Mosquinha

Mosquinha (1890)

This film lasts less than ten-seconds but it's so historically important that you can't help but really love it. Scientist Etienne-Jules Marey was doing research as well as experimenting with film and this here basically shows a fly taking off. Obviously with such a short running time you can't be expecting too much but for 1890 standards this thing is certainly an early masterpiece for the genre. Films were obviously still very young but watching this movie today it still manages to impress. The title and image makes it seem like the perfect monster movie!

Just two years after "Roundhay Garden Scene" came this eight second little wonder showing a fly, in silhouette, taking off. It was made by Étienne-Jules Marey, a French scientist and pioneer in the fields of cardiology, physical instrumentation, aviation, cinematography and the science of laboratory photography. He was very interested in movement of the human body, and that interest apparently extended to the movement of members of the animal kingdom.

Marey's films were of excellent quality for his time. He is credited for making several films in the late 19th century, the earliest of them being dated 1885, which technically was before the first motion picture. That title is "L'homme machine", and can be found on youtube. It is actually the tracing of the motion of man and was likely just a series of photographs taken with Marey's chronophotographic gun, which was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, with all the frames recorded on the same picture.

The next time you enjoy a nature film by David Attenborough, remember this pioneer in the study and recording of the motion of both man and animals.

Etienne-Jules Marey was a french scientist who made several early productions in film-making. His name is not too common when discussing early films, but then, he was a scientist, not a filmmaker. Still, film was one thing he experimented with and this is one of his shorts. It features the take-off of a fly, in silhouette and it makes me wonder how he shot it. Did he use a microscope? It really is very unique to watch. Anyway, everybody says it is the first film to feature a fly. That's not saying much though. How many people film flies?!?! Well, because Marey was a scientist he must have been interested in nature, animals and ... flies. Why else would he bother filming this?

Etienne-Jules Marey was one of those scientists who dabbled in many branches of the sciences. In order to facilitate his study of animals, he developed an early form of motion pictures, and this is his earliest surviving work. It is a picture of a mosquito taking flight.

As such, it is of great historical significance, for pride of place, if nothing else. He invented the chronophotography gun, which took sixteen pictures in short order on a single sheet of film. It must have been a cumbersome device, and transferring the results to a usefully viewable medium seems to have been, well, uncommercial. Another interesting dead end in the evolution of cinema.

Étienne-Jules Marey's first "film" presents the flight of a fly in a sort of animated mode way back when films and animation experiments were in the early stages of development. Marey was a physiologist and physician who studied birds and their flights or similar things, so his film only deserves important and historical credits for being one of the first film experiences ever made. Outside of this box, the film doesn't contain nothing much memorable. It only last six seconds and you see it as a shadow-like fly moving upwards from one point to the other and that's it.

And I wonder: Why the original title comes from a Portuguese term for little fly instead of Petite Mouche?

Gets a thumbs up from me because it survived the test time and hasn't disappeared from view, which is rare accomplishment when it comes to pioneer films. 6/10