La sortie des usines Lumière (1895)

Director:

Louis Lumière

Release Date:

22 March 1895 (France)

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

The 'plot' is outlined by the title: the film consists of a single shot of workers leaving the Lumiere factory...

Plot Keywords:

Factory | Bicycle | Horse Carriage | Dog

Also Known As:

Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory (USA)
Exiting the Factory (USA)
La sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière (France) (informal alternative title)
Leaving the Lumière Factory

Runtime:

1 min

Country:

France

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Filming Locations:

Lyon, Rhône, Rhône-Alpes, France

Company:

Lumière

Trivia:

Recent findings have produced two more copies of this scene, where all the workers didn't manage to leave the factory in time. The big dog appears in them all.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood" (1995)

shows Lumieres' curiosity about world around them

This one-minute film is arguably the first movie ever made. Other inventors had previously filmed actions - like Edison's motion photography of a sneeze - but the Lumiere brothers developed equipment that tremendously advanced the medium. At the time, of course, their `cinematograph' must have bewildered their peers, including their subjects. In this first instance, the brothers record employees leaving their factory, some of whom understandably struggle to hide their awareness of the camera. The Lumieres attempt to make the film more entertaining by introducing animals and a bicycle, but `La Sortie Des Usines Lumiere' doesn't nearly match the ingenuity of their later films. The most interesting aspect of this short film is the brothers' selection of a familiar working class ritual as their subject. Their choice is the initial evidence of their curiosity about all of the world's people, a quality that makes viewing their experiments immensely rewarding and fascinating today.

Rating: 8