Some Notes on Lumière & Co.

December 28, 1895. Around twenty people are gathered in Le Grand Café in Paris. They drink heartily, smoke stylishly and banter noisily as they await the premiere of two local industrialists fantastic contraption. Dubbed the Cinématographe, it is reputed to be able to capture the vibrant vistas of life, opening a window to places far away and times long past.

When the Lumière brothers projected L'ARRIVÉE D'UN TRAIN À LA CIOTAT, the audience saw the image of a train moving towards them. Panicked and confused, they evacuated the theater, and the first public showing of a motion picture was complete.

Fast forward one hundred years. Philippe Poulet, wanting to celebrate the Lumière brothers' achievement, came up with challenging famed world directors (and obscure French ones) to make a film using only the technology available at the dawn of the art. To this end, he restored one of the original Cinématographes and set three rules. Rule One: Each film would be a single fifty-two second shot, as Cinématographes could hold little celluloid and editing had not yet been invented. Rule Two: No synchronous sound or artificial lights. Rule Three: Only three takes would be allowed, as celluloid was an extremely expensive commodity in 1895.

Forty filmmakers accepted the venture, creating on what Roger Ebert terms a cinematic haiku. Their work, which ranges from simple to complex and fascinating to tedious, is chronicled in tonight's film. However, LUMIÈRE & COMPANY does not stop here--it intersperses documentary footage of the new Lumière films being made as well as talking heads footage of the famous filmmakers wrestling with unanswerable and pretentious questions that could only be thought of by a French film critic. "Why do you film?" "Is cinema mortal?" By and large, the interviewees respond with pompous profundity or bewildered shrugs. The only memorable comment that ascends from these digressions is from Michael Haneke, who says, "Never ask a centipede why it walks or it will stumble." Ah, that they could have heeded his advice.

While the experiment itself is fascinating, the results are largely disappointing. I enjoyed only ten of the forty films. As these ten minutes are truly amazing and the rest of the film--supercilious interviews and boring making-of clips--is so terrible, I feel compelled to give the viewer a guide to watching LUMIÈRE & COMPANY. Below is a blow-by-blow account of the movie, with indications when each segment starts. Check it out, decide what you want to see, and feel free to skip the rest. (*'s indicate the sections I liked.)

In closing, it should be noted that the films that the Lumières (and company) made at the dawn of cinema are interesting in their own right--they capture the crude awe that typifies early cinema. A restored collection, released under the title LUMIÈRE: THE FIRST PICTURE SHOW (1996) is entertainingly narrated by French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier. Through this film, one not only learns much history, but truly feels the awe that struck audiences one hundred years ago.