Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1895
Repas de bb
Buy Repas de bb now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Le Repas de Bb' (also known as 'Le Repas (de bb),' 'Le Djeuner de Bb,' 'Babys First Meal,' 'Babys Breakfast,' 'Babys Lunch,' 'Baby's Dinner,' 'Baby's Tea Time,' 'The Family Breakfast,' and 'Feeding the Baby') is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent actuality film photographed by Louis Lumire and showing his brother Auguste Lumire and his wife Marguerite feeding their infant daughter, Andre Lumire.
One of the earliest recordings made by the brothers Lumire, 'Le Repas de Bb' (catalogued as Vue no. 88) is an unedited, single take of less than a minute's duration. The company's catalog described it as "Un papa fait avaler son djeuner un bb" (a father feeds lunch [or breakfast] to a baby) and records that the scene was taken between March 22 and June 10, 1895. Website by Manuel Schmalstieg (2013).
The film formed part of the first commercial presentation of the Lumire Cinmatographe on December 28, 1895, at the Salon Indien, Grand Caf, 14 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. It was the seventh of ten films on the program, each 17 meters long.
Production
As with all Lumire movies (1895 to 1905), this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Louis Lumire photographed the family trio using the newly-invented Cinmatographe, a square box-like camera, which also served as a film projector and developer. The company's films had distinctive rounded corners, usually cropped out of video and still-image reproductions.
Synopsis
Auguste Lumire, his wife Marguerite, and their daughter Andre sit at a dining table in the garden outside a house. The scene connotes the culture of a bourgeois family, with a silver tea service, a bottle of cognac, and fine clothing. Papa twice spoon-feeds their baby while Mama prepares and drinks a cup of tea. Both dote on the child and talk to her throughout. He then gives the infant a biscuit (cookie), which she seemingly offers to someone off-camera. The film ends as Auguste offers bb a third spoonful.
Cast
* Andre Lumire as Herself, 'Bb' (Born in 1894, she died in Lyon aged 24, as a result of the 1918 flu pandemic).
* Auguste Lumire as Himself
* Marguerite Lumire as Herself
Current status
According to Archives franaises du film documentation of 2004: "Pecuniary rights are owned until 2039 by the Association Frres Lumire. Non-pecuniary rights are held by the Lumire estate." 'Repas de bb' and all other surviving Lumire films are housed and preserved at France's Centre national de la cinmatographie (CNC). Memory of the World Register, Lumire Films. Ref. No. 2004-25 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2004). Six-page PDF at https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/lumiere_films.pdf
The film was seen widely in Lumire Cinmatographe shows around the world in 1896 and after. 'Repas de bb' has been included in a number of film, videotape, DVD, and Blu-Ray compilations including 'The Lumire Brothers' First Films' (1996), 'Landmarks of Early Film volume 1' (1997), and 'The Movies Begin: A Treasury of Early Cinema, 18941913' (2002). It also forms part of the documentary 'Visions of Light' (1992) and Ann Hu's Chinese feature film 'Shadow Magic' (2000). In 2013, the British Film Institute copyrighted its reproduction, which streams via Alexander Street Press subscription service.'Repas de bb,' directed by Louis Lumiere (1895); copyright British Film Institute (2013). See https://alexanderstreet.com/sites/default/files/misc/Subscription%20Channels%20Brochure%20Printer%2010.16.14.pdf. Most definitively, in 2015 the Institut Lumire published it among the 114 films on the Blu-Ray and DVD set 'Lumire! Le Cinmatographe 1895-1905.' These digital renderings were 4K scans of the best available 35mm film copies (two negatives and three positive prints in the CNC's Archives franaises du film.Luke McKernan, "Lumire Forever," Nov. 15, 2015, https://lukemckernan.com/2015/11/15/lumiere-forever/
Beginning in 2020, a variety of YouTubers posted digitally enhanced and altered versions of the footage. They used newly available AI and digital deep-learning tools to "up-res" videos, simulating 4K and 60 frames per second resolution. They commonly added artificial coloring, audio tracks, new titles, and cropping (making the original 4x3 aspect ratio into a 16x9 frame).
Legacy
The footage of the Lumire baby being fed has become an icon of early cinema. Resembling what would later be called a "home movie," it nevertheless made a memorable impression on its first audiences.
In July 1896, Russian writer Maxim Gorky saw a Cinmatographe program outside of Moscow and published an account that mentioned the film. Translated into English, Gorky's text ("Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows") refers to the film as 'The Family Breakfast.' He describes it as ". . . an idyll of three. A young couple with its chubby first-born is seated at the breakfast table. The two are so much in love, and are so charming, gay and happy, and the baby is so amusing. The picture creates a fine, felicitous impression."Luke McKernan's Picturegoing website reproduces the Gorky text, citing its source as I.M. Pacatus (Maxim Gorky), 'Nizhegorodski listok,' 4 July 1896, translated (by Leda Swan) and reproduced in Jay Leyda, 'Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film' (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960), pp. 407-409. See https://picturegoing.com/?p=230.
Many historical and scholarly sources have described how some observers said they were captivated by the leaves on the trees moving in the wind. Pioneer filmmaker Georges Mlis told G.-Michel Coissac -- author of 'Histoire du cinematographe' (1925) -- that he was at the first Paris screening in 1895, at which he and others were struck by the sensation of seeing the trees swaying in the wind. Gorky too said this in his 1896 article. Nico Baumbach, Nature Caught in the Act: On the Transformation of an Idea of Art in Early Cinema, 'Comparative Critical Studies' 6.3 (2009): 373383. doi:10.3366/E1744185409000858; Franois Albera, Le Cinmatographe dans le movement: une mtaphysique des feuilles [The Cinematograph in Motion: A Metaphysics of Leaves], '1895, Revue de l'association franaise de recherche sur l'histoire du cinema,' 87 (2019): doi.org/10.4000/1895.6754.
In 2005, the UNESCO Memory of the World Register added the entry "Lumire Films," specifying this as a collection of all 1,405 extant works. By 1996, the CNC had preserved all of the original nitrate material on polyester safety film.Memory of the World Register, Lumire Films, 2004.
References
Buy Repas de bb now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1895