At the top of the screen is a busy street full of traffic, with horse-drawn wagons rolling by. Beneath them are a couple of well-dressed men, standing, looking at.... who knows what? They have the leisure to stand there and look. Beneath them, at the bottom of the screen, women are busy scrubbing clothes on the riverbank.
The Lumieres have created an interesting vertical triptych with this film, and the contrasts in movement between the levels adds enormously to the effect, with the horizontal movement of the street traffic drawing your eye to the top and the vertical movement of the women scrubbing drawing your eye to the bottom, passing over the gentlemen of leisure in the middle.
The Lumieres also used this triptych effect with differing lines of movement in NEW YORK, PONT DE BROOKLYN the same year, but this has a far more radical message.
The Lumieres have created an interesting vertical triptych with this film, and the contrasts in movement between the levels adds enormously to the effect, with the horizontal movement of the street traffic drawing your eye to the top and the vertical movement of the women scrubbing drawing your eye to the bottom, passing over the gentlemen of leisure in the middle.
The Lumieres also used this triptych effect with differing lines of movement in NEW YORK, PONT DE BROOKLYN the same year, but this has a far more radical message.
