User Reviews

Wow! The Roundhay Garden Scene is beautiful, the images so bright and clear. It's playful and fun. The strong shadows cast by the "actors" suggest a very bright, sunny day for filming. Do I note a shadow (the "director"?) in the lower center of the shot that backs out of the picture in the first two frames?

This clip may be little more than movement to test the camera, but the movement is compelling. Mrs. Whitley appears to be leaning side to side on the verge of dancing while her husband is moving in a circle around her. Similarly, Adolphe may be traveling in a larger path around Miss Hartley. His youthful swagger is delightful.

But we only see part of this process, and I was left wanting more. I wanted to see the completed pattern of their movements and not just theorize from these fleeting seconds. I wanted to be there with them.

I feel privileged to have seen this!

As I was watching the 2 second long film I couldn't help but gather that it could've been a little longer as I felt the character development and the stakes felt too rushed for me to care about what was happening, Even though there is Alot of respect seeing that this is the first film of pretty much all time. I also had to have my TV (mind you that has Dolby 7.1 surround sound) up to Max but I still struggled to hear what they were saying to each other. In conclusion, it's too rushed and the characters were underdeveloped, also, sloppy sound design. as I like most of the work this director has done, I feel that this is just too much of a rushed film.

By the way this is a joke so relax

I have never written a review before but I just have to add some balance to this. It is obvious that the other reviews are from people that either worked on it or are family members.

DO NOT believe the hype, this movie is very slow, the acting is wooden and the ending offers no explanation. I was fortunate enough to have watched this at a screening as I would be angry if I actually paid for it.

It starts of well, a garden setting with a family of sorts in a line. The period costume design is also superb, I will give it that. I personally would have added a bit more color to the scene but that's just me.

After this first scene is where the director really drops the ball! Instead of making the man walk in a clockwise manner as is standard practice he took the unorthodox decision to make him walk anti-clockwise! Can you believe it! From there it just gets linear as the man proceeds to walk in a straight line. If you are thinking that it will pick up after this scene then think again! It just ends abruptly with no explanation at all. This seems to be a common practice at the moment, let the viewer figure it all out. That's a cop out!

3/10 would have given it a one but the costumes accurately portrayed the period judging by old movies I have watched.

Save your money and go see Sallie Gardner at a Gallop by Eadweard Muybridge.

This is the least funny film I have ever had the displeasure of viewing. 0 good jokes for the whole runtime. The movie was too short and focused too much on trying to tell an unfunny joke during its runtime instead of dedicating it to what really matters, character.

What this film fails to understand is that in order to make jokes like these to work, I first need to be able to identify the characteristics of each character and be able give a generous estimate of what I think they might do when being placed in certain scenarios. I've had it argued to me before that this film does inform its characters USING its jokes, however after the opening failed ask out joke, none of the characters characteristics established in this joke ever come up again in the rest of the film! Sacrificing crucial character building and plot progression for the sake of a simple, rudimentary, un-thought-provoking and painfully unfunny joke.

I would say that I hope the director, Louis Le Prince, could lose this as a learning experience for his upcoming films, but I hear he's since stopped pursuing his filmmaking career, instead being dead at present. If he were ever to make a return to filmmaking, I'd hope he takes some of the positives of this film while trimming the fat and then, I believe, he could make something truly groundbreaking.

What could I possibly say about 'Roundhay Garden Scene' that hasn't been said before? It is, quite possibly, the single most important film in the history of film, since it is the one that started everything. For that fact alone, I've given it a ten. Though the director only ever produced two extremely brief short films (the other being the incredibly suspenseful high-octane chase film, 'Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge'), he has undeniably left an indelible mark on the cinema industry.

However, though it is usually referred to simply as "the first film," we should not overlook the other masterful qualities of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince's short (but brilliant) film. Not only did he have a name that took three breaths to pronounce, but Monsieur Le Prince also had talent in great abundance. Beneath a seemingly-straightforward tale of four people's strolls around a garden lies an exceptionally powerful morality fable, a journey into the deeply-rooted depths of a Man's heart, exposing things about ourselves that we wouldn't otherwise dare to discover. Le Prince was indisputably an artist with the camera, revealing so much about each character in only a few brief frames.

The acting is, of course, first-rate. A less-accomplished cast would have crumbled beneath their task, and the walking might have appeared forced and unbelievable; but these people stroll about the garden with such confidence and awareness that we are unsurprised to discover that this is an activity that they have practised often. Indeed, at the first Academy Awards in 1929, the Academy members voted unanimously to award a posthumous Best Actress Oscar to actress Sarah Whitley (the director's mother-in-law), who had died just ten days after filming for 'Roundhay Garden Scene' was completed. However, as fate would have it, advocates of Janet Gaynor's performance in 'Seventh Heaven' (1927) ultimately offered a better monetary incentive for the voters, and popular opinion was swayed.

The cinematography, though perhaps primitive by today's standards, acted as a benchmark for every film that would follow it. The unusually-long static shot (for that time) would eventually become popular in many later films, most notably in Andy Warhol's 'Empire' - a continuous 485 minute static shot of the Empire State Building. Unreliable sources suggest that Le Prince originally intended to produce a 170-minute epic feature film detailing the fall of the Roman Empire, though he was somewhat limited by budget constraints (he was working with 12 francs), and they were unable to find any experienced film stunt-men who could adequately handle the high-speed chariots.

On April 1 2007, director David Lynch ('Eraserhead', 'Mulholland Dr.') revealed plans to remake Le Prince's classic film, declaring that he will remain relatively loyal to the original source material. According to Lynch, as quoted in 'Variety' magazine, the only major alterations will include a change of setting to an industrial wasteland, an extended dream sequence involving a purple unicorn and Bill Murray as a maniacal planetary god, the removal of the original film's murder mystery subplot and the addition of a giant rabbit character.

You can forgive me for having a little fun with this review, since there is certainly very little that can be said about this film that hasn't been said countless times before. Let it simply be known that 'Roundhay Garden Scene' revolutionised entertainment forever, and, for that, this film should be revered by all movie-lovers. By the way, did anybody else pick out which character was the murderer?!

The film's value lies in its historical importance as a precursor to the development of cinema. It serves as a testament to the earliest experiments with motion pictures and provides a glimpse into the past. However, as a piece of entertainment, it lacks the storytelling and artistic qualities that contemporary audiences expect from movies. Still, for cinephiles and historians, "Roundhay Garden Scene" remains an essential artifact in the history of cinema.

This film, lasting just a few seconds, captures a brief moment in time in a garden, featuring people walking and moving about. While it may seem unremarkable by today's cinematic standards, it's important to appreciate its historical context. "Roundhay Garden Scene" was pioneering in its day, as it marked one of the first instances of capturing motion on film.

Blink and it's gone. "Roundhay Garden Scene" is a 2-second (yep!) film from 1888, so it's over 125 years old. Impressive. It is black-and-white, silent and was made by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince. Now he may not possess the popularity or fame of Georges Méliès or the most prominent other very early filmmakers, but you have to admit that he explored the entirely medium of movies way before they did. In these 2 seconds, you see a handful people and it looks like they are not exactly poor judging from the clothes they wear, I read that the people in here are actually relatives of the director, all of them or almost all of them. It's probably interesting for people who live in that area to visit the place where this was made and take a look at what it looks like today. I cannot really recommend it to general audiences, for this the contents are just too insignificant, but it's certainly worth a watch for film history buffs like myself.

This two seconds of film is thought to be the very first motion picture, using Louis Le Prince's single-lens camera and Eastman's paper film. It features the earliest born (but not the oldest) person ever to be in a film, Sarah Robinson Whitley, who was born in 1816. She was also the first person featured in a motion picture to die, as she did so just ten days after this film was made on October 24, 1888. She was Louis Le Prince's mother-in-law.

Then there is the mystery surrounding Louis Le Prince's death/disappearance. He disappeared from a train in 1890, planning to make a trip to the United States to demonstrate his techniques. His body and luggage were never found, and legends surrounding his disappearance include the theory that Edison had him killed so that he could take credit for inventing the motion picture. A huge court battle ensued in the United States over that title and the right to collect royalties, first won by Edison against the Le Prince family, but then that court decision was overturned.

There was actually a book written on the subject of the disappearance of Le Prince and how the pioneers of cinema were involved in all kinds of backstabbing - "The Missing Reel". I recommend it as not the best book ever written, but about the only work in writing on the subject.