Reviews on movie Passage de Venus (3)

Some people say that the first film is “The Arrival of the Train at La Ciota Station”, some say that the first film in history is “The Scene in the Garden of Roundhay”, but this is not true. Of course, “The Arrival of the Train” and “The Scene in the Garden” were breakthrough, but the first film was “Passage de Venus”, filmed in 1874.
The film was shot by French astronomer Pierre Jenssen and it, as the name implies, shows the Transit of Venus.
The film lasts only 5 seconds, but it causes, to be honest, a storm of emotions. It’s hard to believe that you’re looking at a recording of space recorded 144 years ago.
Some may not call it a movie, so be it. But you look at it and you realize how far cinema has come in 144 years. Film has gone from simple experimental recordings to a giant industry, one of the most profitable and popular industries. Cinema became such in the 1910-1920s. But when you see that difference, it's just stunning. Every movie lover needs to see this.

Surprisingly, cinema has long been an integral part of life in modern society. For a long time it is not just an art form, but a whole sphere in business. And television emerged under the influence of cinema (though having established its own formats). But if we talk about what the movie was originally, then there can be no art or speech. Like photography, cinema has come a long way before reaching the audience. But, nevertheless, today any of the found finds of “pioneers of cinema” has great value for us.
So, for example, for me was a great discovery film Pierre Jenssen "Passage de Venus". This is due, firstly, to the personality of Jenssen himself (or Janssen in other publications). One of the most famous French astronomers of the XIX century, one of the founders of astrospectroscopy - all this, of course, can be attributed to his merits as a man of science. Although if you dig deeper, you can find information about his work on the creation of photos. But the fact that Pierre Jules César also tried to put a hand in cinema seven years before the Lumiere brothers was a surprise to me (since there are few publications devoted to the history of cinema his name is found). However, Friese-Green, Leprence, Lumiere, and other founders of cinema were primarily experimental photographers.

Secondly, this attempt to capture the motion of Venus through the lens of the telescope and the camera already suggests that this project is the first documentary about the cosmos.
It is a pity that Jenssen did not go further down this path without developing the topic of filming space through a telescope. And in the history of cinema, his name, unfortunately, is not preserved in the human memory of the audience. And the fact that a scientist who made a considerable contribution to the development of astronomy left his (even a small) trace in cinema is still pleasant.

Jeansen, Pierre Jules César personality is very interesting and controversial. So I began to search for the oldest film, and for a long time, in short, I found this citizen on this opus. However, unlike, well, Leprence or Fryce Green, there are a lot of mutually exclusive paragraphs. And he used only official and very large resources, starting with one well-known encyclopedia on the letter B and ending with the famous work on the history of cinema of the comrade on the letter C.
In some sources, this person is designated as French (and such sources I must say most) in others, that he is Norwegian. With a surname in general, the sadness of translators and the spread from Jansen to Ensen. According to some sources, “Thanks to Jansen’s energy, it has been possible in recent years to organize an astrophysical observatory on top of Mont Blanc.” In others, it is said, "Jansen asked Eiffel to build an observatory on Mont Blanc, but the famous engineer, not finding sufficient reason, refused to build an observatory, saying that it would be unstable." Jansen was a stubborn man and the observatory still built, but Eiffel was right: the built building still slipped down.
In the end, I was prepared for the fact that this short man will prepare a lot of surprises. Looking at the water. What is worth at least the fact that on various sites the year of creation is indicated and 1888 and even 1874. That's it.
And that's where we come to the fine line. Where, after all, is the movie, and where, albeit extreme, but photography.
Both Leprence and Fryce Greene worked in the film industry. They invented film cameras, projectors. Leprence, though unsuccessful, tried to show his work to the public. Fryce Greene and more. He is considered the father of stereo cinema (and this is long before the notorious Lumieres). And here's Comrade Jansen. What do we get from him?

If you look at the encyclopedia, there is nothing “cinema” in the lists. Chemistry, astronomy, photogun. (It was about the size of a howitzer, but it’s not a movie.) And here I will express my idea, albeit controversial. This short meter, although what a meter, centimeter ... is not a movie. Let it be a slideshow or there is an extreme photo, or whatever.
From a scientific point of view (for example, astronomical) it is a technical masterpiece. From the point of view of cinematography, this is more of an artifact, a technical kunshtyuk, and therefore I am sorry, but I will not put a lot on the movie site for this movie ... so forgive me comrades The Simpsons, who mentioned this worthy husband in one of their novels.