Brief introduction of Lumiere brothers

The Lumiere brothers studied photography in a photo studio run by their father, Lumiere Sr. When their father was in charge of the photographic equipment factory, they developed the "mobile film machine". As photographers, the Lumiere brothers showed a completely different thinking concept from Edison from the beginning. This difference is not only manifested in the invention of "projection" and the improvement of film machinery and equipment, but also in the fundamental differences in time and space concepts and aesthetics of their film works.

As an inventor, Edison made great contributions to movies. His development of film machines and devices laid the foundation for the birth of new art, and his greater glory is to give this new art a charming, poetic and illusory name-film. However, Edison's concept of film and this new art has great limitations.

First of all, most of the films shown in Edison's "Movie Mirror" were shot in a device he set up called "Black Prison Car". In fact, his creation itself did not break away from the original mode of "photo studio". In front of the "peep mirror" that only one person can see, the viewer's "peep" is just repeating the photographer's "peep" again and again. Followed by Dixon's first 50 or so works, such as The Scene of the Bar, Dance of annabella, Tooth Extraction, Barber, Pierre Buffalo, etc. Most of them simply show entertainment scenes such as dancing, boxing, juggling and playing games. The characters in the film are performed by actors invited by Edison for the camera, just like "moving photos". It's just some fictional little programs that apply the model of stage play.

On the contrary, the Lumiere brothers took a more realistic attitude. First of all, they got rid of the shackles of the closed artificial space owned by the photographers in the studio and moved towards the vast and open natural space. The content of the work is also to express and copy the things and lives that actually exist in real life, rather than to arrange and perform those things and lives that don't actually exist for the camera. For example, short films originally shot by Louis Lumiere, such as Factory Gate, Train Entering Station, Woman Burning Grass, Ship Leaving Port, Representative Landing, Police Parade, etc. , directly show those off-duty workers, passengers getting on and off the bus, working women, fishermen boating out to sea, photographers ashore, policemen marching on the street and so on. In these works, the Lumiere brothers truly captured and recorded scenes in real life, allowing people to see real life and familiar people around them. As georges sadoul said, from Louis Lumiere's movies, people know that movies can be "a machine that reproduces life", not just a machine that acts like Edison's "movie mirror".