Football

The immobility of the camera is clearly an issue in this Lumiere short. The players look at the camera, some grinning briefly, perhaps at its presence, perhaps at the thought of the fun to come -- at this stage, the players were likely a mix of amateurs and semi-professionals, so it was an extra frisson.

Once the event starts, everyone concentrates on the events in hand, although the camera is not positioned to catch what is going on. Is this a practice session or an actual game? Hard to tell from this angle, and that is the flaw in this film.

The Lumiere efforts were generally impeccable in their composition and by this time usually offered interesting studies in movement that even more than a century later can offer some insight into how to shoot something. This fails on both accounts, but may be of some value as an extremely early film of football.

Football (1897)

At just under a minute, this film shows us a group of men playing football. Considering the era that this was made, it's hard to be too critical of the lack of story since the main thing for filmmakers was to simply get something on film and shown to people for a dime. The film manages to be slightly entertaining to those who enjoy watching these early movies but I think showing this to current football fans would be rather fun just so they can see who was playing the sport over a hundred years ago. There's certainly nothing here that makes this stand out in regards to the quality of the film but it's still interesting to watch.