them at work, punctuated with their 50 second films, is mesmerizing. Many of them turn the project into a commentary on cinema in some form - Boorman films Neil Jordan at work, with the actors looking quizzically into the camera (a common device here, also used by Angelopoulos and Costa-Gavras); Lelouch has a sort of reverse version of the Vertigo kiss, designed with great panache. in which a historic parade of cameras observes the spiraling lovers; some, like Rivette, just take varied people and let them play (he's very engaging, seen protesting that the film is too short). Lynch's segment is magnificently skillful and striking, with a potted narrative of police, a 50's style family, and a bunch of space aliens holding a captive woman - it's almost as effective as the whole of Lost Highway and utterly distinctive. In all, it's a tumbling parade of cinematic images that evokes love, passion and breadth, whether the directors take a playful approach (a majority) or aim for greater seriousness (as in Handke's filming of a potted TV news bulletin).

This is a conceptually intriguing project: 40 film directors from around the world each make a 50-some-seconds film with a restored Lumière Cinématographe. Interspersed among the short films is footage of them making the films as well as interviews with the filmmakers. One thing I found surprising was how inarticulate many of them were in responding to such essential questions as why they film, or whether film is mortal. Overall, the added material outside of the 40 films is interesting and adds further layers to the project.

I've been especially interested in the early history of motion pictures and have spent much time with the Lumière brothers' films; thus, this project becomes more rewarding for me. I suggest watching this after seeing "The Lumière Brothers' First Films", with narration by Bertrand Taverneir. The medium has advanced severalfold in the 100 years between today and when the Lumière brothers contributed to the invention of cinema. One of the great advances of the Cinématographe was its light weight--providing mobility. First, the Lumière Company exploited this added mobility with the subjects of their films, with the actuality films and by taking their camera across the world. It's appropriate that this project consists of an international array of filmmakers, as the Lumière brothers were responsible for introducing motion pictures and cinema to much of the world via their (or rather their assistants) traveling the world. The next step the Lumière Company took in exploiting this mobility was with camera movement. One of the company's filmmakers, Alexandre Promio, was, apparently, responsible for much of this innovation. These films consisted of panoramas or fixing the camera to a moving object (i.e. a boat). In his Hiroshima short, Hugh Hudson holds the camera--a "shaky cam" effect--ending with overexposing the film by pointing the camera towards the sun, which is more movement than the Lumière brothers had envisioned.

When limited to the technology of the Cinématographe, however, many of the modern filmmakers' films demonstrate little to no advancement in film grammar or insight into the medium. One of them is an updated remake; others are like something the Lumière brothers might have filmed. You can take that as a poor mark upon those modern directors, or as further good marks for the Lumières, or both. Yet, there are exceptions in this project, such as Hudson's short. Some of the directors do use the benefit of 100 years of hindsight to expand upon those first films. Several of the films are clever in their self-reference and are interesting tributes to the Lumière brothers and film. Gabriel Axel's tracking shot of the arts and Claude Lelouch's rotating "Vertigo" kiss with a background progression of a history of camera technology filming it are two of the more outstanding in this way.

Helma Sanders's "Tribute to Louis Cochet" shows the orchestration of lighting of a stage waterfall fountain. It shows both the beauty and limitations of the relic camera--ending with the lights turned towards the camera. Peter Greenaway also plays with the lighting and exposure of the film in one of the few multi-shot films in the series. As he says, film is a great arena for him to play with image and text. The consensus favorite, the short film by David Lynch, is also one of the most original in the program. It also contains multiple shots (and even the continuity transitions are creative, including flames, as though the negative catches fire). Lynch also provided one of the more agreeable interviews, relating that film is "a magical medium that makes you dream". Additionally, I think the final film is appropriately placed. It's by Theo Angelopoulos, who's in Athens and films a scene from Homer's "Odyssey". With a title card, Ulysses ponders: "I am lost! In which foreign country have I landed?" It clarifies and elaborates upon a few of the other short films that had people staring into the camera (which harks back to 100 years ago when people weren't familiar with movie cameras). Ulysses has landed in the foreign land of cinema.

The idea to gather 40 recognized film directors to shoot a mini film of less than a minute, or what would have been the format the Lumiere brothers used in their revolutionary camera, seems a great idea in paper. Unfortunately, what comes out is an uneven film where some of the short films hold our interest and some others that don't go anywhere.

What must have been an interesting idea doesn't translate to brilliant film making in the finished product. This documentary is for fans of the medium, but will not be of any interest to a casual viewer. Some of the most enjoyable ones are the ones by David Lynch, Helma Sanders, Claude Lelouch, Jaco Van Dormael, and Bigas Luna, just to mention a few. The rest, hold some interest, but don't quite add anything new to the idea behind the project.