Number of user reviews: 5
User score: 5.1
So far in the IMDB Canon, the number of votes a film has received--that is to say, my entire mode of measurement--has been completely irrelevant, since no year has yet contained more than a single film. Furthermore, most years thus far have contained no films at all; going forward from 1883's Buffalo Running, 1884, 1885, and 1886 are, once again, all empty. But these are the last empty years that will appear in this project. From this point onward, the isolated experiments have come to an end; the arrival of one Louis Le Prince marks the epicenter from which the medium of film would explode over the next decade. The same phenomenon as with the two Muybridge entries, but in reverse: Man Walking Around the Corner is the ignored experiment, while Roundhay Garden Scene is his masterpiece--or, at least, his most widely-recognized technical achievement ("masterpiece" feels like an odd word to use for a film 2 seconds long.) So, I'll save my overall thoughts on Le Prince for tomorrow.
There are few films shorter, simpler, or more primitive than Man Walking Around the Corner. It stretches the definition of film altogether, being more a fragment of a fragment, a few photographs stitched together into a sequence after the fact, producing not even a flip-book's worth of movement. If not for the title, it would be difficult to discern what, exactly, the film depicts, as the "man" is a mere blob moving against a grey substrate. Several viewings will likely be required to make out the subject and context of the film. Nevertheless, it does mark an important milestone in the history of film, in that a human is the subject and central focus. No longer are we looking at the movements of planets or the subtleties of animal gaits, but at the actions of people. This fact alone may give it greater resemblance to something that a modern viewer would recognize as a film. Granted, only a single person is visible--don't expect any depiction of social relations here--but merely having human content front-and-center is enough to set it apart from the scientific and technological aims of Le Prince's predecessors. Furthermore, the film places its subject in a definite environment; Le Prince does not seek to make his subject independent of place, as Muybridge did with his horse and buffalo pieces, but places him in a definitely urban setting, in front of some manner of building. Man Walking Around the Corner therefore marks the introduction of spatial awareness into film, the first film in which depth and dimension exist. Passage de Venus and Sallie Gardner were technical feats, yes, but they were utterly flat, effectively two-dimensional representations of objects, almost engravings as much as films. With Le Prince's work, there can be no mistake; this is planet Earth, our world, and this is an actual human moving within its spaces. With no obvious mission behind his film other than to observe a regular person--there is no tracking of planets here, no dissection of a horse's gallop--Le Prince, intentionally or not, introduces social realism into film. No, there is nothing here that can be called social commentary yet, but observation of the common folk moving through everyday spaces can be viewed as commentary in and of itself, for it asserts that the lives of the plebs, and the spaces they inhabit, are as worthy for recording as any other subject. Observation leads to knowledge, and thus to power--to observe the world is a prerequisite for changing it. Insofar as this principle applies to the history of film, Man Walking Around the Corner is the first sentence of the first chapter of a thousand-page book.
Other connections: Despite now being recognized as the grandfather of film as we know it, Louis Le Prince was unknown in his lifetime, owing to his abrupt disappearance in 1890 before he could publicly exhibit any of his films (more on that tomorrow.)
Other most-voted films of 1887: Once again, there is not a single other IMDB entry for this year, but this will be the last time I have to say that.
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