An unexpected masterpiece

A different way of telling a story

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This film from Louis Aime Augustin le Prince is not a film at all. From what I know, this was made in 1887 and the first celluloid film ever, which I believe is "Roundhay Garden Scene" was made in 1888. Also IMDb calls this a 'frame sequence' which is basically a series of images put together to make a moving picture, like animation. One could call this a film, but calling it that you'd be wrong; a series photography is more the term for it.The title tells us what to expect, but the image is very blurry and we can't hardly see what's happening. The framing is bad too. However this was 1887 so be glad we still get some idea of what's going on, even if it's hard to see much. In fact it's so hard to see the man that I'm not sure anybody can actually identify who he was.By the way, I've also done a review on "Roundhay Garden Scene" on IMDb as well.

The trivia on the IMDb... entry is as good a word as any, I suppose ... says this is not a film. It was shot on a device of LePrince's devising which used sixteen lenses. By triggering then in order, he got an image over a span of time... sort of. The positions of the lenses differed, which meant that the series, when viewed, jumped around.This tentative groping towards an explanation forces us either to define what a film is narrowly, or to understand the organic process that led to what we call a film now. The former leads us to pettifog over details that are often irrelevant, and the latter provides us with no clear answer to the question of what film is. Do we in the 21st century, who frequently watch "movies" shot on digital cameras, processed in computers and viewed on our computers even watch films?I prefer to think as film as a recorded moving image which we view, one produced by a process which, in its commercial forms, includes films, movies, television, and other related items. It did not arise suddenly, but evolved out of earlier technologies, which include flip books, magic lanterns, phantasmagorias and such nineteenth century devices as praxizooscopes and kinegraphs. If you accept that attitude, then the question of whether this is a film becomes irrelevant. It may not be a film by some technical definition, but it an important artifact in the development of that art.

A man walking around a corner. Unfortunately, even at its short length, part of the 16-frame-film has gone lost or unusable, so to be completely frank, you possibly wouldn't even know what's happening in these few seconds if the title didn't tell you.Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, the director's 3 other works are thankfully preserved in a better fashion, including Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, The Accordion Player and the very famous Roundhay Garden Scene. Sadly, fate prevented this talented man from becoming one of the truly big names of early motion picture history when he disappeared in 1890 and was never seen again. Thankfully, his legacy lives on.

The last of the four known Le Prince film that survived till our days is Man Walking Around the Corner, a a title that pretty much lets you know everything you'll see. This few frames have received much less attention than the other three Le Prince films, and therefore is know to less people despite being available at Youtube and other pages in the internet. This lack of attention is a shame, specially because it may be responsible of the fact that this is the only Le Prince film that has not enjoyed a professional restoration. This causes that the only way to watch the film is in a very blurry copy and not the quite clear images available for the other three films are missing here. Every copy I've seen is dark and is hard to notice what happens in the screen, while the shadow of a person walking is noticeable to be honest you can't quite see if it is turning around in a corner or just going straight, I'll take the title of the film as true and suppose the corner is indeed there, but it would be nice to see it clearly Let's hope a professional restoration of the film is made shortly so we can appreciate this early film correctly, it shouldn't be a lot of work, after all the movie is just a few seconds long and it would be worthy considering this man invented cinema and this is one of the earliest works in film history.