Effets de mer

This Alice Guy film shows some rocks being pounded by the waves right off shore. There are a variety of angles, and raises the question of why this movie was shot at all.

I believe this is the last of the 'rough seas' genre of early movies. ROUGH SEA AT DOVER (1895) by Birt Acres & Robert Paul may be the earliest motion picture in the group, although one of the preceding technologies offered a view of rough waters; and I imagine photographic studies were made earlier on. You can probably see antecedents in paintings like J.M.William Turner's THE SHIPWRECK.

This does not mean, of course, that images of rough seas have vanished from the movies. They still appear as individual shots, when appropriate, to this day.

Effets de mer (1906)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Alice Guy film clocks in at 90 seconds and what we see is a large rock formation in the middle of the water that is constantly getting pounded by large waves. This film is also known under its English title of OCEAN STUDIES and I think that there is saying too much since there's really nothing that is studied. With that said, the film is mildly entertaining if you enjoy watching these older movies but I'm really not sure what the point of it was. I'm going to guess that if you had never seen the ocean in 1906 that this footage would be excited but there's really not too much to it.