Passage de la Marne par les chevaux du 28e Dragons

This Pathe actuality of men and horses fording the Marne shows that they had learned the lessons that the Lumieres had to teach: good composition and good motion are the hallmarks of good moviemaking, even today, even if the constructions have grown more complicated as the audiences have grown more sophisticated.

It's that tension between boredom and confusion that defines advances in film technique. Indeed, it does so in any art. The simple, one-shot actuality, had not become run of the mill and boring yet. There was no need to do anything more complicated. Yet.