On December 28, 1895, in the basement of a café in Paris, the Lumière brothers showed the audience their new invention: cinema and the cinema projector.
For more than a hundred years, from Paris to Shanghai, from the world to China, film was a recorder and participant in social history. On the occasion of the anniversary of the birth of the film, The Paper has specially commissioned a group of articles to salvage the historical memories collected through the images.
"There will be no future for cinema." Louis Lumiere said this after the release of his first film.
In 1894, thomas Edison invented the continuous photo projector (kinétoscope/kinetoscope) introduced to Paris, and citizens rushed to experience it. The machine costs about 25 cents of francs, and when you look into the box from above, you can see the image of continuous motion.
Proust, a famous French writer who began writing "Remembrance of The Lost Water Years" (or "Tracing the Lost Time"), mentioned the famous continuous photo projector in his novel:
"These spiraling, intricate memories last at most a few seconds; the moment of not determining where we are creates all sorts of assumptions, and in a hurry I often have no time to identify one after another, just as when we look at a galloping horse on a continuous photo projector, we do not have time to distinguish the positions of the different postures before and after." (Proust: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, "Going to Swan's House", translated by Zhou Kexi, Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 2010, p. 7)
Among the crowd was Antoine Lumière from Lyon. He was very interested after reading it, and said: "I want to get the image out of the box and put it on the big screen, I want to go back to Lyon, and my sons can do it." ”
Colored photograph of the Lumière brothers; Auguste on the left and Louis on the right; taken in the 1890s, the original film is black and white AKG/ALBUM
His sons really did. Auguste et Louis Lumière screened their films the following year, in March 1895, among a small number of professionals. In the same year, they decided to pay for a public release. In the eyes of the two brothers, their work needs an audience. Thus, a decisive day has come in the history of cinema or art. On December 28, 1895, in the basement of the Grand Café at 14 Avenida Capucin in Paris, in a private room known as the Grand Café India Hall, the Lumière brothers presented their new invention to the audience: the film and the cinématographe. 32 people (also known as 33 people) paid to see it, and there were invited guests. People set this day as the birth day of cinema.
The word "Cinématographe" comes from two Ancient Greek roots: "κ νημα / kínēma" (meaning "movement") and "γρ φειν / gráphein" (meaning "to write"), i.e. to write down movement. The full name of the film projector is: "Caméra cinématographe". "Caméra" refers to the box of a movie projector.
However, "The Train" is often considered to be the world's first film, and it was not among the ten films that premiered. The so-called audience panicked when they saw the train entering the station, scattered and fled, which became an urban legend.
The end of the empire
Antoine Lumiere and his wife registered their marriage on 24 October 1861 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. They then settled in Besan on. Their eldest son August was born in 1862, and their youngest son, Louis, was born two years later. Although Besançon is a small town compared to Paris, some celebrities have also lived here, such as the great literary hero Hugo.
However, a few years later, on July 19, 1870, the Franco-Prussian War broke out. The army of the Second French Empire of Napoleon III (1852-1870) was defeated at the Battle of Sedan on 1 September. After Prussia had lost to the French First Reich at the Battle of Jena on 14 October 1806, Bismarck, the German iron-blooded chancellor, exclaimed at the Post-War Conference of Versailles in 1871: "Without Jena, there would be no Sedan." ”
The Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, where tourists were weaving before the epidemic; Figure Zhou Zhihuan
The impact of the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War on France was decisive. The fall of the Second Empire was followed by the Paris Commune movement (28 May 1871 – 18 March 1871). Eventually, the revolutionary wave faded and the Third Republic was established. In French intellectual circles, this failure has also provoked scholars to reflect on their own academic development path of debate and exploration.
In fact, as early as the 1860s, the French university system at that time became more and more worried about French intellectuals. The Sorbonne institutions were cumbersome, conformist and devoid of innovation. At the urging of intellectuals such as the philologist and philosopher Ernest Renan (1823-1892) and the philosopher and statesman Victor Cousin (1792-1864), the French historian and Minister of Public Education Victor Duruy (minister of 1863-1869) launched a survey of the European higher education system. As a result, it is clear that the German university system, especially the University of Berlin, has obvious advantages. The Institute for Advanced Study was established in the Sorbonne in 1868. In order to demonstrate the German approach to practice-oriented research, the Institute for Advanced Study was named "Pratique (or 'Applied')", which demonstrates the evidence-based academic style and experimental spirit. The defeat of the Franco-Prussian War accelerated the reform of the original French higher education and research system. In 1886, a fourth department was established at the Institute of Higher Research Practice, named "Section des sciences historiques et philologiques", which was undoubtedly influenced by the popularity of German regional philological studies. The field of theology is also undergoing reforms. A year ago, in 1885, the Paris Theological Seminary was officially abolished. A year later, a fifth Faculty of Religious Sciences was established at the Faculty of École Deux études études Etudes Desé et des Research Practices, nominally inheriting the former Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris.
"Capital of the 19th Century" and belle époque
But the haze of war did not prevent Paris from becoming the "capital of the 19th century," as the famous German literary critic and philosopher Benjamin put it in his book of the same name (Paris, capital of the 19th century, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2013). Film came naturally in the context of the vigorous development of science and technology and literature and art. At that time, Europe already had the technical conditions for inventing the film. Its birthplace was Paris, the capital of the 19th century, known as the Belle époque.
Although Napoleon III lost the Franco-Prussian War, he made great contributions to the foundation of Paris and France and even modern society. He is also obsessed with historical and archaeological research. With the help of many scholars, he completed the famous "Biography of Caesar". In addition to establishing the Institute for Advanced Study in the field of higher education, he also founded the Ancient Celtic and Gaul and Roman Museums, now the National Archaeological Museum of France. People began to constantly sum up the past and "create" the history of their people. However, among his many achievements, he is best known for the construction of the new Paris.
Now the French Archaeological Museum Tu Zhou Zhihuan
From the 1850s onwards, Napoleon III undertook a series of drastic transformations of Paris. Beginning in 1853, Georges Eugène Haussmann (1809-1891) drew up a new urban plan for Paris and designed the uniform Parisian architecture we see today. Except for a few old medieval buildings, a large number of buildings were torn down, so decisive and decisive, as if it were a separation from the old world. He designed new avenues, focused on the construction of urban green spaces, and expanded the area of the city of Paris. For a time, the provinces and foreign countries competed to follow suit. New urban planning also appeared in Dijon, Lille, Montpellier, Lyon and even the cities of Marseille in France. Rome, Barcelona, buenos Aires in the New World, Stockholm in Northern Europe and other famous cities also wanted to become the new Paris, and some cities on the eastern Mediterranean coast, such as Istanbul and Cairo, were heavily influenced by Ottoman urban planning ideas. The birth of the main road facilitated the emergence and use of new means of transportation, such as trams and even later cars. The new Paris, giving birth to modern urban life, is a change in lifestyle. Paris became the capital of the 19th century, a template for the modern city. People embraced modernity.
This is baudelaire's "Flower of Evil" Paris, proust's memories of Paris, or hemingway's heart flowing feast after World War I, who came to Paris in 1921. From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, literary and artistic schools flourished in Paris, and the Industrial Revolution continued to deepen, from the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, which the French called the "Belle Époque".
Visual Revolution: Impressionism in the Pre-Cinematic Period
People began to stroll along the newly built avenues, walking in the forests on both sides of Paris. This is the new modern life. People's vision has also changed. If Paris and the Belle Époque provided geographical and temporal soil for the birth of cinema, then the continuous innovation of the artistic trend can be regarded as a "film" before the birth of cinema.
Beginning in 1860, France gave birth to an artistic movement or an artistic style. Painting is no longer the realistic painting style of the original romanticism and neoclassicism, and the content is no longer limited to myths and legends, biblical stories, and historical themes, but nature, but also people themselves, life scenes in the city, and people living in the city. If you look at these paintings up close, you will see a vague and seemingly untouched draft of the painting. But if viewed from a distance, it seems to be what is noticed in a casual glance. After the fall of the Second Empire and the entry into the Third Republic, in 1874, Monet created the famous painting "Sunrise Impressions". It was this painting that gave this new school of painting, or the wave of art, a name: Impressionism. This is considered the beginning of modern painting.
Monet's "Sunrise Impression", partial details, Figure Zhou Zhihuan
From the beginning of the 19th century, due to the birth of photographic technology, painting was no longer the only means of recording reality, especially portraits. Impressionists no longer used traditionally known colors, but created colors that the eye saw based on observation. The painting scene is a certain moment in real life, but it is different from the past, it is not a fixed pose, nor is it a certain program, the picture seems to be dynamic, and the viewer seems to be able to see the scene that is about to happen in the next moment, or be in it. Because the content of painting is a moment in one's own life.
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) "Paris Road in the Rain"; the lighting in the center of the painting is slightly abrupt, and the lower left corner is slightly blank, but this is the living paris street scene, a moment in the flow of life; picture Zhou Zhihuan
The Industrial Revolution has changed the urban landscape. The train is considered an iconic invention in this revolution. Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris was the largest train station in France at the time, connecting Paris with Normandy and was Monet's frequent station. Smoke from steam engines envelops modern architecture, creating a different landscape. Monet has created several paintings on the theme of train arrivals.
And this multiple creation of the same scene and the same theme is also a major style of Monet. It is not known whether he was influenced by the continuous photographic techniques of the time (chronographie; also translated as "timed photography"). It is best known for a series of paintings called Rouen Cathedral.
One of Monet's series of paintings, The Cathedral of Rouen, painted in 1892, in the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris;
One of Monet's series of paintings, The Cathedral of Rouen, painted in 1892 or 1894, in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris;
One of Monet's series of paintings, The Cathedral of Rouen, painted in 1893 or 1894, in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris;
One of Monet's series of paintings, Rouen Cathedral, painted in 1894, in the Musée Nationale Nationale d'Orsay in Paris, Washington, D.C
One of Monet's series of paintings, Rouen Cathedral, painted in 1894, in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C
This is a dynamic rendering. In art, people are beginning to get used to this perspective of modernity, looking at the world that is changing in a new way.
Seeing and Being Seen: Becoming Immortal
Paris itself was also the most eye-catching city at that time, and the eyes of the whole world were gathered here. In 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900, five world fairs were held in Paris. New scientific and technological achievements and new things at home and abroad are gathered in Paris. In 1889, to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution, an all-steel three-hundred-meter-tall tower stood in Paris: the Eiffel Tower. The construction of the tower also brought a new perspective. Photographers scramble to ascend to the air to see the new modern city from the air. Nadar (né Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820-1910) was one of them. In fact, as early as 1858, he became the first person in the world to photograph high altitude. Photographers at the time took off in a hot air balloon and saw the world from a different perspective.
Max Lefrancq, the grandson of Louis Lumière; at his side is a film projector, filmed and screened; France Television Three
Film also offers another way of looking at the world. Max Lefrancq, the grandson of Louis Lumière, said in a 2017 interview with France's Tv Three: "Cinema was invented by two brothers in one night. The invention came so naturally because modern people have become accustomed to trying to see the world they live in from a new perspective. Edison had a chance to invent cinema, but he stopped and confined the image to a small box. The Lumière brothers did the opposite, liberating imprisoned images and projecting them onto the big screen.
A large part of the early films were documentaries with fixed perspectives. Viewers who have watched these films will surely find that sometimes some passers-by inadvertently walk into the camera, they stare at the camera, not frightened, but curious, but more happy. They knew they were also recorded. What people see in the film is themselves, and individuals participate in the film. The individual's presence and perspective are shared. People can be recorded, individuals participate in the changes of the times, are magnified, are projected onto the screen, and are watched by more audiences. This is another form of immortality.
The famous Italian writer Calvino once expressed his desire to show what only a novel can express. And movies naturally have content that can only be expressed by movies. In 1896, Alexandre Promio (1868-1926), in collaboration with the Lumiere brothers, first performed mobile photography in Venice, which is also considered to be the earliest push-track lens. Later, backwards and movie stunts were discovered and used, and a new visual culture was born. In addition, films have also been used to record historical events, or to reshape historical and social events. This retelling is given a moral evaluation.
Something that only movies can express, which may be the reason why movies have always existed to this day. Now almost everyone has a mobile phone, which can take pictures and videos. The Lumiere brothers had feared that cinema had no future, but instead, cinema had entered the future they envisioned. At present, due to the global epidemic, many cinemas have a low attendance rate or even have been forced to close. In Lumiere's eyes, there is no film without an audience. However, various films and long and short videos appear on mobile terminals in people's hands through the Internet, which is not a new form?
In 1919, Ricciotto Canudo (1899-1923) referred to cinema as the seventh art– by which point the invention of the Lumiere brothers became art. So what exactly is a movie? According to the two brothers' vision, its essence should be to record, participate and watch. If inventing cinema in the nineteenth-century capital of the Belle Epoque was to document, participate in, and watch that new modern society, we continue this tradition today, albeit to a higher degree and with greater initiative. Everyone can create their own films, they can be recorded at any time, immortalized in the form of dynamic films; and the world is further connected.