Auguste Marie Louis Nicholas Lumière (1862-1954) and Louis Jean Lumière (1864-1948) worked in the still photography industry, and it is there that they focused most of their efforts for most of their lives. However, like everyone and their brother towards the end of the 19th century, they also took a few years to develop a motion picture recording and projection system. In 1894, they bought out an unpaid patent for the term cinématographe, originally filed by one Léon Bouly, which they then applied to their own device.

The Lumière brothers are remembered today as the fathers of cinema because of a perfect storm of good luck. Films of Louis Le Prince in France and Max Skladanowsky in Germany were shown prior to the Lumière brothers’ famous exhibition on December 28, 1895, in the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, and Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope was also well known. Though by no means the first to do any one thing, the Lumière brothers arrived on the scene at a time when motion pictures were on the mind of the public, and they did so with a device that was practical (a single unit for both recording and projecting) and attractive (using perforated film for smooth animation and true projection, rather than a peephole device).

Like Thomas Edison, whose business practices included deceptive PR campaigns and intellectual property lawsuits over dubious patents, it is tough to idolize the Lumière brothers. Being business men, their immediate reaction to the positive response their system generated was to lock everything down. Would-be cinematographers could not purchase the equipment, and production and distribution were strictly controlled. Fortunately, their monopoly was ultimately broken by the same factors that colluded to create it in the first place: it was “steam engine time” for the world of cinema. While they lucked into being the first in terms of success, the basic ideas of capturing and projecting film existed well outside of their limited efforts and contributions. When they refused to license their device to others, other devices were created. They exited the world of cinema and returned to focusing primarily on still photography in 1962, selling their film-making assets to another company.

Some of the earliest movie posters.

Like most monopolists, they had no real understanding of the true potential of their market. Louis Lumière is famously quoted as having said “The cinema is an invention without any commercial future” on the eve of their first screening. He constantly referred to cinema as a fad, and towards the end of his life, he remarked that if he had known what cinema was to become, he would never have invented it. Ultimately, their greatest contribution is their role in popularizing the enduring label for the art of the motion picture–cinema.

Early Lumière films had about as much depth and variety as their business plans. They all consist of stationary cameras capturing staged scenes of ordinary life and/or comedy. These simple, one-shot films, shades of documentary and slapstick, were palatable then because of their novelty. Today they are watchable because of their brief duration, their historical importance, and the glimpses they provide into an earlier concept of cinema.

This is Part Four of a multi-part series of posts. Part One discuses Eadweard Muybridge. Part Two discusses Thomas Alva Edison. Part Three discusses Louis Le Prince.