The film consists of a single scene in which workers leave the Lumière factory. The workers are mostly female who exit the large building 25 Rue St. Victor, Montplaisir on the outskirts of Lyon, France, as if they had just finished a day's work. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer.
The film was shown on 28 December 1895 at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, along with nine other short movies. As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
Three separate versions of this film exist. There are a number of differences between these, for example the clothing style changes demonstrating the different seasons in which they were filmed. They are often referred to as the "one horse," "two horses," and "no horse" versions, in reference to a horse-drawn carriage that appears in the first two versions (pulled by one horse in the original and two horses in the first remake)...
The official website describes the film, "Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of humanity's spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation...
Leonard Zelig: I'm 12 years old. I run into a Synagogue. I ask the Rabbi the meaning of life. He tells me the meaning of life... But, he tells it to me in Hebrew. I don't understand Hebrew. Then he wants to charge me six hundred dollars for Hebrew lessons...
Warren: Jeez, last seen springs on motorcycle had to be in the 1920s.
Burt Munro: Well, she's 42 years old.
Warren: These brakes, they're completely inadequate.
Burt Munro: I'm planning on going, not stopping...
THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE:
1. Tell my daughters I love them several times.
2. Find Don a new wife who the girls like.
3. Record birthday messages for the girls for every year until they're 18.
4. Go to Whalebay Beach together and have a big picnic.
5. Smoke and drink as much as I want.
6. Say what I'm thinking.
7. Make love with other men to see what it's like.
8. Make someone fall in love with me.
9. Go and see Dad in jail.
10. Get false nails. And do something with my hair...
A vast empty Western landscape. The camera pans across it. Then the shot slides onto a sunburned, desperate face. The long shot has become a closeup without a cut, revealing that the landscape was not empty but occupied by a desperado very close to us.
In these opening frames, Sergio Leone established a rule that he follows throughout "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The rule is that the ability to see is limited by the sides of the frame. At important moments in the film, what the camera cannot see, the characters cannot see, and that gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots...
Blondie: You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig...
Mason: So what's the point?
Dad: Of what?
Mason: I don't know, any of this. Everything.
Dad: Everything? What's the point? I mean, I sure as shit don't know. Neither does anybody else, okay? We're all just winging it, you know? The good news is you're feeling stuff. And you've got to hold on to that...
Though not yet as heralded as Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), Katsuhiro Ôtomo (Akira) or the late, great Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue, Paprika), Mamoru Hosoda may be the most inspired living animation director in Japan not to be associated with Studio Ghibli. He was at one point due to direct Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), but had creative differences with the Ghibli team, and set up his own rival studio, Chizu.
Best-known internationally for his delightful The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006), Hosoda has now outdone himself with a gloriously emotional new picture, which has the grace, magic and exquisite drawing we associate with the very finest of Ghibli. It tells the story of a college student, Hana (Aoi Miyazaki) who meets a mysterious, dark-haired boy (Takao Osawa) and falls in love, only briefly fazed by the fact that he can turn into a wolf at will.
There’s no howling at the moon here or business with silver bullets. Hosoda makes the subject of his movie into the choice between a lupine or a human destiny — one the couple’s two children, the tearaway Yuki, and her little brother Ame, must also face. The movie is hauntingly romantic at heart, in the best spirit of a Gothic fairytale, but without the harsh shadows or hard edges.
When this half-breed family escape their fear of city life and move to the countryside, we get an old staple of anime: a derelict villa with sliding doors and a leaky roof, which they must fix up to serve its purpose. This is exactly where we want to be — like the old dark house that so fires up the British imagination, it’s a nostalgic pleasure to discover this overgrown retreat with such vivid new characters. Hosoda’s film slots into classic genre traditions with gorgeous skill and also daring — pace Twilight, love between two species has rarely seemed more intense, more natural, or more ineffably sad...
Next movie
#222 Dancer in the Dark
12 May 2025, 3:00 pm
This isn't the last song, there's no violin, the choir is quiet, and no one takes a spin, this is the next to last song, and that's all...
