Querelle enfantine

In this approximately 45-second long Lumiere Brothers actuality (Lumiere No. 82) we see two babies sitting in high chairs. They have fancy clothes on, and a number of toys in front of them, which they end up fighting over. Eventually the one on the left begins to cry.

Although Childish Quarrel (aka Babies Quarrel) is not nearly as interesting in terms of visual composition as many other Lumiere Brothers shorts--in fact, the framing of the subject is less than satisfying--the scene playing out before us is fascinating, funny and poignant. It says an awful lot in a mere 45 seconds.

The babies in the film have two very different dispositions. The one on the right is good-humored and (maybe too) rambunctious. The one on the left is fussy and obviously annoyed by the one on the right. Even though the babies are basically fighting over their material goods, we can tell that the right baby basically wants to play, whereas the left baby basically wants to be left alone. The right baby keeps smiling and laughing until the end, even trying in his way to console the left baby at one point. The film is informative in showing how instinctual certain behavioral tendencies and sources of conflict can be, whether the babies are acting surprisingly adult or adults tend to act surprisingly childish.

The short is also interesting for making clear that actualities/documentaries are not as "real" as they're portrayed in our cultural convention wisdom (I'd prefer to call it "mythology"). Childish Quarrel is obviously staged in that there was an effort to set the babies up in front of the camera in a particular way, close enough to each other, with a number of material items on their high chairs, so that they'd interact in a novel way for the camera.

Surely much of the Lumiere Brothers' work, as well as documentary material in general from other filmmakers, is likewise staged. As an artist, you want interesting visual compositions, interesting action in front of your lens, and so on. There is an effort in most documentaries to make the action look as "natural" as possible, or to encourage the "actors" to go about their business in the normal way, but there's an almost necessary interference by the artist which blurs the distinction between fact and fiction. Filmmakers working in fiction often want their actors to approach their roles in the same way. Backgrounds are filled with extras where the goal is to make them appear to not be extras, but "real people" doing "real things", naturally, behind the primary action.

Watching these early shorts is instructive because at the birth of film, artists were just beginning to sort out how to work with these ideas, so the philosophical and aesthetic points, which are just as present in today's films as ever, are made more transparent.

As uncomplicated as it is, this is really quite a sad and touching, yet certainly human, little movie. Its simple footage suggests the heart of so many of our problems with one another. These two cute babies are dressed nicely, and seem to have everything that they need, yet they start to quarrel.

The Lumière features usually show not only technical skill, but also quite a knack for selecting material that will make for worthwhile viewing in itself. This one is different in its content from most other Lumière features, but it is no different in packing some significant themes into a very short running time. Rather than showing innovation or action or motion, this movie brings out some things inside the two infants that are common to all of humanity.

The two babies ought to be happy, but whenever one person wants something that someone else has, it will always cause a problem. The two babies react to their conflict differently – the more aggressive of the two seems to take most of it in stride, while the other baby seems terribly unhappy. All of these thoughts have obvious implications on a broader level.

Practically all of the early Lumière features offer reasons to watch that go beyond even their considerable historical value. This one, like many others, uses a simple situation to bring out some worthwhile thoughts.

This Lumiere subject is a lot different from what we've seen before from the Bros. Instead of a moment in time, we're given an interesting staged 'story' of sorts. The set-up has two babies in their high chairs. The one on the left, minding her own business, is bothered by the one on the right, who snatches away her spoon. The Lumiere Bros were, as evidenced by this, the innovators of the medium shot, as the view is a close-up one. It's obvious this one was staged as to have the babies start fighting within the minute the camera was filming seems unlikely. Or then again, would the babies be smart enough to fight on command? Either way this film is an interesting watch simply because it shows how the Lumiere Bros moved into fiction. Can be found in Volume 1 of Kino's "The Movies Begin" DVD set.

Childish Quarrel (1896)

This 45 second movie from Lumiere is pretty entertaining because it proves that there were bullies a hundred years ago. The set up is pretty simple as we have two babies in high chairs facing the camera. One then starts to bully the other. Obviously there's not too much plot here but that's okay because overall it's a fairly charming little film that shows one poor baby having its items stolen by the other. There's certainly nothing ground-breaking with this film but a lot of times it seems filmmakers would just turn the camera on and hope that something entertaining would happen. Well, what happens here was entertaining.

Snow Leopard is entirely right in emphasising the high quality of these early Lumière films and their continuing interest today. There is certainly no "pointing of the camera" at anything and everything. Quite the opposite. The films are quite obviously carefully planned and organised.

Although it is true that many of these films made by Louis Lumière himself have a "home movies" element; the two little girls are cousins, the daughters in one case of Louis himself, in the other of his brother Auguste, they are not "documentaries". They are not even in any meaningful sense "actualities" (this term is in any case a false one, a mistranslation of the French "actualités" which means newsreel films). They are "composed views" and develop tropes that are at the origin both of the later documentary and of the narrative film. This is a good example for there is a clear effort to give the film a narrative feel.

It was a popular film. The first know showing was in London on the 7th March 1896, just after the Lumière arrival there at the Empire Theatre and it was almost immediately copied by the Lumière's British rival, R. W. Paul, in a film called The Twins' Tea-party (clearly a staged film and neither home-movie nor "actuality"). Unlike the genuine actuality, the news-films (they were actually called "topicalities" in English), which were reported limited to a particular time and place and made for quite different purposes, the "composed view" could always be copied and remade in this way.

Many of the Lumière composed views (think of the workers exiting from a factory or the arrival of a train in a station) became classic visual tropes that reappear constantly as elements of films throughout the history of cinema.