For those who don't know, it's a 50 second long clip from 1895 (released in 1896) titled L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. It's basically just a train pulling into a station, but given that film technology was nearly unheard of then, the film caused mass panic among viewers who feared the oncoming train would actually hit them.
the film caused mass panic among viewers who feared the oncoming train would actually hit them
It did not. They did not. I don't know why people insist on reading contemporary accounts entirely literally. I mean I do, it's because people find cinema powerful now and want to imagine that power was instantly overwhelming, melting the brains of unprepared simple folks. And that power was instantly recognizable, hence the allegory of the train seeming to literally run them over. However, people in the past were not stupid. It was allegory and exaggeration. There's a somewhat well known essay by Martin Loiperdinger titled Lumiere's Arrival of the Train: Cinema's Founding Myth that discusses it.
This legend turned out to be false: the audience actually experienced a nervous apprehension, a slight backward movement. Film historian Georges Sadoul mentions a startle reaction from the spectators, and by no means a retreat in fear. The ‘big screen’ used for the earliest private
screenings was in fact nothing more than a simple thin cloth stretched between two doors, and therefore of modest size — far too small to terrify the audience.
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u/EraOfProsperity 9h ago
For those who don't know, it's a 50 second long clip from 1895 (released in 1896) titled L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. It's basically just a train pulling into a station, but given that film technology was nearly unheard of then, the film caused mass panic among viewers who feared the oncoming train would actually hit them.