Talk:Auguste and Louis Lumière

Some proposals for improvement

There are some things in this article that seem wrong to me.

This historical screening was based on their first film, the 45-second-long Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory)

This isn't correct, since they showed a total of ten films (as indicated later in the article). About the timing: most sources indicate 50 seconds, some say 1 minute. That's a bit theoretical anyway since the devices were activated by hand. So the duration was 50 seconds at 16 fps, or 60 seconds at 15 fps, or anything inbetween. Therefore there is no point in giving indications like 42 secs, 46 secs - those durations refer to the quicktime movies which have been captured at some arbitrary speed, it doesn't apply to the original movies which had all the same length: 17 meters of celluloid.

shot in 1895[2] with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device patented the previous year.

This isn't correct: as explained below, Bouly simply filed a patent, but the Lumière developed the Cinématographe by their own (although using ideas borrowed from Edison, Emile Reynaud, Marey, Demeny, Anschütz, Le Roy...)

Even though Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioskop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public one month earlier (November 1, 1895, in Berlin), film historians consider the Grand Café screening to be the true birth of the cinema as a commercial medium. The reason is the Skladanowsky brothers' screening was not a motion pictures film but a slideshow of animated still photographs which is not cinematography. See also Chris Marker's La Jetée which is based on the same process.

This paragraph seems a bit too long. I would at least remove the reference to La Jetée, although it's an interesting reference, it doesn't have much to do with the articles topic... 1904.CC 03:25, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, and made several of these edits. --Jeremy Butler 13:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Léon Bouly's cinématographe

The article says that the Lumière shot their first film in 1895 "with Léon Bouly's cinématographe device patented the previous year" - that doesn't correlate with my references (Chardère, B.; Borgé, G. and M. (1985): Les Lumière). This book tells the following story: in the end of 1894/beginning of 1895 the Lumière built their own cinématographe, whith original features like the film-pulling mechanism. Also, in order to get good results, they had to invent their own brand of 35mm film! The technician who built the prototype, following the Lumière Brother's instructions, was Charles Moisson, mechanician at the Lumière Factory.

Léon Bouly indeed filed the first brevet for a machine called "cinématographe", on february 12th 1892 for the camera and december 27th 1893 for the projector. According to Chardère, this machine was never completed, and the Lumière didn't know about it at that time. (note: Bernard Chardère is director of the Lumière Institute, so his opinion could be biaised...)

The Lumière Brothers requested their brevet on feburary 13th 1895, for a period of 15 years (several improvements were aded to it during 1895 and 1896). Would be glad to hear if anybody has different information... bzzp 19:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi!

Can anyone give me any hints where this quote is from: "the cinema is an invention without any future". I spent some hours searching, but I couldn't verify it. --de:Benutzer:SoniC

This is attributed to the Lumière brothers, but I think we should rewrote this part. They were serious industrials, the ex-Lumiere company (merged with Ilford) is still an important actor today in the photographic industry. IMO they were not so stupid, simply movie industries wasn't a part of their industrial strategy. Ericd 20:39, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

According to Chardère (1985), pp.97-98, [quoting a letter by Louis Lumière] after the first projection, Antoine Lumière said this to Georges Méliès who asked to buy a prototype of the cinématographe. They were offered huge amounts (up to 50'000 francs) by the directors of Musée Grevin and the Folies Bergère, but refused because they wanted to market their invention by their own. So it looks like they simply tried to calm down the concurrence. From Mai 1897, the Cinématographe can be purchased at a retail price of 1650 francs. 1904.CC 02:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

What is (the) Tulle-gras?

"The Lumières also proposed ... (the) Tulle-gras® (to heal burns)."

What is (the) Tulle-gras? -- Writtenonsand 04:02, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

http://wound.smith-nephew.com/au/node.asp?NodeId=3823 --Jeremy Butler 13:08, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

You folks don't care about this article, do you?

Do you realize that there have been wholesale deletions in this article, ongoing and unfixed, since last December?

Do you realize that this article mentions nothing about Auguste and Louis Lumière being the best-known pioneers of colour photography?

Do you realize that I think Wikipedia is a useless project because of things like this?

75.71.120.88 (talk) 04:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Do you realise that you can improve the article yourself if you have any ideas?--Angelastic (talk) 12:18, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Indeed this article would deserve much more work... For now i re-injected a paragraph that was deleted in February 2008, taken from this revision. it would also be worth to import some material from the german and french wikipedias, which seem more substantial. 1904.CC (talk) 21:24, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Inventors or not

The Lumière Brothers are known in Europe as the genuine first inventors of cinematograph, and therefor of movie. This isn't even evoked in the introduction : is it due to an omission, or to some american patriotism set to convince people that movies are another invention from Edison, like the wheel, the fire or the Internet ? FredD (talk) 12:12, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Major Inaccuracy

To respond to FredD and all the other people out there that are wondering, the Lumiere Brothers are not the inventors of French Cinematography. It may very well be true that they invented the first color film, but they did not invent even French Cinematography. That honor goes to the late Louis Le Prince, who actually also invented Cinematography in general. If people protest that that's not true, try searching for "Man Walking around a Corner." User:Scratlikesacorns 10:27 (PST) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scratlikesacorns (talk • contribs)

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What does this mean?

I'm puzzled about the meaning of the last sentence of the introductory paragraph:

Either the techniques or the business models of earlier filmmakers proved to be less viable than the breakthrough presentations of the Lumières.

Can somebody clarify this please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:643:8104:730:DD35:618E:D2CC:D6EB (talk) 19:58, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

It's explained in the section "Advantages of the Cinématographe Lumière over other systems". There were earlier cinematographic systems and motion picture presentations that were not as successful or just didn't last long after the introduction of the Cinématographe Lumière. Apart from probably having much luck for giving their presentations at the right time and place, the Lumière system seems to have prevailed because it had some technological advantages and was introduced by a relatively big company that could market it with relative ease for a relatively long time. I'd like to add that part of their luck has to do with being the first to introduce the medium in a culture that was in high regard internationally, a culture that continued to push the envelope of cinema (especially with the very creative and successful films of Georges Méliès) and that kept track of these particular developments more or less sufficiently and communicated their successes broadly. Apart from their much smaller businesses falling apart (probably mostly due to strong competition), pioneers Anschütz and the Skladanowskys may have had bad luck that German-speaking culture had lost lots of international goodwill when the English and French speaking basics of international film history were written down in the 20th century. In the US, Edison seems to have done his best to submerge any trace of previous developments, in order to claim rights as the sole inventor of motion pictures. Some even believe he had the son of LePrince murdered because he tried to prove otherwise in court, but just getting his claims repeated again and again in the press probably sufficed. I may add some lines to the article about such factors, but I'd better find some proper references.Joortje1 (talk) 11:03, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

How about a filmography?

Frankly, this article is woefully inadequate. There's no mention of how many films they made, their business model and other related efforts, etc. Even something a simple as a filmography is missing. Additionally, it also may be helpful to link to the article on actuality film which has some information missing from this one.

Well, here's a website which claims to have some information: https://catalogue-lumiere.com/

But I don't have time to work on this right now. Nonto4567 (talk) 17:39, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

"something a simple as a filmography"

The site you refer to mentions that their company produced 1428 films between 1895 and 1905. How could such a filmography be something simple?

IMDb lists Louis as the (co-)producer of 285 films, (co-)director of 134, cinematographer of 34, editor of 6. August is credited as (co-)producer for 257 films, (co-)director of 11. I doubt whether all this is properly sourced, since people usually weren't credited with such roles at the time, and quite often, company owners have later on received credits for the creative work of anonymous employees. Other complications include for instance August's credit as (co-)director of a "Lumière" documentary that was produced/released 12 years after his death (maybe it included some footage of the few older films that he is credited with, but it's suspicious that Louis received no such credit).

The wikipedia page already lists the 10 films of their first commercial screening, all bluelinked. Few film historians seem to have shown much interest in their later filmography.

It may be worthwhile to look for more insight in their output, business model, et cetera. But just like you, I can't be bothered to do so at the moment.

The French version of this page could be a good starting point though. Joortje1 (talk) 07:51, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

A filmography is the most basic element of a Wikipedia article on people involved with film. In this case, it's obviously much more complicated than usual. But it's still a necessary element.

In this case, there's nothing in the article. Literally nothing. Reading it, one could assume they made ten films, a hundred films, ten thousand... who knows? Because there's nothing there.

Not even a "they produced hundreds of movies over the span of ten years" in the lede.

Clearly it's not enough to read a single source and throw some crap into the article. But like most people, I don't have time to do a major research project and then give it away for free on Wikipedia.

But maybe someone else will. Nonto4567 (talk) 19:37, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Support of Vichy

In the French language article, they have a dedicated section about the brothers' support of the Vichy government, even seating in the national council as well as obtaining the francisque order. This article in the biography section should also have a paragraph mentioning this. Remikipedia (talk) 20:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)