When i reviewed the 1896 short by the same Lumières Brothers entitled -L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat - i believed that it was their first one because medias always depict it like this in France (Cocorico!).
BUT when i watched the documentaries for Coppola's Dracula, they clearly told a simple truth: Cinéma was invented the same year as Dracula (understand the same year that Bram Stoker released his Dracula novel) and so the starting point in filmmaking history is 1895 (for a french at least because anglo-saxons would say it was before with Edison but now it's an endless debate i don't want to enter!)...
In addition, the commemorative movie - Lumière et compagnie - produced 100 years after while using the same camera (in which David Lynch shot a really great sequence) was released in 1995 and not in 1996 or 1994 ....
Indeed, this short has been filmed in march 1895 and screened for an audience in Grand Café at Paris, 28 December.
My feelings watching those 40 seconds are:
1) in my country, we are told in school that women started working during the WWII and again more generally in the Baby boom after it: here, 50 years before, nearly all workers are WOMEN! So this movie is a good piece for Capitalism history and its untold facts because at this time,, this was wild capitalism for which everybody was working (men, wome, children, elderly...) with no workers rights or regulations (ex: legal duration of work)...
2) I noticed that the workers were neatly dressed with everybody with hat... in fact, if you research, you'll learn that this short has several cuts (or editions, versions) and the one I saw is not really the end of a day work because it was shot a Sunday with the nice clothes workers wore to go the church...
So this really 1st movie illustrates with brillance what's the power of this new medium: giving illusion: the image can be deceiving, it can be the truth but it may not and from 1895 to now, we must be cautious in giving them sense...
BUT when i watched the documentaries for Coppola's Dracula, they clearly told a simple truth: Cinéma was invented the same year as Dracula (understand the same year that Bram Stoker released his Dracula novel) and so the starting point in filmmaking history is 1895 (for a french at least because anglo-saxons would say it was before with Edison but now it's an endless debate i don't want to enter!)...
In addition, the commemorative movie - Lumière et compagnie - produced 100 years after while using the same camera (in which David Lynch shot a really great sequence) was released in 1995 and not in 1996 or 1994 ....
Indeed, this short has been filmed in march 1895 and screened for an audience in Grand Café at Paris, 28 December.
My feelings watching those 40 seconds are:
1) in my country, we are told in school that women started working during the WWII and again more generally in the Baby boom after it: here, 50 years before, nearly all workers are WOMEN! So this movie is a good piece for Capitalism history and its untold facts because at this time,, this was wild capitalism for which everybody was working (men, wome, children, elderly...) with no workers rights or regulations (ex: legal duration of work)...
2) I noticed that the workers were neatly dressed with everybody with hat... in fact, if you research, you'll learn that this short has several cuts (or editions, versions) and the one I saw is not really the end of a day work because it was shot a Sunday with the nice clothes workers wore to go the church...
So this really 1st movie illustrates with brillance what's the power of this new medium: giving illusion: the image can be deceiving, it can be the truth but it may not and from 1895 to now, we must be cautious in giving them sense...