Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895)

A man opens the big gates to the Lumière factory. Through the gateway and a smaller doorway beside it, workers are streaming out, turning either left or right. Most of them are women in ... See full summary »

Director:

Louis Lumière

Storyline

A man opens the big gates to the Lumière factory. Through the gateway and a smaller doorway beside it, workers are streaming out, turning either left or right. Most of them are women in long dresses and big hats, but some are men. Suddenly a man with a long apron rushes out through the crowd, followed by a big dog. At last some men on bikes leave the gateway. When all workers have left the factory, the doorkeeper starts closing the gates again.

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Plot Keywords:

reference to lumiere brothers | reference to the lumiere brothers | employee | lyon | workers | 

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Genres:

Documentary | Short

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

France

Release Date:

22 March 1895 (France)

Also Known As:

Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory

Filming Locations:

Besançon, Doubs, France

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lumière

Technical Specs

Runtime:

1 min

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

It was the first film ever to be projected to a paying audience.

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Alternate Versions

Three versions of the film exist. There are a number of differences between them, such as the clothing styles worn by the workers change to reflect the different seasons the versions were shot in, and the horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first version is pulled by one horse, two horses in the second version, and no horse and no carriage in the third version.

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Connections

Referenced in United States of Tara: Chicken 'n' Corn (2011)

User Reviews

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