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Summary of CTI Articles: Botsman - Loiperdinger - Hamari&Sjoklint
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LOIPERDINGER & ELZERLUMIERE’S ARRIVAL OF THE TRAIN: CINEMA’S FOUNDING MYTH
Introduction
- Article discusses the 1895 audience experience with the first film, this was a Lumière
brothers arriving train
- The Louis Lumière’s film Arrival of the Train shows, in 50 seconds, passengers are seen going
back and forth on the platform.
- Although in itself is rather brevite and banal of its subject matter, the film still managed to
get its fame, as it was being the first film in history and became an icon to the medium’s
origin.
- In Germany, and many other countries, the television and press reports attest to cinema’s
undiminished vitality using this film as evidence
- Cinema was said to be capable of resisting even new electronic media by asserting its
peculiar power to fascinate the sense and its appeal to audiences.
- In this context lumieres cinematographic locomotive and its startling effect is mentioned
repeatedly as an illuminating example from the first days of cinema.
L’Arrivée D’un train en gare de la Ciotat
- It was a short film
- With long lasting impact: fear, terror and panic
- Although the cinematographic train was dashing towards the crowded audiences in
flickering black and white, the only sound accompanying it was the monotonous clatter of
the projector
- The spectators felt psychically threatened and panicked
- It is not simply used as an icon of cinemas birth but rather this one-minute film, stands as a
striking example of the manipulative power allegedly inherent in cinema since the basic
principle
- While the fear of the locomotive is retold, its status reaches a much higher, it figures as the
founding myth of the medium, testifying to the power of film over its spectators.
-
Continue Introduction
- Even German railway customer magazine picks up the gag, visually embellishing the
supposedly panicky reaction.
- The spectators ran out of the hall in terror because the locomotive headed right for them
and they feared that it would plunge off the screen and onto them
- These journalistic claims are of course backed up by the standard works of film history.
- All stating that people were indeed terrified of the emerging train.
- The audience’s terror in view of the arriving train is still passed on as a proven fact by film
historians today, and to this day circulates a a generally agreed upon rumor.
- Bernard Chardère laconically notes: the locomotive frightened the spectators
- Film historians repeat without examination the claim hat viewing the locomotive
approaching the camera, spectators at the time mistook the images on the screen for reality.
- This perception of film audiences attending the cinemas first screenings has a long tradition
- Then starting as early as 1901, many other producers decided to produce similar type of
movie content, British people began with “the countryman’s first sight of the animated
pictures: a farmer viewing the approaching train on the screen takes to his heels.
, - Hence, the film idea was quite successful, the audience even proceeded to play along with
the event and reacted totally the events in the films, such as a horse reared or fled from
their seats because they thought the train was approaching them.
Todays Journalism:
- Todays journalism take up the story to illustrate the affective power that cinema is
principally thought to exert over its spectators.
- Cinema made clear, thanks to cameras power of suggestions how to conflate the audiences
fantastic with reality.
- The reality of fear and danger as well as the reality of emotions
Cinema Theory:
- first historical reminiscence of the audience’s reaction during film screens a hundred years
ago cannot claim to be evidence of the cinemas affective characteristics
- in terms of logic, the myth of lumiere’s locomotive is subject to contradictions inherent in all
theories of manipulate
o the affective power ascribed to the medium is postulated to operate suggestively
o medium is supposedly capable of deactivation spectator consciousness
o inevitable drawing all under its spell
Panic among the audience – fact or legend?
- Poster from 1896 depicting the subject of our inquiry
- The depicted arrival of a train suggests simultaneously the films
action, content and seductive potential.
- The sensation that this film caused and its yet unfamiliar illusion
of reality, going beyond any previous scope become surprisingly
manifest in this extended pair of rails
- Interpretation of the power scene is selectively base don the fact
that the rails protrude beyond the film screen
- No audience movement is indicated; in fact, the two women stay
seated in their seats.
- The image of the protruding rails supports a simpler intention: it tries to visualize that the
new invention, the cinematgraphe lumiere doesn’t project a stationary image but displays
continuous movement unlike the well known magic of lantern
- By seeing the rails protrude it indicated the the rain is in motion
- Interpreting the image as a ‘cataclysmic promise” can’t be justified by evidence in the
source alone.
- However, in retrospective inferred from the audiences rumored fight and panic
- However, even a poster is not credible enough account of the experiences of the train
arriving
- Apparently, the posters advertising image was indeed taken from reality. The screenings in
the grand café began every half hour.
- During the remaining five to ten minutes the audience turned over.
- Taking all of these bits of evidence it seems unlikely that the screening of arrival of the train
cause a panic in the audience:
o The movie images projected onto the screen with the cinematograph lumiere could
hardly be mistake for reality
o Contemporary reports of the panic reactions cannot be found
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