L´Institut Lumière, presided by Bertrand Tavernier et avec Thierry Frémaux as narrator, has issued for exhibition in cinemas this renewed session of some of the first moving images. Preceded in 2015 by the DVD "Lumière ! Le cinématographe 1895-1905" and intended to be followed by "L´aventure continue", it shows 114 selected subjects shooted by Auguste et Louis Lumière and the cameramen they sent around the world, like Alexandre Promio and others. By the way, they would encounter some problems in America with the Edison company.
The films, from 35 mm original negatives and each one of them 50 seconds long, assembled in chapters by subject, have been carefully restored in 4K technology to their best. And it is their best! The image quality is often stunning for these first pieces of glorious cinema from late 1890s until 1905. So much that when the film was shown in cinemas around France it largely surpassed Frémaux´s expectations, as he himself explains in the DVD extras. The screen ratio with rounded corners has been preserved so that watching them resembles the way in which the first public did. A Saint-Saëns soft contemporary soundtrack has been chosen, successfuly accompanying the images without overcoming them. And if the image quality of the short pieces is wonderful enough for their age, wait to see some autochromes as a surprise, unbelievably fresh and colourful as they had just been reenacted. There is also a guest appearance by Martin Scorsese hommaging the factory exit first film.
If the subjects themselves can be a bit boring for today´s audiences (mainly single plane location views, yet sometimes travellings and shots from a boat or train, even special effects), they are so brief and there are so varied that hardly become irrelevant. And as it is also noticed, they have an added quality : many of them distillate amusement, as the Lumière brothers and their friends as actors testify. It makes one but smile to see how their factory workers enjoyed a snow battle at Monplaisir. And although many of us have seen some time or another La sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon or L'arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (the first and one of the earliest footages from 1895), here we are presented with three diferent versions of the first and an excellent restoration of the second.
The only issues to be raised against this wonderfully fresh compilation are how nice it would have been to include a sample of the restoration process (comparing some fragments before and after) and the fact that, being all of them so brief, listening to the commentaries and/or reading subtitles takes time from watching the films themselves. There´s always the DVD option of watching them silent, as they originally were. Let´s wait that more of these careful compilations will follow in 4K.
