THE LUMIERE EXPERIMENTAL FILMS Arrival Of A Train At La Ci

Known as Actualités,
or 'actuality' films, their repertoire of experimental films
amassed to over two thousand by the year 1903. These films of everyday life
added greatly to the popular culture.

One such film was entitled
Arrival Of A Train At La Ciotat Station or,
\u201cL'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat\u201d. Subtitled and catalogued as number
653, this short featured members of the Lumière
family in the crowd to the right.

THE
LUMIERE EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
The first of the Lumière
private screeings took place on 22 March 1895 in preparation
for the public showing in December of that year. Known as Actualités,
or 'actuality' films, their repertoire of experimental films
amassed to over two thousand by the year 1903.

These films of everyday life
added greatly to the popular culture and by early 1896, the
Lumières
had opened theatres in New York, Brussels, and London, as well
as in France, showing their films on the same machine which
had taken them, the Cinématographe.

Arrival Of
A Train At La Ciotat Station was again shot two years later
in 1897 but did not cause as much of a stir than it did in 1895. Today,
a director wouldn't think twice about angling the camera within feet
of the tracks as a train entered into the frame. We see it all the time.
However, in 1895 it was a frightening thing to see, in a crowded, small
room, with many people and little room to manoeuvre in your seat.

As the train approaches from a distance you realize it is coming awfully
close to you. Using a diagonal frame from (right to left), the Lumières
provided a sense of realism unseen before. It was the phantasmagoria
all over again. Had the Lumières
meant to do this or was it just by accident that their paying customers
thought they were about to be killed? After all, the people walking
along the tracks did not appear to be scared, and they were closer to
the train than the patrons were to the screen.

Consider for a moment how long the steam engine had been in existence.
And how many people had walked alongside the tracks and along platforms
as the trains approached ever so close. Surely this event of seeing
a train become larger and larger wasn't a new experience? Why then the
hysteria in a makeshift movie theatre in 1895? Perhaps it was the unrealism
of it all. How could this real looking train be actually travelling
down the tracks towards us, getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer?
Weren't we after all, sitting in a room nowhere near a train station
and looking at a wall with a white sheet on it?

Yes, and that is exactly why patrons of early films could not understand
or come to terms with the reality of what they were seeing, versus what
they were experiencing. The two did not match. Whether it was a horse
and rider galloping, a train arriving within a few feet of us, or a
cowboy shooting a gun right into our face, the earliest of film-goers
were entertained in a way that has not been seen since, and never will
be again.

THE HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
An illustrated Chronological History of the Development of Motion Pictures Covering 2500 Years Leading to the Discovery of Cinematography in the 1800's

http://precinemahistory.net

-- Paul Burns