Forgive me the slowdown in posting. I am reading the first draft of a friend’s novel. And there is relatively little traffic here on weekends anyway. And I badly need a break from doing this anyway. I’m not terribly clear what I do it for. Sometimes it seems like housekeeping — just because. Except, of course, that I don’t actually do housekeeping, and I actually do publish about 4,000 words per day here. But not yesterday and probably not today.

On this day in 1862, Auguste Lumière was born. But we celebrate it with his brother Louis Lumière, who was born exactly two weeks later, but in 1864. They are collectively known as the Lumière brothers — cinema inventors and pioneers. You know how motion pictures work, right? An image is displayed on the screen for a fraction of a second; the screen goes dark while the next image is put into place; the next image is displayed on the screen for a fraction of a second. Done over and over, this appears to create action. Well, the Lumière brothers invented the perforations on the side of film that allow it to be moved quickly and accurately through the projector.

In addition to this, the two made almost 200 films together. They are notable in this regard because their films show great care in terms of the framing of shots. Unlike Edison, they were actually interested in photography. So even though their films are all very short (generally less than a minute), they look good. Consider, for example, their most famous film, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat:

Yes, not a lot of drama. But it was made in 1895. The first film was not shown publicly in the United States until 1896. In France, of course, they were already displaying their films publicly. It actually shows the artistic potential of motion pictures and makes the work done by Edison at that time look pathetic. Here is another Lumière film from the same year, The Sprinkler Sprinkled. It is arguably the first comedy ever shot:

Happy birthday Auguste and Louis Lumière!