The Lumière brothers (, ; ),
Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and
Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of
photography
Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...
equipment, best known for their
''Cinématographe'' motion picture system and the short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers.
Their screening of a single film on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the "Society for the Development of the National Industry" in Paris was probably the first presentation of
projected film. Their first commercial
public screening on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the birth of cinema. Either the techniques or the business models of earlier filmmakers proved to be less viable than the breakthrough presentations of the Lumières.
History
The Lumière brothers were born in
Besançon,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, to Charles-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911)
and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio where Auguste and Louis were born. They moved to
Lyon
Lyon,, ; Occitan: ''Lion'', hist. ''Lionés'' also spelled in English as Lyons, is the third-largest city and second-largest metropolitan area of France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of ...
in 1870, where son Edouard and three daughters were born. Auguste and Louis both attended
La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father Charles-Antoine set up a small factory producing photographic plates, but even with Louis and a young sister working from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. it teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, and by 1882 it looked as if they would fail. When Auguste returned from military service, the boys designed the machines necessary to automate their father's plate production and devised a very successful new photo plate, 'etiquettes bleue', and by 1884 the factory employed a dozen workers.
They patented several significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably
film perforations (originally implemented by
Emile Reynaud
Emil or Emile may refer to:
Literature
*'' Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life
*'' Emil and the Detecti ...
) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The original
cinématographe
Cinematograph or kinematograph is an early term for several types of motion picture film mechanisms. The name was used for movie cameras as well as film projectors, or for complete systems that also provided means to print films (such as the Cin ...
had been patented by
Léon Guillaume Bouly
Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to:
Places
Europe
* León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León
* Province of León, Spain
* Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again f ...
on 12 February 1892. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project
motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières. The brothers patented their own version on 13 February 1895.
The date of the recording of their first film is in dispute. In an interview with Georges Sadoul given in 1948, Louis Lumière claimed that he shot the film in August 1894 - before the arrival of the kinetoscope in France. This is questioned by historians, who consider that a functional Lumière camera did not exist before the beginning of 1895.
The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. They went on to develop the first practical photographic colour process, the
Lumière Autochrome.
Louis died on 6 June 1948 and Auguste on 10 April 1954. They are buried in a family tomb in the
New Guillotière Cemetery in Lyon.
First film screenings
On 22 March 1895 in Paris, at the "Society for the Development of the National Industry", in front of a small audience, one of whom was said to be
Léon Gaumont
Léon Ernest Gaumont (; 10 May 1864 – 10 August 1946) was a French inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture industry. He founded the world’s first and oldest film studio Gaumont Film Company, and worked in ...
, then director of the company the Comptoir Géneral de la Photographie, the Lumières privately screened a single film, ''
La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon''. The main focus of the conference by Louis Lumière concerned the recent developments in the photographic industry, mainly the research on polychromy (colour photography). It was much to Lumière's surprise that the moving black-and-white images retained more attention than the coloured stills.
The Lumières gave their first paid public screening on 28 December 1895, at
Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This presentation consisted of the following 10 short films, lasting 50 seconds each, (in order of presentation):
#''
La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon'' (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, ''Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory''), 46 seconds
#''Le Jardinier (
l'Arroseur Arrosé)'' ("The Gardener", or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
#''
Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon'' ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
#''
La Voltige
''La Voltige'' (also known as ''Horse Trick Riders'') is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It was filmed in Lyon, Rhône, Rhône-Alpes, France. Given its age, this short f ...
'' ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
#''
La Pêche aux poissons rouges'' ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
#''
Les Forgerons'' ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
#''
Repas de bébé
''Repas de bébé'' (also known as ''Le Repas de bébé,'' ''Le Repas (de bébé),'' ''Le Déjeuner de bébé,'' ''Baby’s First Meal,'' ''Baby’s Breakfast,'' ''Baby’s Lunch,'' ''Baby's Dinner,'' ''Baby's Tea Time,'' ''The Family Breakfast ...
'' ("Baby's Breakfast" (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
#''
Le Saut à la couverture
''Le Saut à la couverture'' (also known as ''Brimade dans une caserne'') is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, p ...
'' ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
#''
La Place des Cordeliers à Lyon'' ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"—a street scene), 44 seconds
#''
La Mer (Baignade en mer)'' ("the sea
athing in the sea), 38 seconds
Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.
The Lumières went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896, visiting cities including
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Bombay
Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
,
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple- ...
,
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, and
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
.
In 1896, only a few months after the initial screenings in Europe, films by the Lumiere Brothers were shown in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
, first in the Tousson stock exchange in
Alexandria
Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...
on 5 November 1896 and then in the Hamam Schneider (Schneider Bath) in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...
.
Their
actuality film
The actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like the documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things. Unlike the documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger argument, picture of the phenomenon or co ...
s, or ''actualités'', are often cited as the first, primitive
documentaries
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...
, but they had been preceded in this by the work of
Birt Acres and
Robert Paul in Britain. They made the first steps towards slapstick films with ''
L'Arroseur Arrosé'', and the early versions of ''
Le Saut à la couverture
''Le Saut à la couverture'' (also known as ''Brimade dans une caserne'') is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, p ...
'' and ''
La Voltige
''La Voltige'' (also known as ''Horse Trick Riders'') is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. It was filmed in Lyon, Rhône, Rhône-Alpes, France. Given its age, this short f ...
''.
Early colour photography
The brothers stated that "the
cinema is an
invention without any future" and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as
Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief. In parallel with their cinema work they experimented with colour photography. They worked on colour photographic processes in the 1890s including the Lippmann process (interference heliochromy) and their own 'bichromated glue' process, a subtractive colour process, examples of which were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. This last process was commercialised by the Lumieres but commercial success had to wait for their next colour process. In 1903 they patented a colour photographic process, the ''
Autochrome Lumière
The Autochrome Lumière was an early color photography process patented in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in France and first marketed in 1907. Autochrome was an additive color "mosaic screen plate" process. It was the principal color photogr ...
'', which was launched on the market in 1907. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Lumière company was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with
Ilford.
Film systems that preceded the Cinématographe Lumière
Earlier moving images in for instance
phantasmagoria shows, the
phénakisticope, the
zoetrope and
Émile Reynaud's
Théâtre Optique consisted of hand-drawn images. A system that could record reality in motion, in a fashion much like it is seen by the eyes, had a greater impact on people.
Eadweard Muybridge's
Zoopraxiscope
The zoopraxiscope (initially named ''zoographiscope'' and ''zoogyroscope'') is an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector. It was conceived by photographic pioneer Eadweard M ...
projected moving painted silhouettes based on his
chronophotography photography. The only Zoopraxiscope disc with actual photographs was made with an early form of
stop motion. Less-known predecessors, such as
Jules Duboscq's Bioscope were not projected.
Louis Le Prince's ''
Roundhay Garden Scene
''Roundhay Garden Scene'' is a short silent motion picture filmed by French inventor Louis Le Prince at Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds, in the north of England on 14 October 1888. It is believed to be the oldest surviving film. The came ...
'' (1888) is now widely regarded as the first example of filmed moving pictures, but Le Prince disappeared without a trace in 1890 before he managed to present his work or publish about it.
William Friese-Greene patented a "machine camera" in 1889, which embodied many aspects of later film cameras. He displayed the results at photographic societies in 1890 and developed further cameras but did not publicly project the results.
Ottomar Anschütz's Electrotachyscope projected very short loops of high photographic quality.
Thomas Edison believed projection of films wasn't as viable a business model as offering the films in the "peepshow"
kinetoscope device. Watching the images on the screen turned out to be much preferred by audiences.
Thomas Edison's
Kinetoscope (developed by
William Kennedy Dickson), premiered publicly in 1894.
Kazimierz Prószyński
Kazimierz Prószyński (4 April 1875 – 13 March 1945) was a Polish inventor active in the field of cinematography. He patented his first film camera, called Pleograph, before the Lumière brothers, and later went on to improve the cinema pr ...
allegedly built his camera and projecting device, called
Pleograph, in 1894.
Lauste and Latham's
Eidoloscope
The Eidoloscope was an early motion picture system created by Eugene Augustin Lauste, Woodville Latham and his two sons through their business, the Lambda Company, in New York City in 1894 and 1895. The Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of ...
was demonstrated for members of the press on 21 April 1895, and opened to the paying public on Broadway on 20 May.
They shot films up to twenty minutes long at speeds over thirty frames per second and showed them in many US cities.
The Eidoloscope Company was dissolved in 1896 after various internal disputes.
Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the
Bioscop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...
from 1 November 1895 until the end of the month. Their machinery was relatively cumbersome and their films much shorter. Their booking in Paris was cancelled after the news of the Lumière screening. Nonetheless, they toured their films to other countries.
See also
*
Auguste Lumière
*
Louis Lumière
*
1895 in film
*
1896 in film
*
19th century in film
Events
* 1826 – Nicéphore Niépce takes the oldest known extant photograph, ''View from the Window at Le Gras''.
* 1833 – Joseph Plateau (Belgium) introduces a scientific demonstration device that creates an optical illusion of movement by ...
*
History of film
The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art, visual art form created using history of film technology, film technologies that began in the late 19th century.
The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. ...
*
L'Idéal Cinéma Jacques Tati
L'Idéal Cinéma Jacques Tati is a cinema in Aniche, France, built in 1995 on the site of the old L'Idéal Cinéma demolished in 1993. It is named in honor of the French filmmaker Jacques Tati.
The original building was constructed for La Cham ...
in
Aniche the oldest still-active cinéma in the world, though not continuously, since 23 November 1905.
*
List of works by Louis Botinelly
*
Place Ambroise-Courtois
Place Ambroise-Courtois is a square in the neighborhood of Monplaisir in the 8th arrondissement of Lyon. It was named after , a city councillor, on 30 October 1944, months after Courtois was assassinated by the Milice française. It had been pr ...
References
Notes
Works cited
*
*
General references
* Chardère, B. ''Les images des Lumière'' (in French). Paris: Gallimard, 1995. .
* Cook, David. ''A History of Narrative Film'' (4th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. .
* Mast, Gerald and Bruce F. Kawin. ''A Short History of the Movies'' (9th ed.). New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. .
* Rittaud-Hutinet, Jacques. ''Le cinéma des origines'' (in French). Seyssel, France: Champ Vallon, 1985. .
External links
*
*
The Lumiere Brothers, Pioneers of CinemaSociété d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale*
*
*
Major Exhibition Casts New Light on the Lumières' by
David Robinson
The films shown at the first public screening(QuickTime format) — 26 December 1895. Also includes a program for the event.
Le musée Lumière— Lumière Museum
Autochrome colour still of the Lumiere Brothers, 1907*
*189
Palestine 1896 short film (La Palestina En 1896) – Lumieres Brothers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lumiere, Auguste And Louis
1862 births
1864 births
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1954 deaths
Businesspeople from Lyon
Color scientists
Sibling filmmakers
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French film directors
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Pioneers of photography
Cinema pioneers
History of film
Defunct film and television production companies
La Martinière Lyon alumni
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Order of the Francisque recipients
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French cinema pioneers
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