9. A Trick Of The Light (Wim Wenders, 1996)
A Trick Of The Light is a film that blends documentary and re-enactments to revisit the story of Max, Emil and Eugen- the Skladanowsky Brothers- a couple early film pioneers whose claim to fame was the first public film screening. This took place at the Weingarten Theatre in Germany six weeks before the Lumiere Brothers would publically air their Cinematograph films in France. Max and Emil were responsible for having invented a double-lensed projector, known as the Bioscope (Bioskop), which would display moving images by shifting between two illuminated loops of makeshift film. In his review for A Trick Of Light, film critic Gerald Peary cites how, "In 1923, the Skladanowskys were briefly rediscovered by the silent-movie Fox News, which went preposterously overboard saying that the trio had produced movies by 1890." I was unable to dig up any further information about this early example, but that is clearly a lie...as the Skladanowskys did not technically film anything. Rather, they concocted shoddy loops of film by pasting together series of still photographs. Wim Wenders would go on to make this film with the help of a group of film students he was teaching in Munich. In the director's commentary on the French DVD, he discusses how they made the film in 3 parts: starting off with the research; then filming the re-creations of the Weingarten Loops with the brothers' backstory; and finally, filming the interview with Lucie, Max's now 91-year old daughter. The introduction in A Trick Of The Light is a filmed re-enactment based on testimony from Lucie. It shows how her incessant demands drove them to try and create the first, genuine, moving images. As the story goes, when Lucie's favourite uncle, Emil - an entertainer, and subject of her fathers films - left to travel and perform with the circus, she became very upset. To appease her, her father told her that everything was ok because they had trapped Uncle Emil inside the camera. After some investigation - having taken this literally - she discovered that Emil was not, in fact, inside the camera. Her father told her that she had mistakenly let him escape! But not to worry, because they had another copy of him. When she was eventually shown the pictures, she found that her concerns had still not been addressed...because Emil was still really small! Thus, her father sought to invent a new way of projecting his moving images in real-life size! According to this version of the story, a fib told to a child was one of the driving forces behind early cinema's technological development. It's safe to say this tale is slightly exaggerated, though. If you stay tuned throughout the end credits, you'll be rewarded with more insider information on the "artistic liberties" that Wenders took when re-creating her father's story. 91-year old Lucie is quick to point out that they could have been more accurate if they would have interviewed her first.