Boat Leaving the Port

this is possibly the most beautiful of the early Lumiere shorts. A boat rows from the front of the screen away from the audience to the back, while to the right, women wait on the port. The camera, as usual, does not move, but the play of sunlight on the waves are gorgeous, and the rippling movement is so vibrant, especially within such a static frame, that it looks like one is watching an actual scene behind glass.

As with 'Demolition d'un mur', the real frisson of the film comes from the unexpected. The scene proceeds as expected, the boat moving steadily along. But, just as it turns, a stronger wave lunges, and almost capsizes the boat. Before we discover what will happen, the reel, and the film, ends. These early films made no precautions for the necessity of extra reels.

But the effect is quite shocking. The unexpected violence is unsettling enough, but with the film over, and loose ends nowhere near being tied up - indeed, just initiated a narrative, in the dying seconds - the audience is left agonising in the dark. What happened next? Inadvertently, the audience is required to imagine for itself, imagine what's not capable of being represented by the cinema, something the Hollywood generic system to come will stamp out. With its daring use of ellipsis, is this the first art-film, the first 'Cat People'?

Yes, this is a one shot film that lasts less than a minute; but the beauty in the film is the result of the composition. Three men in a large rowboat set out to sea as the choppy water rocks the boat and makes beautifully defined ripples in the shallows near us. A rock quay juts out into the water from some out-of-site location along the shoreline to our right. The several women and the child on the end of the quay are totally isolated from us and we do not know their relationship to the men in the boat. It is the closest thing you will see to a black-and-white painting in motion.

This Lumiere film is not one of their very well known efforts, but it's included on the "Movies Begin" set. The commentator on the soundtrack of the set explains that when the Lumiere's shot their first subjects they used 50-ft lengths, thus the films would "end" very suddenly. This explains why we actually never see the boat disappear from the screen. Instead we are left in suspense when a large wave tosses it.

This is fairly bland to watch but as some other reviewers have pointed out the photography is great and the movement of the waves is effective looking. If you saw this on a large movie screen you very well might feel as though you are right there watching. It helps also that the footage survives wonderfully and the picture is extremely sharp. If you're new to the Bros then this is a nice place to start because of the photography. It's pretty bland all-in-all but looks great anyway.

Back in 1895, most films being released were mere experiments, recordings of daily life, one minute documentaries serving mainly as a device used to kickstart cinematic history. This particular film is among the more fascinating works of this era mainly due to its beautiful ocean imagery. It is made up of only one take that only clocks in at about fifty seconds, and yet it s more complicated than many of the other Lumiere films. There are many moving parts (the men, their boat, the wavy sea), the camera stays steady, but the visuals do not. The waves rock fearlessly, and the film ends before your conscious that it has begun. This is an interesting visual experiment crafted during the dawn of film, and should be judged as such. In comparison to many other Lumiere films, this is certainly a treat for the eyes and is a treasure of early cinema.

I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.

At once this film is interesting but yet frustrating in seeing things being worked on that are now commonplace. The interesting aspect is the framing of the shot, which is reminiscent of a painting in the way it sets the foreground (the jetty) and a background (the sloping hill on the horizon). However as a film it has the boat moving through one towards the other, which is an interesting development that provides plenty to look at. The women on the pier are worth watching as is the boat, so the viewer is held by both.

However it was here that the film annoyed me by just "ending". I had expected the planned film to see the boat move out of shot around the jetty, which would be a logical end, leaving the viewer wit only the static fore and back grounds to contemplate. It did annoy that the film just stopped instead of ending. That said though, it is yet again interesting to watch as part of Lumière's development.