Australia's oldest film now online
Patineur Grotesque is the oldest known surviving film shot in Australia and, after restoration, a clip has been made available online.
The film is believed to have been shot in October 1896 by Lumiere cinematographer Marius Sestier, in the days prior to the 1896 Melbourne Cup Carnival. It was shown in Australia for the first time today at the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.It was shot on a 35mm format which has been obsolete for a century, and the NFSA staff built special tools and modified their equipment for preserving and copying the film.
Typical of the films of its time, Patineur Grotesque captures a daily life moment, in this case, a bearded man smoking a cigar rollerskates before a ring of onlookers in a park. While skating, he lifts his jacket to display to the crowd a white hand on the seat of his trousers.
Curator Sally Jackson said the NFSA is hoping a member of the public might be able to identify the location and/or the identity of the man featured in the film.
Patineur Grotesque is available at australianscreenonline.
My gut intuition tells me this is not Australian, but somewhere else – perhaps in France or when Sestier was on the way to Australia? But if you have really good evidence that it was made in Australia – not just an earlier film to the Melbourne Cup and therefore “likely” to have been made in Australia, I would say it was more likely to be in Sydney – perhaps Manly from the trees? Or Glenelg or somewhere else in Adelaide – not Melbourne for me as a Melbourne born person. I think the act – I couldn’t see the whole film because I don’t have an uptodate Adobe flash whatever – is too sophisticated in some sense for Australia at the time, but could be France, South Africa or elsewhere. This is all just intuitive from thousands of hours of reading magazines & newspapers of the time, seeing early films from here & Europe and so on. It just doesn’t add up somehow as Australian for me.
By the way my records could be updated for the JACKA VC film – my address now is 24 Pindari Drive, MOUNT CLEAR VIC 3350. Tel: (03)5330-1615
User ID not verified.
Those were my exact thoughts in 2006 when I saw the film and why I decided I needed to know more. Even though the 1996 BiFi book ‘La Production cinematographie des Freres Lumiere’, says it was shot in Melbourne and its very first screening was in Lyon of 28 February 1897, I still had my doubts. So I began a four year research project and during that time I looked at pictures of Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and their surrounding suburbs, parks and seaside resorts being the cities where Sestier travelled to see if I could locate something like this scene. And while I find many ‘almost but not quite’ pictures I found nothing to indicate it was Australian. Then I looked at Bombay where he had spent 2 months, and Colombo where he spent a day and still nothing concrete.
It wasn’t until the Sestier descendants allowed me access to his documents that I found a page where he lists the films he made in Australia in the order he made them and the skater is listed there before the Melbourne Cup films. There is a slight possibility of the film being made in Sydney but it is the white hand on the backside of the skater which locates it as being in Melbourne. And of course we have asked Melburnians for help in identification of both the location and the performer.
In terms of the sophistication of the film having now watched many, many films made by freres Lumiere representatives it fits both in terms of its theatrical theme, its street theme and its execution. Georges Sadoul in his 1973 Histoire Générale du Cinéma : L’Invention du Cinéma 1832-1897 sees Patineur Grotesque as a forerunner to the work of Chaplin and Linder. He also refers to the success the film enjoyed during its life on the screen.
User ID not verified.
Thanks so much Sally for your great contribution!
`You may have already discussed, but the man with the hand on his trousers looks a bit like ‘Mo’ to me. His name is Roy Rene and created the character around 1914 according to ‘Australian Folklore’ by Bill Wannan.
If its not ‘Mo’ perhaps this chap inspired the character in which case it might be good to check out ‘Mo’s Memoirs’.
great find and congrats
mark
User ID not verified.