This 37-second long Lumiere Brothers actuality (Lumiere No. 54) is a close shot of a lion in a cage. A zookeeper tries to keep the lion moving for the camera.
This short is fascinating for two reasons not intended by the Lumiere Brothers, because they both hinge on historical facts about cultures. The first is that this is a nice record of "old fashioned" zoos. Zoos used to be rows of small cages that appear more like prison cells for the animals. Modern zoos, although still arguably prison-like for animals (which is not to say I dislike zoos--I love them; the issues surrounding the capture and display of animals in zoo environments are complex), attempt to put their animals in much larger and more "natural" spaces.
The second is the behavior of the zookeeper. Here we see him antagonizing the lion while standing precariously close to him. A modern zookeeper wouldn't intentionally antagonize an animal, whether it's for a film camera or not (at least if they would, they'd get fired for it if their superiors found out). The viewer expects any second to see the "original version" of that famous scene from Paul Schrader's Cat People (1982), wherein Ed Begley, Jr. loses an arm.
The modern conception of documentary animal photography is to keep everything as "natural" as possible. This is distinct from a lot of modern documentaries featuring humans, which still stage a lot of scenarios for maximum effect (there are a lot of complex issues here, too, which aren't really appropriate to get into in this review). Even animal wranglers on fiction films won't (or aren't supposed to in theory/per the animal rights organizations that try to monitor such things) intentionally antagonize an animal to get it to perform.
Aesthetically, this is far from being one of the more successful Lumiere Brothers shorts, but the historical/cultural worth more than makes up for aesthetic deficiencies in this case.
This short is fascinating for two reasons not intended by the Lumiere Brothers, because they both hinge on historical facts about cultures. The first is that this is a nice record of "old fashioned" zoos. Zoos used to be rows of small cages that appear more like prison cells for the animals. Modern zoos, although still arguably prison-like for animals (which is not to say I dislike zoos--I love them; the issues surrounding the capture and display of animals in zoo environments are complex), attempt to put their animals in much larger and more "natural" spaces.
The second is the behavior of the zookeeper. Here we see him antagonizing the lion while standing precariously close to him. A modern zookeeper wouldn't intentionally antagonize an animal, whether it's for a film camera or not (at least if they would, they'd get fired for it if their superiors found out). The viewer expects any second to see the "original version" of that famous scene from Paul Schrader's Cat People (1982), wherein Ed Begley, Jr. loses an arm.
The modern conception of documentary animal photography is to keep everything as "natural" as possible. This is distinct from a lot of modern documentaries featuring humans, which still stage a lot of scenarios for maximum effect (there are a lot of complex issues here, too, which aren't really appropriate to get into in this review). Even animal wranglers on fiction films won't (or aren't supposed to in theory/per the animal rights organizations that try to monitor such things) intentionally antagonize an animal to get it to perform.
Aesthetically, this is far from being one of the more successful Lumiere Brothers shorts, but the historical/cultural worth more than makes up for aesthetic deficiencies in this case.