New York, Brooklyn Bridge

One of the pleasures of watching the Lumiere's movies from the 1890s is that they understood composition and the fact that things had to move: no stationary shots of the Brooklyn Bridge, this. Instead, the bridge, only about a decade old then, serves as a backdrop for the constant motion of trains, steam and other items of interest. Even though this film lasts only about ten seconds, the eye is kept busy following events: something Edison's people took a decade to begin to understand.

Compare this with, say the work of James White, or VIEW FROM THE NORTH RIVER: a slow, leisurely, boring examination of docks that do nothing. The secret of how to make an interesting movie was already in hand. It just took a while for anyone else to understand.

Worth seeing for its historical interest alone, this Lumière footage of the Brooklyn Bridge also displays the good photography that characterizes so many of their films. Along with its companion film of Broadway and Union Square, it provides a living record of the New York City of its long-ago era. This feature also benefits from the prominent view of trains, which always seem to work so well on film.

The action simply focuses on trains and streetcars passing over the bridge in different directions. The motion works in making the scene much more alive than a still photograph would have been, and the camera field is set up nicely, looking across the bridge while catching plenty of action in the foreground.

In their own time, movies like this probably allowed a lot of viewers to "visit" places like New York, and to feel that they were a part of a larger world, even if they were not able to travel far from their own homes. Over a century later, they serve a different purpose, keeping alive a record of things as they were in their day.

While there really isn't too much to see in this Lumiere documentary, it can still be appreciated due to the fact we're seeing a place as it was over a hundred years ago. Here, in this film, we have a simple set-up of two trains passing each other on the Brooklyn bridge. In all honesty, this brief scene is pretty bland, but with that said it's still interesting because of the good cinematography and beautiful print condition. The director of the film, Alexandre Promio, was one of the Lumiere Brothers' cameramen who they sent out to different spots around the world to film life elsewhere. As far as it goes, this actuality isn't anything special to watch nowadays, but at only 50 seconds or so, it's not a waste of time.

This approximately 45-second long Lumière Brothers short (Lumière No. 321) shows two trains from the old "New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway", which eventually connected to the Brooklyn Rapid Transit (BRT) lines, predecessors of today's subway, passing over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Once again in a Lumière short, we have the visual composition of "obliques and processionals". An interesting angle was found that placed the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge on the left hand side of the frame but that also allowed the railway tracks to create an oblique from the lower left portion of the frame cutting all the way across to the right, then curving back towards the towers. This type of visual composition, which is found in a great number of Lumière actualities, both exaggerates perspective to emphasize depth and allows for more complex motion to be sustained for a greater length of time--the perfect way to exploit the novelty of this new artistic medium, the motion picture.

The processionals are created by the two trains, one in each direction. We first see a train coming from the center of the frame, making the curve and nearing us. Almost at the precise moment that the last car is about to exit the frame on our left, another train emerges from "behind" us, going the opposite direction, headed towards the curve and the distance. Just as the last car of this second train passes, and before its "backwards" facing engine comes along, a single, separate engine that had been parked in front of the control booth at the base of the bridge comes along in the direction of the first train.

This is beautifully complex motion, and it seems almost as if the trains would have had to be choreographed in this manner--to the extent that practice runs would have been necessary. The motions seem perfectly planned with respect to the camera. If it was a chance moment captured on the Lumière's cinématographe, it's hard to believe their good fortune.

Of course this short is also of great historical interest.

New York, pont de Brooklyn (1896)

Once the Lumiere Brothers started traveling to other locations to shoot their films we really got some great stuff. This one here has the brothers in America with their camera stations on a railway that is connected to the Brooklyn port. The camera is stationed near the track as we see one train leaving Brooklyn and then another starts going towards the city. Obviously there's nothing ground-breaking that you're going to see here but if you're a fan of these early movies then you'll certainly enjoy this one. The best thing about the picture is the fact that it contains some beautiful cinematography that perfectly captures the image. It's also perfect timing (or staged) that the trains would cross at the point they did.