Roundhay Garden Scene

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🎙️ EPISODE 500: 06.30.22 *review begins ~19:27 (but just watch the video below) The following text has been adapted from the narration of the YouTube video That's right, party people. Movie Jeff is back on YouTube after getting his channel deleted due to circumstances out of his control and by "circumstances out of his control" I mean, you really can't be posting weirdo clips from Peter Greenaway movies and why am I speaking in the third person? But we're back and better than ever, celebrating the 500th Episode of the MovieJeff.com Review podcast with a special double feature. If you want to see my opinion on the "lost" 2008 horror classic, ONE MISSED CALL, simply go here.

You know, my main goal when I started this project back in 2015 was to watch and review every movie ever made. And by my calculations I have a ways to go! As google tells me there are approximately 500,000 movies currently in existence. So I would have to live well over 1,000 years to complete this task if I averaged one movie review a day. And lucky for all of humanity, I am up to this task despite how impossible it sounds. The one thing you need to know about me is that I do not fear things like math. Or time. Or common sense.

So I thought I would start at the beginning, and review the oldest movie ever made. And that would be 1888's Roundhay Garden Scene, directed by Louis Le Prince. Good thing it's only 1.6 seconds long!

Louie Le Prince was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion-picture camera. The first person to shoot a moving picture sequence using a single lens camera and a strip of paper film. He has been credited as "Father of Cinematography" whose motion-picture experiments culminated in 1888 in Leeds, England when he filmed moving-picture sequences of family members in Roundhay Garden, using his single-lens camera and Eastman's paper negative film.

Sadly, Le Prince was never able to perform a planned public demonstration of his work in the US because he mysteriously vanished. He was last known to be boarding a train in September of 1890 and multiple conspiracy theories have emerged about the reason for his disappearance, including: a murder set up by rival Thomas Edison, secret homosexuality, disappearance in order to start a new life, suicide because of heavy debts and failing experiments, and a murder by his brother over their mother's will. However, no conclusive evidence exists for any of these theories. He just disappeared and was declared dead in 1897.

In 2004, a police archive in Paris was found to contain a photograph of a drowned man bearing a strong resemblance to Le Prince who was discovered in the Seine River just after the time of his disappearance, but it has been claimed that the body was too short to be Le Prince. But this is still a very creepy connection to my first channel getting deleted for showing a clip from this movie: Death in the Seine

As far east the movie, Roundhay Garden Scene is concerned, it is a genuine classic. It pretty much has everything you want in a film: intrigue, love, brevity. We see this guy, the main character. He walks from the house in a circular patter in front of three others. A lady, perhaps his wife, looks at him, briefly, but turns her head away, towards the bushes. Another man, beige coat guy, is doing a little jig off to the right, seemingly in his own world. He is the comic relief of the movie. And lastly, a fourth member of the garden party, decked in black, does a somewhat seductive dance. Perhaps she is having an affair with the main character and this is why wifey turns her head in shame? Like with any great motion picture, it is fiercely ambiguous. Leaving it up to the audience to connect the dots and make some sense. There are no wrong answers in the perfect cinema, only great questions.

And to think, come this October, 134 years will have passed since the release of this amazing film. Hollywood and movie industries all over the world, big and small, have made close to 4,000 movies a year on average since the Roundhay Garden Scene. AND MY PLAN IS TO WATCH ALL OF THEM. Come along, won't you?

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 500A - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 501 ⫸

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Roundhay Garden Scene is a short silent motion picture filmed by French inventor Louis Le Prince at Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds in the north of England. It is believed to be the oldest surviving film in existence. It was released on October 14, 1888.