The First Murder

The assassination of King Alexander I Karađorđević of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, on October 9, 1934, took place in front of cameras on La Canebière in Marseille. The footage records the death of public figures and is considered the first instance of its kind in the history of media. The American version of the film, produced by Universal Newsreels, was introduced by a dramatic voice-over announcing: “You are about to see the most amazing pictures ever made!”

The First Murder is a reconstruction of what, until 1934, were described as “the most amazing pictures ever made.” It does not address the event itself, but rather the images of that event. The only way to produce identical images was to determine the exact positions on the street from which the cameramen filmed on October 9, 1934. This would not have been possible had the site of the assassination not remained almost unchanged since that time.

I decomposed the original film into individual frames and compared them with a satellite image of the assassination site. Everything contained within the frame of each particular shot could be identified in the satellite image, making it possible to reconstruct the position of the cameramen at any given moment. Once a complete map of all camera positions had been established, I went to the site of the assassination and repeated those shots.

After a complete map of all the camera positions was made, I went on the assassination site to repeat those shots. There is no murder in the reconstructed images, for the content of those images was not a priority, partly because the original film, owing to its importance, competes with the actual event that it shows, and partly because in the media society images carry a greater value than the events they show.