La sortie (1999)

• 78%
• 1999

The first film of cinematographic history shows workers leaving a factory. The title of this work which is 50 seconds long and bequeathed to us by the Lumière brothers is La Sortie des Ouvriers de l'Usine. There are three known versions of the work. In the hardware and software of the cinematographic 'machine' resides much of the specifically mechanical charm of the industrial age. In one sense it is a paradox that the Lumières began film history with workers leaving the factory instead of giving place of honour to them working on the production lines. Over a hundred years later Siegfried A. Fruhauf has made a fourth version of La Sortie des Ouvriers de l'Usine. This remake gives short shrift to the unconscious irony of the Lumière films. Fruhauf needs six minutes to run through the current fate of industry. Fourteen workers are present here - five on the (optically) vertical axis, the rest cross the horizontal axis in the background. Their movements form a cross - a symbol of death ...