Army horsemen dressed in cuirasses charge across the plain, and pull up right in front of the camera, threatening the audience with their sabers.
Some of the early Lumiere movies were said to make the first audiences faint with terror, like the one about the train pulling into the station at Ciotat. That's a fable, but here's an attempt to do so, and with that armored man threatening me with a sword, I'm not sure I wouldn't have panicked!
It's all about the speed and movement and composition in this early Lumiere movie, an effort to bring the effect of a man in the field with the heavy cavalry charging at him.
