New York: Broadway at Union Square

This Lumiere documentary is very typical of their earliest work and while it offers up nothing new it's always worth seeing because it captures a moment in time. The short depicts a street scene of Broadway (as the title suggests), with trolleys, public, and policeman. That's pretty much it. The reason I say it's nothing new is because the Lumieres loved filming street scenes. Just life going on as usual and that's all. It may not be as interesting a subject but as far as it goes it's a good depiction of life on Broadway in 1896.

In this approximately 35-second long Lumière Brothers short (Lumière No. 328), the camera is placed at the intersection of Broadway and 14th Street--the southeast corner of New York City's Union Square/Union Square Park. You can see the Lincoln Building prominently in the top center portion of the screen (1 Union Square W.), which had just been built 6 years before, and new construction just to the left of that. Policemen direct pedestrian and streetcar traffic along the roads, and we see a number of horse-drawn carts and carriages go down 14th Street.

The first thing that struck me as unusual about this short is how nonchalantly, even haphazardly, the three policemen are directing traffic. They seem to be somewhat arbitrarily waving everyone on, pedestrians and streetcars alike, in a manner that reminds me of the way you used to be waved into Mexico from the United States by the Mexican border guards. It's quite funny. Of course, the streetcars aren't traveling as quickly as cars do today (and that corner tends to have cars speeding by to catch the traffic light), but still everyone seems to be standing dangerously close to the tracks. I suppose this changed after a few severed feet.

As I've pointed out in my comments about a number of other Lumière Brothers shorts, we again have a visual composition of "obliques and processionals", designed to maximize the novelty of the then new medium of motion pictures. The obliques are provided by the streetcars rounding the corner at Broadway, and most of the motion in the shot is a processional.

Among the elements that are fascinating to note historically, aside from those already mentioned, such as the streetcars, are the clothing, which tends to look very formal and dour compared to today, the newspaper boy who lingers in the foreground, often staring at the camera, and the final streetcar that passes--which is designated as a "Smoking Car". I was surprised to see the separate facility for smokers this far back in time.

The old little films made by the cinématographe, invention of Louis and Auguste Lumière, are all interesting since it is part of the history of cinema. Since they all run for about forty or fifty seconds it is hard to be bored watching them. 'New York, Broadway et Union Square' shows exactly what the title tells us. The stationary camera looks at Broadway and Union Square in Greenwich Village. We see two police officers taking care of pedestrians wanting to cross the street while streetcars pass. In the background we also see some horses and carriages.

Like I said, these films are too short to get bored. Watching the lives of some New Yorkers over a hundred years ago is pretty interesting as well, even though it only shows us a minute from it.

New York, Broadway et Union Square (1896)

The title of this Lumiere Brothers film pretty much tells you everything that you need to know. The camera is stationed on the street of the title and we see the action that is going on. There's obviously nothing ground-breaking about this movie but at the same time it's quite fascinating getting to see what New York City was like on a busy day in 1896. The camera stays in place as you'd expect but there's quite a bit to look at as people come walking by. At the street corner there's a policeman directing traffic as people walk across the street. There are also several automobiles that you can see. Being able to see the street as it was in 1896 is what makes this film so entertaining. Obviously there's no plot or anything like that but this is an entertaining actuality film.

This footage of New York City at Broadway and Union Square is interesting, detailed, and well-photographed. It is worthwhile historically, both in preserving what the area looked like and in preserving some of the routines of daily life in its day. Though both have no doubt changed considerably, early movies like this make it possible to remember them.

As with so many of the early Lumière features, this one is worth watching a number of times so that you can see all the detail. The activity in the foreground, with the vehicles, the pedestrians, and the policeman directing all of them, grabs your attention first. There is also some fairly good detail of some large buildings in the distant background, which come to the eye next. Finally, there is a good bit of action going on in the nearer, but less noticeable, part of the background.

No doubt much of what appears in this footage will at first seem old-fashioned or even quaint, yet footage of our cities of today will probably seem equally so in a century or so from now. Short movies like this serve a valuable purpose in keeping alive the ways of life in long-past eras, so that thoughtful viewers can think for themselves about what is different, at least on the surface, and what is essentially the same.