L'Arrivée d'un Train à La Ciotat (1896)
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 1 minuten
Alternative titles: The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat / The Arrival of a Train / The Arrival of the Mail Train / L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat
Country:
France
Directed by: Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière
Stars: Madeleine Koehler and Marcel Koehler
IMDb score:
7,4 (13.930)
Releasedate: 10 October 1897
This movie is not available on US streaming services.
L'Arrivée d'un Train à La Ciotat plot
A group of people stand in a straight line on the platform of La Ciotat train station, waiting for a train to approach in the distance. When the train stops at the platform, the straight line disappears. The doors of the train cars open and people on the platform help passengers get out.
Reviews & comments
Metalfist
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- 12407 messages
- 3964 votes
Contrary to popular belief, "L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat" was not part of the legendary screening on December 28th. At least, the recovered program doesn't mention it anywhere. Yet, it's also a short film that left an impression, as legend has it that several viewers left the theater in fear of the approaching train. While the previous films were more of a static snapshot, the Lumière brothers seem to be playing with dramatic effect here by placing the camera at an angle and close to the train. This allows the train to pass by, as it were, in long shot, medium shot, and close-up.
3.5*
Translated from Dutch · View original
Fikret8
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- 6172 messages
- 4239 votes
Here's a media-philosophical note in review form on a one-minute clip. 
A textbook example of putting the goal first, the tool second. The power lies not in the content, but in the impact. That's why L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896) works in an era when people aren't yet accustomed to watching moving images on a screen.
As a new medium, this fragment confronts an untrained viewer with a radical experience: a pure element of surprise. The image programs the brain to instinctively recognize danger and step aside to avoid the approaching train. As if you're standing on the tracks yourself and it's happening to you, while in reality you're not participating.
What follows is observation. People move unfiltered in a way that today seems unconscious and clumsy, completely unaware that they are being watched. Let alone that these images are still circulating more than a hundred years later. What remains is a window into daily life around 1895. Fashion, behavior, and social patterns are not interpreted, but recorded.
What's particularly galling is the realization that this one-minute clip is the result of a massive technical, logistical, and conceptual effort by the Lumière brothers, while a comparable image can be generated today with a single AI prompt, with virtually no effort. It's also galling that even this extensive review requires more time and attention than it would take to generate a comparable clip today. 
Translated from Dutch · View original
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