Number of user reviews: 39
User score: 7.6
Roundhay Garden Scene is the kind of film that throws me into an existential panic. I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I do truly feel that there is something deeply disturbing in these foggy, faded images from a bygone generation. Perhaps it is the simple knowledge, pointed out in so many Youtube comments, that all of the people depicted in this brief footage are long-dead. I mean, the footage is 129 years old; even their children would be dead by now! But it's not as if the cast members needed that long to die; in fact, the reason that Roundhay can be almost precisely dated to October 14, 1888 is that one of its principal performers, Sarah Whitley, died only 10 days later. She was the first person, ever, in the history of the world, to continue moving from beyond the grave. Her husband, Joseph, also featured in the film, died in 1891. This film is the only mark that these two lives left on the world, the only reason they have not been completely forgotten. When was the last time anyone mentioned Sarah or Joseph Whitley outside the immediate context of Roundhay Garden Scene? As they say, you die twice: the first time when you stop breathing, and again when someone says your name for the last time. I guess the Whitleys just lucked out. Who knows what other people narrowly missed being captured by Le Prince's camera, and so are lost forever to the ether of time and space? I'm thinking too much about this. Or am I?
For there is still the strange fate of Le Prince himself to consider. In 1890, not long after creating his first batch of films (among them Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge and Accordion Player), he boarded a train in Paris with a briefcase full of his work, intent on travelling to America to show his invention to the world. He was never seen again, despite an extensive police investigation (recent evidence suggests Le Prince drowned, somehow.) His disappearance remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of film history, not only for its spooky appeal, but also for the implications it would have on the development of the film industry; who knows how things might have gone if Edison had not been able to take credit for Le Prince's work? Everything may have changed. Or perhaps not. Either way, the chilly air of death and mystery surrounds Le Prince and his films; it is as if one is viewing a parade of ghosts, directed by a man who became, himself, a ghost.
But is even this explanation adequate to explain why Roundhay Garden Scene unsettles me where the earlier entries of this series did not? Perhaps it is, indeed, the humanity of Roundhay that gives it a potency beyond that of, say, Buffalo Running. As with Man Walking Around the Corner, Roundhay's content is entirely human, entirely within a mundane environment, and cognizant of the three-dimensional potential for movement on film. Whereas the earliest experiments in film (Sallie Gardner and the like) took an almost-clinical interest in the pure mechanism of movement, seeking to reduce it to science and process it into ossified knowledge, Le Prince's film is lively and spontaneous. There is no academic (or aesthetic) mission guiding Roundhay's filmic event; the performers move as they wish, and Le Prince simply points the camera in their general direction and captures their whim. In doing so, Le Prince sets yet another precedent for future filmmaking: that is to say, Roundhay marks the beginning of improvization on film. He brings no particular purpose to his project beyond showing movement; the means by which that movement is created is determined not by the mind of a scientist, or technician, or auteur, but by the actors themselves. It features people walking jauntily, haphazardly, erratically--a far cry from the dry directness of purpose in previous films. For the first time, the performers have been put in control of their own representation on film. This may, too, be part of the reason I find Roundhay a ghoulish piece: the juxtaposition of the playful and morbid, chaos and void--it reminds me of the ephemerality of choice, and the permanence of obligation, that is to say, the obligation for it all to end. And I don't like that.
No fault to Le Prince, though.
Other connections: As mentioned yesterday, Le Prince's disappearance before he had the chance to exhibit his invention doomed him to obscurity for decades afterward. This is as good a place as any to also mention the much higher vote total for Roundhay than for previous entries in the IMDB Canon, indicating its widespread de facto status as the first film ever--though, as indicated by previous entries in the series, that is an oversimplification.
Other most-voted films of 1888:
This is the first competitive year of this series, featuring five titles. The other four are as follows:
2. Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (Louis Le Prince | 1,982 votes)
3. Accrdion Player (Louis Le Prince | 615 votes) - another uncanny, ghoulish early clip.
4. Pferd und Reiter Springen uber ein Hindernis (Ottomar Anschutz | 69 votes)
5. Brighton Street Scene (Williams Friese-Greene | 35 votes)
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