The cinematic apparatus

pp. 221-235

in: Stephen Heath, Questions of cinema, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1981

Abstract

In the first moments of the history of cinema, it is the technology which provides the immediate interest: what is promoted and sold is the experience of the machine, the apparatus. The Grand Café programme is headed with the announcement of "Le Cinématographe" and continues with its description: "this apparatus, invented by MM. Auguste and Louis Lumière, permits the recording, by series of photographs, of all the movements which have succeeded one another over a given period of time in front of the camera and the subsequent reproduction of these movements by the projection of their images, life size, on a screen before an entire audience"; only after that description is there mention of the titles of the films to be shown, the "sujets actuels", relegated to the bottom of the programme sheet.¹