Bocal aux poissons-rouges (1895) This film from the Lumiere Brothers lasts just under a minute and in reality it's probably one of the least entertaining I've seen from them. I usually love these actuality movies but this one here is a little lame to say the least. Basically the camera is set up in front of a fish bowl and for about a minute we watch the fishes swim around. Yep, that's pretty much all there is to this film and it's really not all that entertaining. I love watching these actuality movies because they give you a chance to see things from the past as they really were. With this film here you see that fish pretty much swim the same way today as they did then.

Louis Lumière was first and foremost a photographer and, in his own films - and there are not that many - would often concentrate on achieving particular photographic effects, on developing what would later be called mise en scène, on precise angling of the camera and, as here, on the technicalities of lighting. Since Lumière himself decided what films would and would not get into the company's catalogue (a stringent form of quality-control), this is why the French films of this period are technically so far in advance of those being made in the US.In 1964, the centenary of the birth of Louis Lumière, Fritz Lang was the president of the jury at Cannes where several of Lumière's own films were shown. Lang singled out Bocal aux poissons rouges for mention and played particular tribute to Lumière's remarkable use of light in this short view. The movement of fish is, one might add, greatly appreciated by the Japanese for its soothing and calming effect, one of the reasons perhaps why it is so commonly the subject of computer screen-savers.

At this stage the Lumieres seem to have been pointing their cameras at anything that would hold still enough to shoot and the gold fish that were swimming around in their round bowl don't seem to have objected to being observed.In most wise, this is a pointer at what not to do in terms of shooting a motion picture. There is a pointlessness to the goldfish swimming around that rouses my impatience. The Lumieres would think this over and soon learn that opposing lines of motion would make the watcher observe the entire frame, most notably in their view of the Brooklyn Bridge.Were that the only point -- this is what not to do -- it wouldn't be a worthwhile picture, but by shooting the fish in a globular bowl, they effectively use a fish-eyed lens, which offers distortions. The history of cinema has witnessed a struggle between the objective and subjective camera and the optically distorting lenses like the fish-eyed lens, has been a powerful tool for the subjective camera. Here it is at the start.