Roundhay Garden Scene - History and a critique

Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, heavily influenced by the work of Eadweard Muybridge who was the first person to experiment with the motion picture in the United States in 1878, made Louis Le Prince to move his thoughts for the creation of the first ever surviving motion picture – Roundhay Garden Scene. The historic film is so famous even now, indisputably owing to the genius of Le Prince whose strikingly different element of his films is the clarity of pictures.

Besides, the historical importance the film has got, it is also a beautiful documentary created on the middle-class British family. Incredible are the credits drawn on the significance of the film.

Fostered technological development
The two-second long film of Le Prince, indeed, fostered the early technological developments in the motion picture. The transition of static photography to the motion pictures with an astonishing clarity raised the brows and gained the momentary stability. Not just the element of moving images, but the setting, tone, the sense of colours, the static background coalesced well. This roaring success of the film, in turn begot, the perhaps second motion picture – Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge.

Three unities
Way back in 335 BC, Aristotle talked about the rules of drama. The rules are called Classical Unities or Three Unities or Aristotelian Unities. They are:

1. The Unity of Action: A play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.
2. The Unity of Place: A play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
3. The Unity of Time: The action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.
   

Films having been derived the roots from dramas and plays, did at one point of time followed these rules. Some of the films that have followed the restrictions of the classical unities are 12 Angry Men, Alien, Reservoir Dogs, Ladri di biciclette, and High Noon.

According to me, this Le Prince’s creation should also be added onto the above list. The action of this film is simple and direct wherein the four characters are found promenading in the garden. Moreover, the significance of the young is one of the main points of the script. This is exemplified by the older characters fading out of the shot. It also satisfies the second rule. Its backdrop is set in a garden; Oakwood Grange signifies the historic location. Of course, the third rule is fulfilled by running for about 2.11 seconds.

Setting accompanied the subject
Roundhay Garden Scene laid foundations to the importance of setting that accompanies the central subject of the film. Here too, the film itself is named after the setting. In the second production of Le Prince – Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge the interconnectivity between the subject and background in the film frame is more explicit, as Leeds Bridge is used both as a setting and a character in itself.

Dissertates the importance of genre or performance
The genre of Le Prince’s film turned the subjects into self-conscious actors. Both Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge belong to the genre of live action. This resulted in the recreation and the representation of the reality.

Let me conclude my critique by saying, though the cinematic contribution of Le Prince is minute, he left footprints for the evolution of the motion picture which the 21st century bags the credit of its technological success.