The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
About The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
A steam locomotive pulls into the station at La Ciotat and stops. Doors open. Passengers step down, others climb aboard, and people on the platform watch the train. The camera does not move. The shot runs about fifty seconds.
Cast & crew
More about The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
Auguste and Louis Lumière produced the actuality, indexed as Lumière No. 653. Louis Lumière photographed it with the Cinématographe, a camera that also printed and projected. The first public showing was in Lyon in January 1896. It was not among the ten films at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895.
Themes
Background
The Lumière brothers were still introducing the Cinématographe city by city in the first months of 1896. This view was one item on those programs, not the film shown at the December 1895 Paris opening.
In film history
The story that the first audience ran from the hall in terror has no contemporary report behind it. Stephen Bottomore collected startled reactions to train films and found none in which people are shown to have believed the train was real. Tom Gunning treats the appeal as a safe thrill. Hellmuth Karasek later repeated the panic claim in Der Spiegel.
Making
The Cinématographe exposed a single continuous take on 35mm film at an aspect ratio of about 1.33:1. There is no cut and no deliberate camera move.
Reviews
In 1896 Maxim Gorky described a Lumière train picture: 'A train appears on the screen. It speeds right at you — watch out! ... But this, too, is but a train of shadows.'
Look
Louis Lumière set the Cinématographe at the end of the platform at La Ciotat so the engine approaches the lens, then stops, in one uncut take.
Technique
One unedited 35mm shot, about 50 seconds, made with the Cinématographe, which served as camera, printer, and projector.
Preservation
Prints of the 1896 view and of the 1897 reshoot survive. Lumière No. 653 has been issued in early-film collections, including Landmarks of Early Film, Volume 1. A stereoscopic reshoot from 1934 also survives.
Notes
- Wikidata dates the first showing 6 January 1896. The English Wikipedia places that showing in Lyon and rules out the 28 December 1895 Paris program.
- Three versions are known. The print most often circulated is a summer 1897 reshoot, with women and children boarding.
- Louis Lumière later reshot the arrival in stereoscopic film and showed it, with other 3D shorts, at a 1934 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences.
- Martin Loiperdinger notes that members of the Lumière family are on the platform and that nobody looks at the camera, and he reads the view as at least partly staged.
- British release titles included Train Pulling into a Station. American titles include Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.
Scenes
- The engine comes down the track toward the camera, slows, and stops beside the platform.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, Complete.webm)
- Internet Archive (11-arrival-of-a-train-at-la-ciotat)
- Landmarks of Early Film, Volume 1
