an automobile accident on the Route de Versailles c.1903
- Lumière catalogue no. 2021
- Lumière catalogue no. 2021
Google Street View June 2016
Accident d'automobile appears in the 1905 Lumière catalogue among that anomalous final group of twenty-three films listed as 'Vues fantasmagoriques', tagged on at the end after the main corpus of films numbered 1 to 1400. For these phantasmagoric views the numbering begins at 2001. Number 2021 is itself anomalous among these twenty-three films in presenting a clear and legible topographic setting for the comic incident it stages. This in fact distinguishes the film from most if not all of the hundred-or-so comic scenes listed in the catalogue, where the setting is typically either a studio set or an anonymous exterior backdrop, a generic locale with few or no distinguishing features:
At best, the films made for the Lumière company by Georges Hatot at the fortifications around Paris are localisable, though I haven't yet managed to identify any of the buildings in the background of these scenes:
On the other hand, we can localise precisely the film Accident d'automobile. A sign on the building in the background reads 'Aux Hirondelles'; narrowing down from several establishments bearing this name at around this time, we arrive here:
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Google Street View August 2015
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It is apt that a film depicting a motor-car accident be shot in the vicinity of this 'Rendez-vous of Cyclists and Automobiles'. There are in total three motor-vehicles in the film and six people on bicycles.
This postcard matches the direction of view in the Lumière film:
Aux Hirondelles is the building in the centre-distance. Nearer to us, on the right, is a more famous establishment, the Hôtel-Restaurant du Père Auto:
The fame of Le Père Auto was assured when it was chosen as the final control point of the first Tour de France in 1903:
It continued in this role for further tours, and - as in these postcards below - for races such as the Bordeaux-Paris:
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Both the Père Auto and Aux Hirondelles had supplementary terrasses across the street, the route de Versailles, and were an attraction for both automobilists and velocipedists:
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The Lumière film documents the traffic (and the dangers thereof) along the route de Versailles, making it both an actualité and a dramatic comedy:
Ville d'Avray is not habitual Lumière territory, and it isn't at all clear which if any of the known Lumière operators made this film. The first thirteen of the 'Vues fantasmagoriques' have been attributed to Gaston Velle, but the last nine, including no. 2021, seem to have been made between 1903 and 1905, when Velle was already working for Pathé. These last nine are all filmed in real exteriors, and though only the location of the Accident d'automobile can be positively identified, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some of the others were made in the same area. The cross-country race shown in Rally-Paper (cat. no. 2017), for example, is of a type regularly run in the Bois des Fausses Reposes, the woodland bordering the road in the background above:
And though this could be a pond in a park anywhere, the setting for Une Farce de Gavroche (cat. no. 2022) could easily be the Parc de Saint-Cloud, just north of Ville d'Avray:
In fact, it wouldn't surprise to learn that these films were all made somewhere in this vicinity, and by the same unknown makers:
If there isn't enough topographical evidence to support my idea that these nine films are made by the same people, the recurrence of the same actors might serve as evidence. Unfortunately the images I have access to aren't all clear enough to allow for positive identification of actors across different films:
So for the moment this is just idle speculation. All I can say for now is that the automobile accident in the Lumière film no. 2021 happened on the Route de Vincennes, between the Restaurant Aux Hirondelles and the Restaurant du Père Auto, somewhere near the Bois des Fausses Reposes.
footnote:
Just around the bend in the postcard above, a few metres along from the scene of the accident in the Lumière film, Lino Ventura and Michel Constantine are picked up by Christine Fabrega in a 1966 Dodge Dart, in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 film Le Deuxième Souffle:
Just around the bend in the postcard above, a few metres along from the scene of the accident in the Lumière film, Lino Ventura and Michel Constantine are picked up by Christine Fabrega in a 1966 Dodge Dart, in Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 film Le Deuxième Souffle:
If it were possible to as easily identify the vehicle in Accident d'automobile it might be possible to identify its owner, and from that get a clue as to who was involved in making the film. Unfortunately, I can't quite make out the registration number on the front of the vehicle:
