Capturing History: How Émile Reynaud Redefined Entertainment Technology with ‘The Steeple-Chase’

Of the early pioneers in the art of motion pictures, Émile Reynaud is the first to have successfully combined the engineering capability of inventing an apparatus that could display images faster than a human eye could perceive and the projection of these images to a wider audience with, most significantly, the artistic ambition of creating a new medium for entertainment. Starting in 1877 and culminating with his exhibition of the Praxinoscope at the Universal Exposition in Paris in May 1878[1], he tirelessly created multiple drawings for his invention. These artworks fall into three main overlapping categories: ordinary actions of humans and animals, circus performances, and displays of popular games and sports in the 1870s. As an ensemble, these proto-animation works constitute the dawn of motion pictures as the seventh art.

It took over a quarter of a century for Ricciotto Canudo to coin the new cinematic medium as "plastic art in motion"[2] in 1911, when both films and animations gained sufficient popularity to deserve distinct categorisation. What we see in Reynaud's early output contains all the ingredients necessary for that definition. To assess this, we shall analyse one of his most ambitious productions, namely The Steeple-Chase from his third series of strips for the Praxinoscope. Understanding the achievements of this work and its significance in the history of film requires reviewing the evolution towards it in the preceding strips.

In the first series, we encounter a young lady playing with fish in The Aquarium, a chef preparing a chicken in The Roaster, a young girl blowing bubbles in The Soap-bubbles, and a young man playing the tambourine in Dzing. Boom. Boom!. These images follow the pattern established by other pioneers who emulated movement through the rapid rotation of stroboscopic discs. The central characters perform ordinary actions, allowing viewers to focus their attention at the centre of the canvas and track the movement of various body parts. Similar features appear in The Baby's Breakfast and The Smoker in subsequent series of strips. These works are mere reproductions of real motion, with varying degrees of artistic achievement.

The circus performances in The Juggler, The Learned Dogs, The Tight-rope Dance, The Trapeze and The Clowns focus not only on movement reproduction but on performance in their own right, as the audience consumes the act in motion not as mere curiosity but as entertainment.

The displays of popular games further enhance sport's appeal in engaging an audience through observation. The Skipping-Rope, Battledore and Shuttlecock and The Game of Graces are, in effect, moving advertisements for those games. Nevertheless, all of the above works confine the action within the frame of the drawing, allowing continuity to be expressed only through localised repetition.

The breaking of the frame's constraints is first witnessed in The Lady Swimmer, as the gaze of the central character constantly extends beyond the limits of the painting with each stroke of the arms and legs. The Lady Rider completely abandons these limits as the sportswoman moves in and out of the visible frame with each trot of her horse. The constant return of the same character reminds the viewer of the techniques used in shadow plays, which essentially treat the canvas as a stage where performance is limited to character entry and exit. To achieve this effect, Reynaud moved the action horizontally in a linear fashion before adding the frame separators.

The Steeple-Chase expands on the lessons of The Lady Rider by incorporating multiple performers. The central point of the drawing is in constant flux, as the viewer's eye moves simultaneously across the canvas while remaining fixed at the centre of the image enjoying the spectacle. This shifting of perspectives parallels Eadweard Muybridge's set-up of linear horizontal cameras placed to capture the movement of the horse in real life, whilst allowing the final action to be projected with the gaze focused solely on the centre of the image. Muybridge used the Zoopraxiscope, a slight refinement of Reynaud's Praxinoscope, to exhibit Sallie Gardner at a Gallop in 1880[3], but it is arguably unlikely that The Steeple-Chase was an inspiration, despite preceding the Palo Alto experiment by approximately a month. Curiously, Reynaud depicted his horses with all four legs in the air in his drawings, a fact that Muybridge subsequently confirmed with certainty[4].

Indisputably, the timing of both productions places The Steeple-Chase at the heart of the race to create moving images. However, whilst the historical coincidence is fortuitous, timing alone provides insufficient reason to celebrate it as a key work of cinematic archaeology, especially given the twenty-seven previous animations Reynaud had already produced. Admittedly, the technical combination of linear image shift with the maintenance of central compositional focus was achieved in this work for the first time, and therefore it merits due recognition.

The additional reason this work is essential to the history of moving images lies in its subject matter. Reynaud's drawing of the steeplechase race appears only four years after the inauguration of the Grand Steeple-Chase de Paris in 1874[5]. The emerging popularity of the sport would have resonated with the contemporary public. Reynaud's work functions not merely as an exercise in motion but as a record of actual events. Prior to the discovery of film, animated drawings were the only means of using moving images to document actual sporting events in motion. Even after film's discovery, it was not unusual for film pioneers to restage actual events and present them as documentary evidence. More than any other of his works, Reynaud here demonstrated the potential of moving images to capture history in motion.

Reynaud's masterpiece ultimately stands as the first example of defining the medium of moving pictures as a source of entertainment, both for its ability to reproduce entertaining events and for generating public enjoyment through repeated viewing. The Praxinoscope and subsequent projecting devices became desirable products for consuming entertainment, effectively reducing the necessity of attending individual events to experience them. The Steeple-Chase exemplifies how its apparent simplicity achieved such important milestones in how technology shapes our appreciation of life.

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References:

[1] Neupert, Richard. French Film History, 1895-1946; p. 10. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2022.

[2] Pervez, Saima. Film and Visual Communication: Exploring the Art and Language of Cinema; p. 14. New Delhi: The Readers Paradise, 2023.

[3] Herbert, Stephen. "Projecting the Living Image" in Eadweard Muybridge: The Kingston Museum Bequest, edited by the Kingston Museum and Heritage Service; p. 115. Hastings, East Sussex: The Projection Box, 2004.

[4] Bekey, George A. Autonomous Robots: From Biological Inspiration to Implementation and Control; p. 304. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: The MIT Press, 2005.

[5] Vamplew, Wray & Kay, Joyce. Encyclopedia of British Horseracing; p. 133. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2005.