Passage de Venus

How could anyone (besides an idiot) give this short such a low rating? I'm annoyed at what I'm seeing. This is one of the first attempts at making a film, and you idiots give it a 2? A 3? That is really poor on your part. I'll tell you why.

First of all, where do you think today's movies came from? Did cinema evolve out of nowhere? Of course not! Cinema had to progress. People had to get their ideas, experiment, mess around, whatever. You cannot give this such a low rating! Yes, it's a scratchy mess, and impossible to identify what it's about, but you have to start somewhere. So maybe it's not exactly a great film in itself, but still deserves at least a 7.

The guy who gave it a 10 was really thinking about it. He understood. You cannot criticize it for its scratchiness or anything. The fact it is one of the earliest attempts at filmmaking is enough.

I will admit it's not a true film. As IMDb's summary states, it is merely photographs, and is not 'filmed', per say, on a filmstrip. The first true celluloid film was Louis le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene" in 1888, but until then this is an important movie suggesting the beginning of our medium. It is also important because the event it portrays is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we wouldn't be able to witness today. But, thanks to Pierre Janssen, we can.

OR IS IT?

It is true that this is the very first sequential photographic series put to motion ever produced, there is an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. The tragedy is that this is not actually the heavenly body of Venus passing before the great burning day ball in the sky. It is in fact, the world's first screen test, as these are only models, placeholders made to test the plates which would be used for the real deal. Regrettably, the actual footage of the Venusian transit may be lost forever. According to Wikipedia, "A 2005 study of the surviving material concluded that all the extant plates made with the photographic revolver are practice plates shot with a model and that none of the many plates successfully exposed during the eclipse seem to have survived."

Yet we must interpret it as it is: A film. Indeed, it is fitting that man's first foray into something so invariably groundbreaking in influence, cultural impact and importance to art as film is indeed, baby steps, waddling up towards the stars. Or at least, the pretend ones spinning above the nascent medium's crib in its nursery. If we play along with this vision, we cannot help but be in awe of man's great scope for this technology's use, to chart astrological and scientific phenomena, to revolutionize the preservation of once in a lifetime events, and indeed attain near-apotheosis in achieving the ability to preserve, simulate and replay life itself as long as the powers and mediums employed would hold. It is staggering in and of itself that this alone survived into the age where it could be immortalized nearly forever, to inspire every generation with proof that even in simulacra, man has always been driven to achievement by gazing upon the wonders within the stars.

This is the oldest thing listed on the entire IMDb. I'm glad to have discovered this neat trick where you can literally look at any submission on the entire website. You just type in a keyword and then get rid of the check in the box. This website has literally 5.3 million entries! It's quite nice to get to see the first one. I believe "Roundhay Garden Scene" was technically the first movie ever made.

This is actually a series of photographs, so it probably doesn't count as a movie. It's only 5 seconds long, but it's great to see history in motion! Of course, it's very low quality. I imagine this would be in the public domain so it shouldn't be hard to find. Weird when I make a review longer than the actual entry! I'm sure you have time to see this. ***

On 8 December 1874, French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen recorded a series of images with his photographic revolver of the transit of Venus between the Earth and the Sun. Plans to observe the astronomical event had been in the making for some time, and records made by Janssen's method required the invention of a new camera. Since then, historians have considered this a turning point in pre-cinema history and the history of photography or as the beginning of the invention of motion pictures. One film historian, for example, called Janssen "the originator of modern cinematography" (Friedrich von Zglinicki, quoted by Hermann Hecht in "Pre-Cinema History"); while Virgilio Tosi has said of Janssen's revolver photographique, that it was "a genuine scientific cine camera in embryo". Generally, the revolver photographique figures as a starting point for Chronophotography and is cited as especially of influence on the work of fellow French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (see "Falling Cat" (1894)).

Janssen presented his plans to photograph the transit of Venus with his revolver and had the first version of the camera built by clockmaker Eugène Deschiens in 1873. The camera was called a "revolver" because of its similarities to the firearms, such as those introduced by Samuel Colt. Others have said that "revolver" is a misnomer or that the camera is more similar to a machine gun. Before Janssen, others had tried to record sequential photographs; reportedly, Englishmen, one named Thompson and the other Thomas Skaife, invented cameras that made several images. Others photographed staged and slightly altered poses in lieu of being able to take instantaneous sequential pictures. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (also known by the pseudonym Nadar) did this for a revolving self-portrait circa 1864. Similarly, in 1870, Henry Heyl photographed a couple in a series of waltz poses, and he synthesized their motion via the projection of his Phasmatrope.

Many of these early cameras, which can be viewed at the George Eastman House website, very much resemble guns, as does Marey's later photographic rifle. It seems an appropriate combination of two technologies that emerged earlier in the 19th Century and which allowed for the development from still photography to that of instantaneous and serial images. Despite their mechanical similarities of rotation, however, Janssen's cameras are only cylinders. The second version made in 1874 by the father and son instrument makers Redier, featured intermittent movement of the Daguerreotype metal plate by means of Maltese-cross gears. This cylindrical camera, which could be operated either manually or automatically, was attached to a horizontal telescope that was pointed at a small heliostat, to record 48 images in 72 seconds of the "Passage de Vénus".

Janssen's team of eight people traveled to the Kompirayama hill in Nagasaki, Japan for the event, while two other members of his party went to Kobe, Japan. The next day, Janssen reported that his observations were a success, despite the caveat that it was "cloudy at intervals". Unfortunately, as the sources mentioned at the bottom have discovered, this record is no longer known to exist. The plates from several English parties who used cameras based on Janssen's for the transit don't seem to have faired too well, either, over the years—except for at least one that has been said to still be known to exist. (By the way, the English cameras were by John Henry Dallmeyer, who is also notable for having provided the lenses that helped to make possible Eadweard Muybridge's "automatic electro-photography" beginning in 1878 (see "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" (1880))). The animation of images available on the web, including at YouTube, and in Tosi's educational film mentioned at the bottom are of a simulation conducted by Janssen earlier in 1874. Janssen presented artificial passages to the Académie des Sciences on 6 July 1874.

In addition to arguably being the first instance of cinematography, these images are also early examples of time-lapse photography and of scientific filmmaking. (By the way, part of Tosi's thesis is that cinema was invented out of the research needs of science by the likes of Janssen, Muybridge, Marey and others and not as spectacle, i.e. by the likes of Thomas Edison, W.K.L. Dickson and the Lumière brothers).

Chronophotography, or cinematography, weren't of main interest to Janssen, though, but, rather, a means to aid his scientific research, as was also the case for Marey. Of the rest of his life, Janssen was an accomplished astronomer, including discovering the gas helium. Nevertheless, he continued to take part in the invention of motion pictures in another way, by appearing in the work of Marey and the Lumière brothers. These Frenchman, of course, would be among the first to invent celluloid film cameras and projectors. On 1 January 1884, Janssen posed wearing a turban and smoking a cigarette for close-up chronophotographs on a disc made by Marey (see the book "Picturing Time" by Marta Braun). On 11 June 1895, he was among the French photographic society filmed disembarking from a boat in "Débarquement du congrès des photographes à Lyon", which the Lumière brothers projected the next day at a private Cinématographe screening for them. Janssen also appeared in the Lumière film "Discussion de Monsieur Janssen et de Monsieur Lagrange", for which during the projection of it, he and Lagrange hid behind the screen and reenacted the dialogue of that discussion (source: Stephen Herbert, Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website). Additionally, Janssen met Edison in 1889 while the "Wizard of Menlo Park" was in Paris and introduced him to the Académie des Sciences and to Marey (source: Braun). Although most people today may not know much about the true invention of the movies, Marey and the Lumière brothers knew whose shoulders they were standing on.

Main sources: the essay "Jules Janssen's 'Revolver Photographique' and its British Derivative, 'The Janssen Slide'" by Françoise Launay and Peter D. Hingley and the book "Cinema Before Cinema: the Origins of Scientific Cinematography" and film "The Origins of Scientific Cinematography: the Pioneers" (1990) both by Virgilio Tosi.

Though it barely constitutes as a film, 'The Passage to Venus' is likely the earliest film in cinema history. No, not the earliest film of any particular genre or method, but just the first FILM in general. As for what it contains, there's not much to it. You might as well read the IMDb description and that is pretty much it. It's only about six seconds long, the quality of even the finest print of this film is low and hard to see, which is natural considering the film's extraordinary age. However, how impossibly important this film really is makes up for the less than compelling actual contents of the film, as it really enhances the awe inspiring quality this film would otherwise never inspire.