The film that marked the beginnings of cinema, by the Lumière brothers, celebrates its 130th anniversary

What we call the seventh art has been taking us into the world of the Moon – and into many others – since December 28, 1895. That day, “La Sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon” and nine other films, directed by the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, were screened for the first time in paid screenings, at the Salon indie du Grand Café, in Paris. Nothing has taken us this far.

— It is curious to think that the first film made in the cinema is about workers. This set a precedent for this type of scene of workers leaving a workplace to be repeated throughout cinema history. From time to time, a filmmaker films the exit from a factory, a mine or a company building. This has taken on several meanings throughout the history of cinema — explains critic and researcher Carlos Alberto Mattos, author of the Internet book “End of Shift: Factory Exits in Cinema from Lumière to Loach” (www.fimdeturno.com). Mattos exhibits and analyzes genre scenes from 130 years of cinema in its dramaturgical, industrial, social and political aspects.

The historic session took place in a small room in the basement. It brought together 33 lucky winners, including journalists and theater directors, such as Georges Méliès, eminent in the development of fictional stories. They attended, for 1 franc, notes Mattos, the first public presentation of the Cinématographe Lumière, an invention developed by Auguste and Louis Lumière.

— People were amazed, impressed to see the movement, simply a machine capable of capturing the action and displaying it on a large screen. This film had already been shown at a scientific meeting, — describes Mattos.

It is not clear how the audience behaved during the first screening. But there are versions of unusual reactions to another short film, later screened by the Lumières, which would have startled spectators.

— In the following sessions, there is this famous story according to which people were frightened by the train which, arriving at La Ciotat station, heading towards the camera, would have frightened people by its approach. But that’s folklore. We don’t know to what extent this is true – says the researcher.

The set of the first film, restored in a modern way and decorated with images of figures from the period in transparent glass, is now part of the Institut Lumière, rue du Premier-Film, in Lyon, the third largest French city, about 470 kilometers from Paris. The original warehouse, restored in 1998, now houses a 269-seat cinema. The former home of the Lumière family, in Art Nouveau style, is a museum. Among the exhibits, spread across 21 rooms on four floors, is Cinematograph No. 1, the device that projected the first films in 1895.

— The Lumière Institute continues to this day to film the exits from the site of this factory. Every year, ordinary people sign up to get out of this door. The institute offers the Lumière Prize. Wim Wenders, Tim Burton and (Pedro) Almodóvar as well as countless other filmmakers have already received awards. Each of them films a factory exit as they wish, observes Mattos.

Ex-factory covers are posted online on the Institut Lumière website.

— We see anonymous people coming out of the factory and doing a lot of stupid things, dancing, kissing, playing, playing ball. It has become a fun and entertaining thing to participate and even watch these performances, says the film critic.

The Lumières manufactured photographic equipment, but after the creation of the cinematograph, they focused on film production.

— At first, these films were just improvisations based on famous people, sometimes family members. Then, with the development of this language, the arrival of Georges Méliès and (David Llewelyn Wark) Griffith in the United States, cinema began to be thought of as a larger story. The montage was created, joining one scene to another. What we call narrative cinema today has developed. The Enlightenment became the fathers of documentary. The filming was always very direct to reality, even if it was a staged reality.

The factory outlet was already a subject explored by photographers in the mid-19th century. Les Lumière jumped on the trend by recording in this setting. There are three known versions of this release. The differences are subtle but noticeable. In the first, leisure clothes, numerous women and a carriage pulled by two horses, transporting the Lumière brothers.

— In the second version, we see people in work clothes. They no longer wear their Sunday clothes. There is a balance between the number of men and women, he explains.

The third version, considered by many to be the one that really hit the screen in the first session, includes the factory gates opening. These remakes happened because Lights, by delaying the start of filming, missed the moment when the gate opened.

— People play, something a little playful, get out of the factory and interact with each other. A woman pulls another’s skirt, a boy pushes another with his bike – underlines the researcher.

In England, filmmakers and cameramen have specialized in the subject. There was even an animator, responsible for organizing the movement of workers within the camera frame. For Mattos, leaving the factory became almost a cinematic genre between the 1910s and 1940s.

— In Brazil we have several examples of very significant factory productions, such as “Ganga Bruta”, a Humberto Mauro classic from the 1930s; “Greater than Hate”, by José Carlos Burle, in the 1950s; “The Threatened City”, by Roberto Farias, in the 1960s; and “They Don’t Wear Black Tie” (Leon Hirszman, 1981). There are several documentaries where the factory door is the place where leaflets are distributed, where the characters cease to be a mass of workers to become individuals with desires. In 2024, “The Needle Girl”, a Danish film in the running for the Oscar for best foreign film, presents factory production exactly the same as that of Lumière, he points out.

The idea of ​​the worker leaving the factory has been repeated, but at the same time it has changed throughout the history of cinema, especially today with new work configurations.

— Today, people work alone at home, on the computer. There are videos on the Internet of people leaving their isolated work environment alone, closing their laptops, getting up from their chairs and heading towards the kitchen, the living room or the street – he observes.

The new habits revealed after work take us back to the origins of cinema.

— Before the Enlightenment, cinema was an individual thing. The person at home looked at the photos one after the other with a magic lantern, creating the illusion of movement. When the Enlightenment created collective cinema, a new era of cinema began and today it is being reversed somewhat. You come back to individual cinema. Cinema on mobile phones, home cinema, streaming – he assesses.

The successors of the Lumière brothers face a great challenge.

— It is interesting to see the fight of exhibitors to maintain this habit of going to the cinema, so as not to lose this collective bond which makes laughter, drama or tension contagious in the face of a suspense or action film. Today we have this question of cinema at home or cinema in the cinema. Once again, cinema is faced with this dilemma – comments Carlos Alberto Mattos.