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Eclair, formerly Laboratoires Eclair, was a film production, film laboratory, and
movie camera A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie s ...
manufacturing company established in
Épinay-sur-Seine Épinay-sur-Seine (, literally ''Épinay on Seine'') is a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. The church of Notre-Dame-des-Missions-du-cygne d'Enghien, designed by Paul Tournon, may be fou ...
, France by Charles Jourjon in 1907. What remains of the business is a unit of Ymagis Group offering creative and distribution services for the motion pictures industries across Europe and North America such as editing,
color grading Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, ...
, restoration, digital and theatrical delivery, versioning. The company produced many silent shorts in France starting in 1908, and soon thereafter in America. The American division produced films from 1911-1914 such as ''
Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature and film. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is de ...
'', one of the first filmed versions of the classic story in 1912. Deutsche Eclair, now Decla Film, was established as its German studio branch. In 1909, Eclair took part in the
Paris Film Congress The Paris Film Congress was a major meeting of European film producers and distributors in the French capital Paris from 2–4 February 1909. It intended to create an association to protect the interests of the participants through the formation ...
, an attempt by major European producers to form a
cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mo ...
similar to the MPPC in America. Originally a production company, Eclair started building cameras in 1912. The company is made up of two entities: Eclair Cinema and Eclair Media.


Studios in the United States

An Eclair studio, the Eclair Moving Picture Company, was established in
Fort Lee, New Jersey Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop the Palisades. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the borough's population was 40,191. As of the 2010 U.S. census, ...
. It suffered a devastating fire in 1914 in which many early film prints were lost. A western studio set was also established in
Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive ...
. Jules Brulatour was involved with the company and
Dorothy Gibson Dorothy Gibson (born Dorothy Winifred Brown; May 17, 1889 – February 17, 1946) was a pioneering American silent film actress, artist's model, and singer active in the early 20th century. She is best remembered as a survivor of the sinking o ...
one of its stars.


Eclair films made in Tucson

* ''Over the Cliffs'', 1913 * ''The Reformation of Calliope'', 1913 * ''The Aztec Treasure'', 1914 * ''Mesquite Pete's Fortune'', 1914 * ''At the Crucial Moment'', 1914 * ''The Renunciation'', 1914 * ''The Jackpot Club'', 1914 * ''The Return'', 1914 * ''The Cross in the Cacti'', 1914 * ''The Dupe'', 1914 * ''The Caballero's Way'', 1914 * ''When Death Rode the Engine'', 1914 * ''The Heart of Carita'', 1914 * ''The Squatter'', 1914 * ''Dead Men's Tales'', 1914 * ''Within an Inch of His Life'', 1914 * ''The Stirrup Brother; or, The Higher Abdication'', 1914 * ''The Blunderer's Mark'', 1914 * ''A Tale of the Desert'', 1914 * ''The Bar Cross Liar'', 1914 * ''The Ghost of the Mine'', 1914 * ''
Into the Foothills ''Into the Foothills'' (1914) is an American short (two-reel) silent Western film. It was written and directed by Webster Cullison and filmed on location in Tucson, Arizona in December 1913. The movie is believed to be lost. Plot The story ...
'', 1914 * ''Fate's Finger'', 1914 * ''Smallpox on the Circle U'', 1914 * ''The Line Rider'', 1914 * ''Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold'', 1914 * ''Whom God Hath Joined'', 1914 * ''
The Girl Stage Driver ''The Girl Stage Driver'' is a 1914 American short silent Western film. It was directed by Webster Cullison and was thought to have been lost, but an incomplete 35mm positive print was found in 2009 in the New Zealand Film Archive. The film was ...
'', 1914 * ''The Jewel of Allah'', 1914 * ''The Wondrous Melody'', 1914 * ''The Price Paid'', 1914 * ''The Yellow Streak'', 1914 * ''The Devil Fox of the Orth'', 1914 * ''The First Nugget'', 1914 * ''The Bar Crossed Lier'', 1914 * ''The Blunderer's Mark'', 1914 * ''Terror'', 1915 * ''The Thief and the Chief'', 1915 * ''Saved by Telephone'', 1915 * ''Romance in Bear Creek'', 1915 * ''The Oath of Smoky Joe'', 1915 * ''The Answer'', 1915 * ''Lure of the West'', 1915 * ''The Lone Game'', 1915


The Zigomar Lawsuit

Between 1911 and 1913, Eclair released a series of films revolving around the fictional character Zigomar which was created in 1909 by the French author
LĂ©on Sazie Leon, LĂ©on (French) or LeĂłn (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * LeĂłn, Spain, capital city of the Province of LeĂłn * Province of LeĂłn, Spain * Kingdom of LeĂłn, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again fr ...
in the Paris-based newspaper Le Matin. The movies would go on to be very successful commercially, but Sazie came to feel that they were too different from his idea for the series, and so sued the director, Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, and the Eclair company for excessive alteration of the source material. The courts ruled that 6,000 francs were to be paid to Sazie in damages, but Eclair appealed the case resulting in the amount to be paid increasing to 10,000 francs, with an additional 250 francs for any future violations.Gallica
"Auteur et Metteur en Scène"
(Le Petit Journal, 1919). p. 3.


Cameras

Among their early models was the Caméréclair of 1928, then the Camé 300 Réflex, both successful studio cameras. Their real breakthrough design, the ''Caméflex'' (shoulder-held portable 35mm camera with instant-change magazines, with later 16/35mm dual format option) introduced in 1947, played a major part in the
French New Wave French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of icono ...
by allowing for a freer form of shooting 35mm fiction films. Later 16mm silent models such as the 1960 Eclair NPR (aka "Eclair 16" or "Eclair Coutant") and the 1971 Eclair ACL were documentary cinema favorites. The NPR also saw considerable use in television production and was the standard camera used by 16mm film crews in the BBC's Film Department. Due to its light weight and ergonomic design, which housed the film spools at the back of the camera rather than on top, the NPR was seen as a considerable improvement over its predecessors. For 16mm cameramen out in the field, this ease of use and maneuverability was vital to capture the right shot, often in hostile conditions. NPR stands for Noiseless Portable Reflex and ACL comes from the letters of the names of its designers Agusti (Austin) Coma and Jacques Lecoeur. The last models designed by Eclair in the early-1980s came too late to save the company from bankruptcy and were hardly produced, if at all : the ''Eclair EX16'' (similar to ACL with fixed viewfinder and 24/25fps fixed motor) and the ''Eclair PANORAM'' (first dual format 16+ Super16 camera with "Varigate" system) The instant clip-on design of the camera magazine of the Caméflex and later the NPR, ACL, EX16 and PANORAM models' coaxial pre-threaded loop magazines revolutionized filmmaking, in particular
documentary films A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in ter ...
, since magazine changes could now be made in seconds without the need to spend time threading the film through the camera. The ACL model used a focal plane shutter for exposure and a side-to-side oscillating mirror for reflex viewing to keep the camera body size to a minimum


Famous camera users

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
used an Eclair Cameflex when filming ''
Breathless Breathless may refer to: Aircraft *Paradelta Breathless, an Italian paraglider design Film and television * Breathless (1960 film), ''Breathless'' (1960 film) (''Ă€ bout de souffle''), a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard * Breathless (1982 ...
'' in 1959. Godard wished to film using ambient light, and the Cameflex was the only motion picture camera capable of using ASA 400 35 mm Ilford HPS still camera film. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard spliced the 18-meter still camera rolls into 120-meter rolls for use as motion picture film, and pushed it to ASA 800 during development.The Criterion Collection. ''Breathless'' DVD. Special Features, disc 2. Coutard and Rissient. 2007. A handheld Eclair camera was used in the shower scene in the 1960 film ''
Psycho Psycho may refer to: Mind * Psychopath * Sociopath * Someone with a personality disorder * Someone with a psychological disorder People with the nickname * Karl Amoussou or Psycho, mixed martial artist * Peter Ebdon or Psycho, English snook ...
''. An Eclair 16 was used by L.M. Kit Carson (and discussed, on camera) in Jim McBride's ground-breaking film, '' David Holzman's Diary'' (1967). Two years later, the NPR was chosen by director Michael Wadleigh to shoot his documentary ''
Woodstock Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, Woodstock. ...
''. Wadleigh used sixteen NPR cameras. In ''Woodstock: From Festival to Feature'', he explained some of the challenges he faced using a then seven-year-old camera in a manner that would have been unheard of for 35mm movie cameras, let alone the relatively untried NPR.


Later company history

The company was acquired in late 1968 by UK-based Canadian film producer
Harry Saltzman Herschel Saltzman (; – ), known as Harry Saltzman, was a Canadian theatre and film producer. He is best remembered for co-producing the first nine of the ''James Bond'' film series with Albert R. Broccoli. He lived most of his life in De ...
who then founded the Éclair-Debrie (UK) Ltd. company and moved production to the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Soremec-Cehess took over the French side of the company and resumed production in France, so English Eclair cameras (similar to the French product with minor differences) were manufactured simultaneously for a few years until Éclair-Debrie (UK) Ltd ceased activities in 1973. Production then continued in France with a good degree of success, but the company eventually declined in the late-1970s and early-1980s until it was eventually sold to
Aaton Aaton Digital (formerly known as Aaton) is a French motion picture equipment manufacturer, based in Grenoble, France. History Aaton was founded by Eclair engineer Jean-Pierre Beauviala, whose efforts have been primarily focused on making quiet ...
S.A. in 1986 who ceased all camera production, offering only a license for maintenance of the many existing cameras. The film processing and post-production side of Éclair continues to operate.


References


External links


eclair ACL manuals
{{Authority control Cinematography Photography companies of France Silent film studios French companies established in 1907 Mass media companies established in 1907